I Finally Sold My Reliable Old Ferrari And Replaced It With An Unreliable Old Ford

Well. That’s that then. I am no longer a Ferrari owner. Early on a summer Sunday morning about five weeks ago, it blared into life outside my house, woke the neighbors one final time, and drove away down the street and out of my life. I filmed the moment for posterity and immediately went back inside to make another cup of coffee. No lingering look. No sense of loss. No regrets.

That might sound surprising if you’ve been following along with my Ferrari adventures over the last four and a half years. And to be honest, my lack of remorse somewhat surprised me as well. For now, it’s enough to know that it simply reinforced the idea that I had made the right decision – for myself, my life, and my bank account – and post-sale events gave me further reasons to believe this was true. Lesser observers might chalk all this up to karmic justice in action – a relatively normal person tries to own an exotic car and finds it too much – but I’ve always been honest about my trials and tribulations with it, and what it cost me to run. And for a long time, the Mondial did mean a lot to me. Then, about two years ago, I realized, for reasons I can’t fully explain yet, there was a car that meant a lot more.

To bastardize the original advertising copy line, I am the newly minted owner of ‘The Car I Recently Promised Myself’: a 1981 Ford Capri. Not just any Capri, mind you, but the exact model in the exact specification I wanted. A two-tone Graphite Gray over Stratos Silver early 2.8 Injection, with 13” Wolfrace Sonic alloy wheels (colloquially known as pepper pots), a four-speed gearbox and ‘Carla’ tartan trim interior. But because this is The Autopian, and my life is – gestures broadly at smoldering hellscape and broken dreams – my life, I managed to buy one that was pre-broken down. Yep, I got rid of a reliable old Ferrari and replaced it with an unreliable old Ford. Some of the words in that sentence feel like they are in the wrong places.

And just like that, it was gone. pic.twitter.com/B9DCochXIc

— Adrian Clarke (@adrianfclarke) July 5, 2026

About two years ago, the seeds of my Capri desire were re-awoken when I aimed both barrels at Ford’s cynical EV bearing the same name. At that time, I wasn’t seriously contemplating getting into one, but bringing you the high-quality articles you deserve requires research, even if I am somewhat familiar with the subject matter. And with my brain being wired the way it is, that eventually proved fatal. Before I knew it, I was losing hours on the big UK classic auction sites and creating an eBay saved search. Purely for getting a feel for the market, you understand. But also, just in case.

Can you imagine the effect seeing this commercial had on eight-year-old me?

Then, in March 2025, what looked to be an absolute stoating example of what I wanted was coming up auction at Practical Classics and Restoration Show in Birmingham. I seem to remember it being guided (i.e. a reserve set) at about £18k. More than I could afford without selling the Ferrari, but seeing as it was an event I would be going to anyway, it would be silly not to at least have a look, wouldn’t it? Apart from the misaligned hood and fenders, that particular example turned out to be more minty than a mouthwash and crème de menthe cocktail. However, what I got out of the experience was not a Capri but an education.

When buying at auction, any due diligence is limited to research you can do beforehand by searching the registration and by inspecting the car and paperwork on the day. You can’t test drive any prospective purchases nor hear them running (although in this case I did manage to wrangle that at least). There are no comebacks, so you are basically buying at trade – and you’re bidding against the trade as well, who have the facilities to fix any niggles, take nice photos against a white background, and then have it sitting around in a showroom with another ten grand slapped on the asking price, until they find a sucker big enough to pay. Finally, you have the auctioneer’s cut, which can be as much as 10% or more of the hammer price. Bidding opened at sixteen grand and ended seconds later. DGJ 725X was nice, but not £22,500 nice.

Any prospective purchase would have to be significantly cheaper than that to mitigate the hassle of having two classics and only one garage until the Ferrari was sold. I got the Ferrari valeted, had the side window frames resprayed black, took a load of decent photos, and stuck a classified advert on Car & Classic. I paid £35,995 for the Mondial at the ass end of 2021, and at the time it wasn’t the cheapest available nor the priciest. Considering the time and money I’d spent sorting out the snagging issues, plus the general rising of the classic market overall, I advertised it for £42k. I knew this was a bit cheeky, but better to price it high, weed out the dreamers, and take an offer of around £40k.

I might have overestimated my personal internet notoriety and the fact that my Mondial was a known commodity because precisely nothing happened. I got no enquiries at all. Knowing I had been optimistic with the price, I lowered it to a round £40k after about six weeks. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. In the meantime, I went and looked at another Capri 2.8 Injection at a dealer. This was a black one advertised on AutoTrader for £14k, and because I have the Safari price tracker extension, I knew the car had been on sale for over a year. Arriving to find it buried in the back of a barn, it was dusty, grubby, and a bit tatty. It did run, but the Saturday kid wasn’t able to get everything else out of the way, so I couldn’t drive it. I spoke to the proprietor on the phone and offered £11k, which was turned down flat.

