Ford Capri review

The Ford Capri takes one look at the ever-growing class of practical, affordable and long-range family EVs on sale and points its bare buttocks in its general direction. Despite sharing its electrical and mechanical underpinnings with the Volkswagen ID.4 (and the more practical and cheaper Ford Explorer), the Capri goes out of its way to make no sense whatsoever. It's less practical than its rivals and trades on a name that's about as current as smallpox.

It dares to be different, then. And if you're looking for an electric SUV that's fun to drive, then the Capri's well worth a look – if you can overlook the fact that Ford also makes the Mustang Mach-E, which is also an electric SUV that's fun to drive.

For your money you get a rear-drive or dual-motor electric Capri that – with its smallest 52kWh battery – can travel 232 miles on paper (expect 200 miles in the real world), or up to 370 miles with the larger 77kWh battery. The dual motor version tops £55,000 new, but with 340hp is perhaps most worthy of the Capri name, zipping to 62mph in 5.3 seconds. The rest of the line-up manages it anywhere between 6.4 and 8.7 seconds.

On a more practical level, the Capri's cabin is shared almost completely with the new Ford Explorer. Proceedings are dominated by a giant portrait-oriented screen measuring 14.6-inches corner to corner. It has your usual wireless CarPlay and Android Auto systems, and it's easy to use. You can grab the tab at the bottom of the screen and then tilt the entire screen by 30 degrees, thus revealing a hidden compartment that houses a few USB ports. Neat… until you trap a USB cable under the screen.

Higher up in the cabin there's a small, clear digital dashboard that you'll recognise from Volkswagen's ID. models, and the steering wheel's third spoke is a piece of metal with punched circular holes in it, harking back to the Ford Cortina.

Rear seat space isn't the best in the Capri – headroom and foot room will cause issues for tall adults. Space is much better in something like a Skoda Enyaq, which is now, weirdly, a mechanical relative of the Ford Capri. There 572 litres of space in the Ford's boot which is good if not quite class-leading.

Out on the road, the Capri leans gently into corners and feels on the verge of drifting gently out of them when you get on the power. It's a fun car to hustle down a B-road so long as you don't expect Porsche levels of response from the steering, and it's a comfortable companion for long distances on the motorway, where we managed a 3.8 miles/kWh in the dual motor version for a real-world range of just over 300 miles. 

In short, it's hard to justify the Capri's back-seat compromises when Ford makes the more practical, cheaper and otherwise identical Explorer – especially because there's nothing really very Capri about this car.

Hop inside the Ford Capri and you're greeted by a mammoth vertically-oriented touchscreen infotainment system that makes your work laptop look like a Casio watch. 

It's a good distraction, because the dashboard layout otherwise looks a bit clumsy and over-done. Top-spec Premium models get a B&O 10-speaker system including a soundbar, which is jammed clumsily on top of the dashboard, leaving more muddled layers of plastics between the steering wheel and infotainment screen than a Fisher Price lasagne. 

Plastic quality is also questionable for a car that costs from well over £45,000 for the most popular models. The door cards have hard plastics exactly where your knees and elbows touch them, which is a shame because the leather seats (which can massage you in most models) are very comfortable for long drives.

Back to that giant screen. With wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto it'll mirror your phone's apps to your heart's content, and your tunes sound exceptional through that B&O sound system. It takes a few prods to adjust the temperature, but it's not too hard to do on the move. Sadly, Ford's inherited Volkswagen's unsatisfying and confusing haptic buttons on the steering wheel, leaving you turning the volume up or down more than you expected while driving. In fact, VW has recently ditched these, citing usability, so it's confusing that Ford is sticking with them.

At least the digital dashboard is small, concise and clear – showing you the essentials such as your remaining range, efficiency and radar cruise settings. The gear shift in the Capri is a twist system mounted to the right of the steering wheel – just like in a Volkswagen.

