The Ford Capri is a paradigm of self-deception, but cars are men’s mirrors, and they want to be deceived by them. I like the old Capri because there was something jaded and stubborn about it: a weary postwar British sex appeal. But its owners couldn’t forget the Capri, named for the island off Naples, though the old Capri had no ghostly hebephiles: I will leave the question ‘Would the Emperor Tiberius have driven a Capri?’ Sweep away the old Capri, Criminal Intelligence, the Essex V4 engine – made in Dagenham, whose Ford sign was the largest neon object in Europe! Perhaps Ford is right, and those who feel betrayed by the newly sensible Capri will follow their classic cars to the graveyard, and the new Capri will be the famous Capri.