On Thursday, March 28, 2002, at 02:09 AM, Larry Steckel wrote:
> Consider the Aussie built Capri. A Mazda design out of Ford Australia.
> That
> thing came off the boat with bolts missing, systems inoperative, or
> sloppily
> installed.
The Capri was not a Mazda design but rather a Ford Australia design
based upon the chassis of the Australian Ford Lazer (a version of the
'88 Mazda 323), see http://www.geocities.com/capricarclub/convert.html
and http://capri.virtualave.net/info.htm for a history. Mazda itself had
little or nothing to do with the car since they were busy working on the
Miata at the time :-). The Capri was supposed to come out before the
Miata in early '89 but problems delayed it's US launch until 1991 by
which time Mazda had pretty much captured the market.
I remember wanting a Capri when I first saw the sketches back in '88 but
as soon as I heard of the Miata that December there was no question
which one I was going to buy! I suspect that Holden and Ford must have
improved their quality control since then or they wouldn't still be in
business, import taxes or no. I also suspect that if they haven't Mr
Lutz will make sure they have before they are imported.
FYI at one time a couple of years ago someone on this list saw a LHD
Holden Commodore GTX being tested as a potential police car in Georgia
or somewhere. I wonder if perhaps we'll now see the Commodore brought
over too?
- Alan Dahl
--------------
Alan Dahl home:
adahl@eskimo.com
Federal Way, WA, USA work: aland@bestnet.com
http://www.eskimo.com/~adahl ICQ 52688023
/// unsubscribe/change address requests to majordomo@autox.team.net or try
/// http://www.team.net/mailman/listinfo
/// Partial archives at http://www.team.net/archive
|