Group 2 Ford Capri RS2600/3100 racing history and whereabouts (mega merge!)

[Peter Mallett]

Hmmmm,

I'll look through my references.

[vollpower]

As far as i can make out the RS2600 is the Cologne Capri so called because it used a production V6 block made by Ford Cologne.I think they could bore it out bigger or something.
The RS3100 was more a pure racing motor with 4 cams and 4 valves and looked totally different with bigger wings and spoilers,was 3400cc i believe.
I remember many yonks ago seeing Brian Yogi Muir racing one of the RS2600 here.It was sponsored by Wiggins Teap metallic blue it gave Frank Gardner a hard time in the SCA Freight Camaro.now that was Touring car Racing.

[Steve Holmes]

Thanks folks. Keep the info coming. The guy who owns the ex Moffat car, says the earlier cars all had Weslake built engines, the last four, like his, Cologne built engines, hense the name. Trying to find info on them aint easy though, considering their amazing history.

[Peter Mallett]

As far as I can tell it goes something like this:

The original Works Capri was the 2300. This engine was a German "Cologne" engine and was modified by Weslake in Rye. Next came the RS2600 again using the "Cologne" based engine. This suffered from reliability problems and so Peter Ashcroft was sent from Boreham to help resolve the problems. The engines were bored out to around 2.9 litres at this time.

For 1974 it was decided to move into the over 3 litre class and that is when the cars stopped being purely "Cologne" cars. The reason was the engine which was based on the Essex 3 litre V6. Cosworth were given the job of building a 4 valves/cylinder quad cam fuel injected V6 and they came up with the 3.4 litre GAA.

The road cars were built in Halewood. Again a departure from the Cologne factory.

The race cars were still built in Cologne.

Can't find a reference to the actual numbers built but it would make sense because Ford competitions were strapped for cash at the time and so two race cars two spares seems reasonable.

There were also Broadspeed versions of the original Group 2 Capri. They were, I believe, the first to run the "plastic" single leaf rear spring with multi linked suspension.

[Beejay17]

Steve, as you probably know, the ex-Moffat Capri has a specific chassis number, mentioned on the NZ Capri Club site. Not long ago another was sold from the TWR museum when TWR went bust. I didn't record the details but it was identifiable by the no.

There was an extensive story on the Moffat car in NZ Unique Cars magazine, which was reproduced at this site:

http://www.geocities.com/theultimatecapri/cologne.html

The cars were built by the team under Mike Kranefuss, so by my understanding only those RS3100 Group 2 racers would be considered Cologne Capris.

Anyone else?

[Beejay17]

There is a bit of the story in Graham Robson's Ford in Touring Car Racing, which basically says the design layout was different. Various components were in various locations affecting the bodywork, and if you add in the signature ducktail spoiler, a close look will show they were quite different inside and out.

[Peter Mallett]

They went back to steel panels due to the regs. They put the gearbox and diff oil coolers in the rear panel.

If you look at the Homologation Certificate there are photo's covering the various development bits from the original through to the final Gp 2 Car. The wings were originaly fibreglass panels by '74 the squared off vented panels were made up from a kit comprising the top piece in fibreglass and the side pieces in steel. The weight went up from around 960 kg to 1050 (ish).

The radiators were sited in the rear wheelarches. So yes they were different to the original RS 23/2600s. The ducktail was first tried on a RS2600 in Japan. Then a similar car won in Macau. That was the end of '73.

The best source that I know is "CAPRI The Development & Competition History of Ford's European GT Car" by Jeremy Walton.ISBM 0-85429-863-0.

Going back to the "numbers built" I can only find references to three car entries. So unless somebody has more detail there may well be a few "kit built" cars doing the rounds.

Vince Woodman has (had?) a white example. I knew about the TW example and the one that prompted Steve's questions (as I understood it) started out its life as a ETC car but then was pedalled by Niki Lauda in the German Championship before going to South Africa.

As Beejay says the engine in the '74 car was an Essex (Ford UK) derived lump and as such they spent an awful lot of time selecting the necessary blocks from the production batch. This was because they discovered a weakness. Cosworth had to make (or prove that they had manufactured enough components to make) 250 engines.

I'm sure Frank de Jong could help us out here.

[Peter Mallett]

Looking at Frank's Site
http://etcc-history.it4us.nl/

It seems that the cars were called Koln Ford Capri whilst they were run by the works team. So at one time the works 2300/2600 and 3100 cars were known as "Koln" Capris.