In July 2025, I took the Ferrari to Le Mans Classic, and as the summer days began to shorten, I decided that if it hadn’t sold by about September, I would pull the advert and keep it until 2026 and then decide in the spring whether to list it again. That August, another black Capri was up for auction at Anglia Car Auctions, in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. The other side of the bloody country. By now I was smitten, so I set off at stupid-o’clock on a Sunday morning to go have a look. At ACA, the cars are driven across the block as they go under the hammer, so you can at least hear and see them being driven. This was a much nicer example than the other black one I looked at, so I bid up to £16k – but doing the maths in my head, I realized that, including fees, the total price would be getting on for £18k. More than I could afford, so I backed out. If I remember correctly, it hammered for £17k, to which ACA added on their 10% cut.

Throughout all of this, my inbox was occasionally littered with various examples sent from the various crackpots, functioning alcoholics, and assorted riffraff I call friends. The trouble was that none of these contenders was ever quite right. If I was going to do this thing, I would do it properly. I absolutely had to have an early, four-speed car with the Carla tartan interior. And it had to be black, two-tone gray and silver, or in a distant third place, silver. In a rare example of me breaking my self-inflicted style rules, my preference was for the two-tone, as I think it suits the shape and feel of the Capri better – plus gray and silver are just shades of black, are they not? The tartan fabric needs no justification, but the preference for a four-speed box over the later five-speed one probably does, so indulge me diverting into a bit of Capri history.

When the MkIII Capri was introduced in 1979, it was only ever intended to be a stopgap car, because underneath it was still based on the original MKI Capri from 1968 (known as the Mercury Capri in the US, its biggest export market). Ford intended to replace the Capri with either an Escort or Cortina-replacement based car in the early to mid-eighties. But Ford could never get to grips with an Escort-based coupe, and the Cortina replacement (Project Toni) was mired in development hell and ended up being cancelled. Suddenly, Ford needed the Capri to live a bit longer as sales in the UK and Germany remained strong, and it made money. This wasn’t a problem for the standard 1.6 and 2.0 liter Pinto OHC engine powered versions. They could be freshened up with new trim and paint. But the hottest model used the Essex 3.0-liter V6 engine, which would not pass 1980 European emissions standards.

Around this time, Ford of Europe was developing a Bosch K-Jetronic fuel-injected version of the German Cologne V6 for use in their luxury sedan, the Granada. FoE President Bob Lutz, a man determined to raise the image of Ford’s engineering, realized this new engine would be perfect for the Capri. Developed in double quick time because US and German market MKI & II Capris had previously used the Cologne V6, the Capri 2.8 Injection was announced in May 1981. Ford was being typical eighties Ford and didn’t want to put much money into a car they expected to die within a couple of years, so aside from some suspension upgrades, better brakes (ha!) and bespoke tires, almost everything else was carried over from the earlier 3.0S model. Including the four-speed gearbox and back axle.

It might seem archaic, but five speeds were still a bit of a novelty back then, and this was an occasion where engine and gearing matched perfectly. Weighing 1190 kgs (2620 lbs.), the Capri 2.8 Injection rocketed to 60 in 7.8 seconds and on to nearly 130 mph, serious performance for 1981. The new-fangled Golf GTI could only manage 9.2 seconds to 60 and 113 mph. Then when the Sierra finally arrived in 1983, it became immediately obvious Ford (and by association Lutz) had misjudged the market, and the 2.8-injected-engined hot XR4i version was going to flop. Ford took the Sierra’s five-speed box and bolted it into the Capri as an upgrade, without altering any of the internals or the final drive ratio (which would have cost too much money). This meant five-speed 2.8 Injection Capris were over-geared and had their performance slightly blunted. Good for economy, not so good for acceleration. Compared to the Sierra, the Capri didn’t have the aero efficiency to pull all the way through a higher top gear, which meant, compared to the four-speed cars, a lower overall top speed. And the shift quality in the four-speed is much, much better.

Rolling into the beginning of 2026, I re-listed the Mondial on Car & Classic for £36k, exactly what I paid for it. Still, the phone didn’t ring, and I received no messages. A good friend of mine advised me to just hang on to it, saying the market would eventually cotton on and values for the Mondial would rise, like they eventually did for the other unloved Ferraris: the Bertone designed 308GT4 (which the Mondial replaced), the louche 400/412 V12 cruisers, and the 348 of the early nineties. I followed the logic without really agreeing with it. To me, the Mondial represented the supposed sweet spot for the current enthusiast market: wedgy early-eighties aesthetics with side strakes, a completely analog driving experience, pop-up headlights, and a gated shifter. It literally nailed everything enthusiasts say they want and, in some cases, pay a lot of money for. But no one was interested. On top of that was something I’ve always held to be true – that some cars are just irredeemable and their value potential is never met. Although I never seriously thought my articles about the Mondial would jump-start a redemption arc, I hoped they might at least move the needle. Constant disparagement online whenever I posted Mondial content to social media simply confirmed it wasn’t going to happen, in the near term at least. The scene demands Ferrari have a whipping boy, and the Mondial is destined to remain it. Additionally, the post-pandemic classic bubble was cooling, and the market was much softer than it had been for the last couple of years.

