Okay, not brand new, but new (a month ago) to me! I found it online and e-mailed with the dude for almost two months before I had five days in a row to go look at it. I rented a car and drove to LA, checked it out, and ended up buying it. "It" is a 1993 Mercury Capri XR2, with the optional hardtop. At 132 HP/136 TQ, it's not as powerful as the SVT, but at around 2500 pounds, it's at least as quick! It has the same 1.6L 16V DOHC turbocharged engine as the Mazda 323 GT and GTX, and shares much of the running gear with them.
At purchase, it had 84,xxx miles on it. The body's decent, but not perfect. The interior is quite good, and much better than others I saw. Mechanically, it seems very good. With 2000 miles on the oil change (which the dude selling it was nice enough to do the day before I looked at it!), the oil was still fairly clean-looking and nowhere near black. He had already installed a front strut bar, and he also tossed-in an uninstalled manual boost kit.
I haven't modded it much yet, other than repairing the fog lights, installing double-platinum Autolite plugs, installing Hella H4 conversion headlights (oh, how I've missed those!) and installing the boost kit that came with it. I bumped the boost up from 7.5psi to 10psi. A company sells an ECU reprogram for $235, that's supposed to get another 29HP and extend the fuel map from 11psi to 15psi, so I may be getting one of those. :laugh: I need to do the fog light mod yet, and install a relay and wiring so I can use 100W high beams in the headlights. I also need to get urethane bushings for the suspension. I'd like to get some different wheels, but I may wait until these tires wear down some more, since they still have a lot of tread left on them. I also need some warm weather so I can take the hardtop off and enjoy the convertible feature!
The 1991-1994 Capris were built by Ford of Australia and sold in Australia and the US. In typical Ford tradition, they restyled them to look better in 1994, and then discontinued them. In fact, they only made 366 of the XR2 models in 1994 -- between the US and Australia. (They did make significantly more of the standard model Capri that year.) If anyone wants more info about these cars, check out www.teamcapri.com and www.techcapri.com and the links sections on those sites.
And yes, I still have the SVT! (Although I did hit a friggin' CAT with it, which broke the lower grille and pushed the oil cooler into the AC condenser, putting two holes in it. :nonono: At first I felt bad for the cat, then when I saw my car bleeding, I was like "Screw the damn cat!" I backed up, expecting to see a big ol' furry cat-puddle, but I never even found it. Fing cat.)
Marty
At purchase, it had 84,xxx miles on it. The body's decent, but not perfect. The interior is quite good, and much better than others I saw. Mechanically, it seems very good. With 2000 miles on the oil change (which the dude selling it was nice enough to do the day before I looked at it!), the oil was still fairly clean-looking and nowhere near black. He had already installed a front strut bar, and he also tossed-in an uninstalled manual boost kit.
I haven't modded it much yet, other than repairing the fog lights, installing double-platinum Autolite plugs, installing Hella H4 conversion headlights (oh, how I've missed those!) and installing the boost kit that came with it. I bumped the boost up from 7.5psi to 10psi. A company sells an ECU reprogram for $235, that's supposed to get another 29HP and extend the fuel map from 11psi to 15psi, so I may be getting one of those. :laugh: I need to do the fog light mod yet, and install a relay and wiring so I can use 100W high beams in the headlights. I also need to get urethane bushings for the suspension. I'd like to get some different wheels, but I may wait until these tires wear down some more, since they still have a lot of tread left on them. I also need some warm weather so I can take the hardtop off and enjoy the convertible feature!
The 1991-1994 Capris were built by Ford of Australia and sold in Australia and the US. In typical Ford tradition, they restyled them to look better in 1994, and then discontinued them.
In fact, they only made 366 of the XR2 models in 1994 -- between the US and Australia. (They did make significantly more of the standard model Capri that year.) If anyone wants more info about these cars, check out www.teamcapri.com and www.techcapri.com and the links sections on those sites.And yes, I still have the SVT!
(Although I did hit a friggin' CAT with it, which broke the lower grille and pushed the oil cooler into the AC condenser, putting two holes in it. :nonono: At first I felt bad for the cat, then when I saw my car bleeding, I was like "Screw the damn cat!" I backed up, expecting to see a big ol' furry cat-puddle, but I never even found it. Fing cat.)Marty
