My late dad in short.
Money was allways tight so he did his own work on his cars, including painting some of them.
The only thing he did not do was welding so everything had to be bolt on type of thing.
He was allways a VW man so I did grow a interest of them.
First car he had as I grow up was a Split bus, sadly sold a couple of years later to a mate that did not take care of it and ended being scrapped a few years later.
He built this from a two seater to a semi camping rig, made the front spoiler and he may have built the side scoops as well, propper 70s homemade style.
Me standing in front of the bus, together with my grandmother and my mom, both passed away now.
His next car was a Beetle, think it was either a 71' or 72' 1300L fitted with a 1600 engine, Zoom exhaust, homemade front spoiler and ofcourse the Hella lights that was very popular around here.
It also had rear window louvre, third brakelight as I remember.
He painted it two tone
Next car was a 75' Toyota Corona Mark 2 estate, lovely car, I really liked that car, would love to have one just like that.
Me at the right
Next car was another Toyota, a 77' Corolla KE36, which means a estate.
This had a 1200 engine, lovely car, would like to get a copy of that one as well.
I remember my dad, me and a mate of mine traveling to a car show in Oslo in late 80s, dad acclerated onto the motorway and did 103km/h in third gear with 3 people and a full tank of fuel, that was more than the book said it should do when new!!
Sadly one morning my dad was on his way to work the car hit a rock wall in a inside turn, the car just took a sharp turn of it's own and hit the wall hard.
My dad never told the reason, I donno if he ever did check, but I suspect a track rod failure or something of that nature.
THEN he walked 30miles to get to work, he never missed a day of work his whole life.
The Corolla was replaced by a late bay window bus it was really in good nick, him repaired the frontend and painted itself after by hit by a pickup truck head on as the pickup lost traction in a corner one winter day...
This is the only picture that remains of that vehicle.
My brother is standing on the rooftop of the house to get the snow down from there, don't need to live in Alaska or Canada to get snow LOL
He sold that bay window bus and bought a 82' (last year of air cooled engines) T25 (T3) Transporter that he retrimmed the interior, fitted later brakes, fitted a Volvo B230 engine with help of a KEP kit, built his own grill and repainted it.
That's my 3.0S Capri
As you can see he painted it blue as he hated the green paint, my Capri being broken for parts...
This was his last car before he passed away in 2004
My interest for Capris and Ford vehicles started by reading my dads Street Machine magazines from young age, I was reading them before I even have started in school at age 6.
I could not read but asked my dad what that and that word was meaning, so I did learn technical words before I learnt normal english in school lol.
And at age 14 or so there was one chap that was heavly footed with his tuned Capri every day he came from work.
Usually he drove past our garage along the road, then turned off to the left up a steep hill, and that hill saw thread marks every day for a couple of years, I think that was the most amazing thing, and had a big grin in my face every day he did that.
I ended up buying his mates Capri as my first car and Capri.
And at age 10 or so I got a lift in a Mk3 3.0S fitted with Janspeed exhaust, and from that day on I was sold on that sound and the torque of a V6 car.
For me a Capri needs a V6 as it is a sportscar, not a she and to me a Pinto engine don't cut it.
Richard