[Frank de Jong]

The term "Cologne Capri's" never had an official meaning as far as I know - I would call all works Capris 1970-1975 "Cologne Capri".
Each year a number of cars were built and sold to privateers the year after - even some 2300 GT's lived on as RS2600's I guess (since there were privateer cars with square headlamps in 1971).
I know of at least one 1973 RS2600 which got an RS3100 engine in 1977 (!) and today lives on as an ex-works RS3100.
I know of two factory 3100's built, one maintained by the works in 1975, one went to Grab for Werner Schommers. But perhaps there were more, but they were not raced in Europe in 1975.
IIRC the 1975 works car finally went to Australia for Allan Moffat.

[Steve Holmes]

Thanks everyone. That's fantastic! You've all been really helpful. I guess what started it was my mentioning to one of my editors that I'd like to do a story on the Paul Fahey Cologne Capri as part of a series I've been doing on old New Zealand racing saloon cars.

This car came to NZ in the early 70's apparently as a spare factory car, and raced very successfully by Fahey before he retired. It then passed down through several different owners, eventually having the V6 replaced by a Chevy V8 and is now being restored in the South Island.

However, my editor said a friend of his, ie Mike John, owns a real 'Cologne Capri' which is exactly what I thought the Fahey car was. When speaking to Mike, he says the same thing. That there are just four 'Cologne Capri's', the earlier cars having Weslake engines, therefor not being Cologne Capri's.

Keep the info coming. This is great!

[alfasud]

Isn't it the ones with the Westlake *heads* (not the entire engine?), that is to say an RS2600 car, that can be called a Cologne Capri... and the ones with the Essex based engine (with Cosworth heads) than aren't... or maybe if they were prepared in Cologne they can be called Cologne cars too????

Or maybe it's better to just abandon any attempt at deciding which is a "Cologne Capri" and which is not, and talk about Grp 2 "works" cars, and model numbers, e.g. RS2600 and RS3100.

My understanding is that the Paul Fahey Capri was an ex works RS2600 with the 12v engine. I think it was later upgraded to 24v Cosworth power.

The Mike John ex Alan Moffat car that you can read about from that geocities link posted above, was a genuine RS3100 works car.

We had this thread before, so rather than repeating....

http://www.ten-tenths.com/forum/show...threadid=43029

Now if you really want to dig up the details of the NZ racing Capri's, here's a possible source of info.... when I was a young lad, way back in the 1960's and 70's (yes, I'm a fossil!), my brother worked as a mechanic for the local Ford dealer. At that stage, the Ford motor company in New Zealand produced a monthly(?) paper called the "Ford Performance News" and I remember articles about the Paul Fahey Capri, and his earlier FVA Escort and 1970 Boss Mustang.... plus something on the locally built Don Halliday car.

Where to find these "Ford Performance News"... I've no idea, but you could ask Ford in NZ if they have anything in their archives, or you could try the NZ RS owners club.

[Peter Mallett]

Originally posted by alfasud
Isn't it the ones with the Westlake *heads* (not the entire engine?), that is to say an RS2600 car, that can be called a Cologne Capri... and the ones with the Essex based engine (with Cosworth heads) than aren't... or maybe if they were prepared in Cologne they can be called Cologne cars too????

Or maybe it's better to just abandon any attempt at deciding which is a "Cologne Capri" and which is not, and talk about Grp 2 "works" cars, and model numbers, e.g. RS2600 and RS3100.

I think that's right. They were all "Cologne" Capri's whilst the works ran them. They were always Group 2 Capri's no matter who ran them.

And yes Weslake only built the heads and manifolds for the 2300/2600 cars. Cosworth however built the entire engine for the 3100.

[Steve Holmes]

I wonder if it was an Australasian thing, calling them Cologne Capri's. During the 70's there were several V8 Capri's competing in Sports Sedan competition, the Cologne Capri certainly sounded like a more exotic name.

[Peter Mallett]

The V8 originated in South Africa where it was homologated for competition.

As stated above the "Works" entries were always known as "Koln Capri" and when they were sold they just became Group 2 Capri's.

[Steve Holmes]

Sorry, I didn't write that too clearly. Sports Sedan regs in NZ allowed any engine up to 6,000cc to be fitted to any body. During the late 70's, early 80's, most teams shoehorned Chevy V8's into Capri's, as they could get good reliable horsepower, with a light bodyshell. None were genuine Perannah's though.