AUTOSPORT HISTORICS
8 25 JULY 2019 AUTOSPORT HISTORICS
ord’s crack marketing team tagged the Capri
as ‘the car you always promised yourself’, but
Gordon Spice didn’t share that sentiment.
When the curtain fell at the end of the 1982
British Saloon Car Championship season, he
had racked up 25 overall wins and six successive class titles in the
coupe. But the switch to tin-tops was a sideways step that only
took form after glory in Formula 5000 had eluded him.
“I was very lucky,” Spice says of his 10-year affair with the
Capri. “It actually came to my rescue back in the early 1970s.
At that time, Formula 5000 had more or less given up on
me and I was without a drive.”
For the first half of the decade, Spice had to settle for class wins
- seven in the first nine races of the 1975 season – as the battle
for the overall lead was dominated by the Chevrolet Camaros. The
American invasion of the BSCC was
nothing if not ironic – cars that didn’t
sell in the UK were winning the
country’s premier championship, and
the Capri (which was meant to be a
European version of the iconic Mustang) couldn’t get close.
But for the following season a 3000cc engine limit was brought
in, and so Spice and the Capri came to the fore. He won the Class D
title, and took a class success in that season’s Spa 24 Hours.
The modest finances of backer Wisharts Garage had to change,
though, if Spice was to climb higher. He sought factory support
from Ford, and UK competition manager Peter Ashcroft brokered
the deal. Spice received free shells, engines and parts.
And yet success still had to wait. A lapse of concentration during
the 1977 Spa 24 Hours while deliberating tyre strategy for the
next pitstop meant Spice glanced the barriers at Malmedy and
retired on the spot. That didn’t stop the rest of the season from
being a commercial win for the
Gordon Spice Racing team, so in
1978 it grew to two cars, uprated
to the Mk3 Capri, switched to
Neil Brown engines, signed
Chris Craft on the deal of
‘no team orders’, and moved
from Dunlop to Goodyear.
Spice scored half of the Capri’s
12 wins in the BSCC that season,
and added a stunning victory in
the Spa enduro – having been 48
seconds down on the lead BMW
with an hour to go thanks to
a combination of overheating
and tyre problems.
“I preferred endurance racing
to the sprint side of things,” says
Spice. “If you make a mistake in
a sprint, you’re f****d. If you
make a mistake in a 24-hour
race, you’ve got time to put it
right. I know they’re much moreThe classy
way to build a
tin-top legacy
A trophy at the Silverstone Classic is
named in honour of the Ford Capri’s
most successful driver – Gordon Spice
BY MATT KEW
F
The mighty
Rover Vitesse
knocked the
Capri off its
perch during
the early 1980s