Spend £1,300 on top of the Capri's list price and you can have the driver assistance pack, which includes a head-up display. It's not the biggest, but it works well, displaying your speed and sat-nav directions. This pack also upgrades the standard-fit reversing camera to a 360-degree camera (handy given the poor rear visibility), and it also provides lane assist, active park assist and a powered boot lid.

Back seat space in the Capri is middle-of-the-road for this class of car, and it's way off the palatial feeling you get in the back seats of a Skoda Enyaq. The Ford has cramped headroom for adults, and if the driver has their seat as low as it'll go, you won't find much footroom sitting behind them. The sloping roofline is especially egregious, cutting into headroom if you lean back. Kids will be fine, and Ford always has the Explorer if you want more rear-seat headroom.

Boot space is decent though – you get 572 litres for stuff, and it's a nice wide space that'll easily cope with a couple of big suitcases for a family run to the airport. It's still not as big as the space in a Tesla Model Y, which also has a frunk, unlike the Ford. Capri owners may rejoice to find an unusual almost-rectangular plastic bucket on the left-side of the boot, giving you a handy (and removable) waterproof storage bin for wellies or... crabs. The boot floor can also be dropped down to give you more boot space, and you can prop half of the boot floor at an angle so you can slide charging cables or other items under it while keeping both your hands free.

Up-front storage in the Capri is good, with big doorbins and a huge 17-litre cubbyhole under the central armrest which Ford has called the Megaconsole… presumably they'll be hearing from Sega's legal team soon. There's also the hidden storage space behind the central infotainment screen, which is handy for hiding valuables when you're leaving the car – the screen locks in place when you lock the car.

The Capri gets a line-up of battery packs and motors that we've seen in everything from the Volkswagen ID.4 to the Cupra Tavascan – which are essentially the same car as the Capri under the skin.

The Capri range starts with a 52kWh 'standard range' battery model which is good for a claimed 232 miles of range, and has a 170hp rear-drive electric motor. Expect just under 200 miles in real-world driving, and a 0-62mph time of 8.7 seconds.

Step up to the 'extended range' 77kWh battery and you get a more powerful rear motor, with 286hp and a theoretical range of 370 miles. It'll get to 62mph in 6.4 seconds.

Top-spec models get two motors totalling 340hp, and a slightly larger 79kWh battery that's good for 346 miles on paper – we managed just over 300 miles in our testing. The 0-62mph sprint is dispatched in a breezy 5.3 seconds. 

It's worth noting that the Capri isn't the fastest-charging EV out there – the 52kWh and 77kWh models charge at a decidedly average 135kW, while the dual motor will accept up to 185kW. A heat pump is on the options list – it'll set you back £1,050.

Ford's made a bit of a name for itself for making fun handling cars, and the Capri follows suit. Sure, it's still a 2.2-tonne car and not a lithe coupe, but the way it leans on its suspension, soaks up bumps and almost pivots out of corners is entertaining – certainly compared to the competition. It won't have you laughing and worrying for your driving licence in the way Ford's best ST products used to, but there's some fun to be had here.

Wind your neck in and drive sensibly and the Capri is a fine companion for daily driving, with mostly smooth and unruffled progress at all speeds. There's sometimes a bit of a jerky accelerator response around town, but we appreciate the way the regenerative braking automatically adjusts based on your surroundings, meaning you rarely need to use the brake pedal around town.

Refinement out on the motorway is mostly decent, with a gentle background hum from the tyres that's easily drowned out by the sound system. 

Perhaps the worst bit about driving the Capri is the visibility out. We found the front windscreen pillars a little too thick and obstructive at some junctions, and the view out of the back is just plain bad, thanks to those thick rear pillars. There's no rear windscreen wiper either, but as we found with the similarly denuded Cupra Tavascan, the airflow over the car does actually keep the rear window clear of water and grime most of the time when you're on the move. If you park up and there's a dust-laden rain shower then you'll need to do some manual cleaning before you set off…