So why not hang onto the Ferrari and continue to enjoy the delights of prancing horse motoring? It wasn’t costing me anything in payments, and since the last big bill in May 2025, I was reasonably confident I had gotten all the niggles and breakdowns out of the way, evidenced by the fact that the car continued to run perfectly. There were a couple of issues to sort, namely the air conditioning compressor and the electric aerial, but they were hardly urgent or preventing me from driving the thing.

When I wrote about what I had spent on the Ferrari last year, I mentioned the running costs were a bit of a stretch for my modest means. I have never not had repairs done because I couldn’t afford them, but my bank account had taken several big hits. Not to the point of having to exist on beans on toast for a month, but certainly to the point of not having money for other things I wanted to do that are important to me. For example, I’ve not been on my annual summer pilgrimage to my beloved M’era Luna goth festival in Germany for three years. And I could never shake the feeling that if something went seriously wrong with the Ferrari, I would end up spreading the financial damage across several credit cards, and that really wasn’t a position I wanted to end up in at all.  When it comes to an old Ferrari, even for simple annual servicing, people want to see a nice wad of receipts with a fancy letterhead. I do not especially enjoy wrenching, but at least with a Capri it would be possible to do that and a lot more myself. If a Capri dropped a rod, I could probably get a complete secondhand engine for a grand. With a classic Ford, no one really gives a shit, and what I can’t do, any local garage could.

My mind made up, in February I contacted Iconic Auctioneers about potentially selling the Mondial with them at their March 2026 sale at the NEC. They advised me they would set a reserve for my car at £25k. My response to that was unprintable, but I realized any auction house gets their cut from both sides of the deal, so they just want a sale and don’t care what a car goes for. What they also didn’t tell me was they already had a newer Mondial 3.2 in the catalogue for that sale, which ended up selling for just over £34k including fees. Taking off Iconic’s 15% that left the seller trousering £29k. I’d rather keep the car than sell it for that.

Then, in early May, out of the blue, I finally fielded a telephone enquiry about the Mondial. A few days later, the prospective buyers came to have a look, then a week or so after that came back with their mechanic so he could inspect it and have a test drive. We agreed on the price, they gave me a deposit, and then unfortunately for them, life got in the way. Still knowing the deal was done had me firing up the MacBook in search of a Capri again. Although I had a very specific version of the 2.8 injection in mind, I’d been and seen three in person, and at least three more had come up that I hadn’t looked at, because I was exercising some discipline and not doing that until the Ferrari was sold. Now that the sale was on the verge of happening, and knowing examples of the exact car I wanted were out there, what did the Dagenham Deities have in store for their newest disciple? Absolutely sweet fuck all.

Ebay was serving up its usual dross; rotten projects, boxes of parts claiming to be a complete car, over-restored examples at overly optimistic prices. The usual auction suspects didn’t have the right cars either. Mathewson’s of Bangers and Cash TV fame had an early 2.8 injection, which in their sale video was pushing water out of the radiator, and it was the wrong color. For all the reasons I’ve talked about, I really didn’t fancy pulling my knickers down at an auction. Then, in the strange way that life sometimes works, something fortuitous happened. The first weekend in July the balance for the Ferrari was paid off and the car collected. By the end of the week after that, the perfect early Capri had fallen into my lap.

I harbored reservations about joining a Capri Facebook group because, you know, ugh, those sorts of people. At the very least, I figured I would get a heads-up about any cars coming up for sale, or a lead on any parts I might need in the future. Someone made a post about having trouble selling a two-tone Forest over Crystal Green car for £16k. I made a comment saying it was a shame it wasn’t Graphite Grey over Stratos Silver, or I’d have been interested. An hour later, someone else replied to my comment, saying he had one that might be available and he had sent me a DM. We swapped messages for the next few days, the seller sending me pictures and telling me all about the car. He’d spent a lot on it and used it locally for shows, but really his better half wanted a convertible, preferably a Morris Minor, so the Capri might be for sale. There were apparently a few bits that needed sorting (indeed there were, just not the ones he mentioned…) but he was being fussy and it was a good, solid drivable car. He wanted £13-14k for it. The car was about an hour and a half away, so arrangements were made for the following Saturday morning. My friends, I could not go and see it fast enough. I felt unfamiliar human emotions. In this case, I think it’s the one you call excitement.

