2024 Ford Capri revealed as electric coupé SUV

On sale Late 2024 | