FORD’S CONSUL CLASSIC AND CAPRI
The story of Ford’s Consul Classic saloon and Consul Capri coupé is seldom accurately told. Most journalists will have you believe they were commercial flops, the wrong cars at the wrong time with styling that was just plain weird. The problem is that those journalists are wrong. We will concede that the cars’ timing was unfortunate, but this was due to outside circumstances that we will come back to later. As for the rest, the cars were visually striking, reasonably ergonomic and sold well by anybody’s standards at the start of the 1960s. So why do they seem to attract such negative press? Well, if you are sitting comfortably, then I’ll begin...
In the mid-1950s, Ford had two sectors of the market brilliantly covered in the UK – some of the cheapest and best large cars around in the shape of the Consul, Zephyr and Zodiac trio, plus its range of Prefect and Anglia 100E small cars that were a more practical solution for many motorists than the upcoming Mini or the established Minor. What they didn’t have was an offering in the middle ground, one that competed with the likes of Hillman’s Minx.
Penetrating this growing market sector with a brand-new product would not be easy – brand loyalty was very strong in those days – and so Ford had to present something with an obvious edge, whether that was styling, engineering, practicality or even good old economics. In many ways they offered something from each of those categories in the Classic, but it is always the styling that gets people’s attention today.
The chief stylist for the 109E project (which was to become the Classic) was Colin Neale, then aged