I messaged the seller Friday evening to make sure we were ok for the next morning. All good, but he had to be honest and said the car had developed a small water leak around the thermostat housing. My mental hard drive began searching the wrenching archives from thirty years ago. That’s about an hour’s work, if that. A quick search found the two thermostat housing gaskets online for a couple of pounds. No problem, I replied, see you tomorrow.

When the seller opened his garage to reveal an assortment of bikes, including a Honda Monkey (I adore these and will probably buy one at some point) and a vintage Massey Ferguson tractor, I knew I was buying from exactly the sort of person you want to buy a car from. He pulled the Capri out onto the drive, left it running, and went back inside to make coffee, leaving me to get on with having a good poke around. Scrabbling around on my back in a most undignified manner, I poked and prodded, shone a torch, and offered up a magnet to whatever parts of the structure I could reach. All solid, and no evidence of patches or pigeon shit welding anywhere. In our conversations during the week, the seller had mentioned the front of the fenders and the bottom of the driver’s door as being a bit crusty. The tiniest bit of bubbling and chipped paint was apparent, but nothing that I couldn’t live with. He was just being really picky. And then as I got round to the underside of the front of the car, it was absolutely pissing hot coolant everywhere. I think this was slightly more serious than a leaky thermostat housing.

Popping the hood revealed a huge jet of coolant squirting out under pressure from between the block and the water pump. I quickly turned it off because I didn’t want to add head gaskets to the list of repairs that would be immediately required should I buy the car. Who am I kidding? Mentally, I had already bought it – I was just furiously figuring out the logistics of the whole thing. The seller had already graciously agreed that if a deal was done, he would drop the car off at my house on Sunday, with his wife following behind, and I was more than happy to give them a drink for doing so. The trouble was the Capri wasn’t in a position to get around the block, let alone the eighty or so miles back to my house. But I did now have a bit of bargaining leverage.

After letting it cool down and topping off the coolant, I managed a quick test drive, literally around the block. It wasn’t ideal, but it was enough to inform me the tracking was out and there was a slight pull to the left under braking. By the time had been back ten minutes, the Capri was doing a good impression of a boiling kettle. So yeah, I was definitely going to have to get my new car recovered home. Except it wasn’t quite mine yet. Would you take £12k? I’ll take £12.5k. Sold. I was going to be getting my mismatched collection of old tools out of hibernation a lot sooner than I anticipated.

The following Saturday was Festival of the Unexceptional, and I was desperate to take the Capri, if only so I could actually drive the car properly and not just the ten minutes I managed on the test drive. That week saw me struggling to get a new water pump and gaskets fitted. Struggling, because I’m not as limber as I used to be, and in the process of removing the old pump, one of the bolts snapped, leaving half in the block. Drilling out the snapped bolt and using a Helicoil kit to fit a new one turned into a complete palaver requiring several trips to tool stores, because I needed a tap handle, which of course I didn’t have. I got it all bolted back up and filled with coolant just in time for a 1am test drive around Leamington on Friday night before FOTU on the Saturday.

Did the mighty Capri 2.8 Injection make the 160-mile round trip to FOTU without a hitch and without overheating, on one of the hottest days of the year so far? Of course it did. Was I feeling pleased? You bet your life, more so when a Capri nerd came over to have a look and was genuinely impressed with how nice and original my car was. Did you know the way to tell if your MkIII Capri has its original fenders is to feel for a hidden lip in the sheet metal above the headlights? I didn’t. Aftermarket pattern fenders don’t have that. Maybe those sorts of Facebook group people are alright after all. In fact, I know they are, because on the Capri’s next big outing to see my uncle in Clacton a week later, I would need their help again.

The MIGHTY 2.8 injection roars! (with no water leaks).

See you at FOTU! pic.twitter.com/fAynGV9lwR

— Adrian Clarke (@adrianfclarke) July 25, 2026

So yes, my unreliable old Ford has broken down twice in a month. It took the Ferrari more than a year to do that. Now I have a mini-laundry list of other things wrong with it, which is impressive considering it’s only slightly more complicated than a boat anchor. But you know what? I don’t care because at the price I paid for my Capri, I essentially stole it. Remember I said at the top of this piece about events convincing me I had made the right decision in selling the Ferrari? The first was how lucky I was to have my dream Capri appear out of nowhere. The second is that a few days ago I found out the specialist who looked after the Ferrari for me is closing down. If that isn’t the universe sending me a message, I don’t know what is.

Maybe I should spend some of the money I made selling the Ferrari on some new tools. Because I’m going to need them.

Top graphic images: Adrian Clarke