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Looking back to 1969 – The Ford Capri launch in UK Autocar January 1969

10 November, 2020

 

 

NZ Classic Car magazine readers often donate boxes of car magazines from the 50s, 60s and 70s from their garages for our own archives.
Here’s an occasional look inside a magazine chosen at random from our collection. Let’s look at what treasures the weekly UK Autocar issue from January 23rd, 1969 has for us – cover price, 2s/6p.

The big, big news this issue is the brand new Ford Capri, launched on this day in the UK. This issue of the magazine took the bold step of going on sale a day late this week so their cover strap could coincide with the launch “Out today, new Ford Capri”.
There’s 10 pages of coverage including a road test in Cyprus and an in depth look at the new 4-valve per cylinder, Ford Cosworth BDA engine. This exciting new engine was going to find its way into 100 of the new Capris before committing to volume production in the Autumn of 1970.
There is also a visit to the 1969 Brussels Car show where there were “Few novelties but plenty to see”.
Our own Eion Young’s Straight from the grid column had a small paragraph on how “New Zealanders have been making their presence felt on Grand Prix race tracks for a while” and even a report from Eion on the Lady Wigram trophy that year where Lotus finished first and second. Jochen Rindt won by a “handsome 2.6 seconds”.
There’s a good fun article about enjoying some off road thrills in a Saab 96 V4, and the Autotest this issue is the basic 1599cc Vauxhall Victor. Quite an in depth test and spec report. 

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The butterfly effect

18 June, 2026

The man on the mountain bike pedalled over, taking it all in. Gazing in wonderment at this small Japanese coupe with butterfly doors, he said, “Wow, I have never seen one of these before. What is it?” When I told him it was a Toyota, he nearly fell off his bike.
The Toyota Sera is unique amongst ’90s Japanese coupes. The Sera, which is Italian for ‘evening’, can trace its roots back to Toyota’s AXV-II concept car. Launched as part of a trio of Toyota concept cars at the 1987 Tokyo Motor Show, it shared its underpinnings with the P70 Toyota Starlet. The similarities ended there, thanks to the AXV-II’s low-slung and rounded coupe styling with butterfly doors. These doors were held upright by gas struts when fully open. Glass covered the upper section of the doors and the rear hatchback.
These features, much to everyone’s surprise, were carried over to the production Sera in 1990. Toyota marketed the Sera, which means ‘will be’ in Spanish and ‘princess’ in Hebrew, as a funky alternative to the much-loved MR2.

Racing Mazdas

12 June, 2026

Both Rod Millen and Ron Kendall were rotary racing kings, emanating from the North Shore of Auckland, where I grew up. And the ultimate rotary techno guru was Bill Shiells, who developed the engine into a rocket ship while working out of Gulf Mazda in Takapuna from 1969, and later in his own business, Rotorsport. He began to extract some phenomenal horsepower from the enigmatic rotary engine. Bill was one of the first to race the Mazda RX-2 Coupe in 1971 and achieved immediate success, causing others to sit up and take notice, particularly the North Shore’s racing elite. They included Robbie Francevic, Rod Millen, Ron Kendall, John Woolf, John Le Feuvre, and Rex Findlay.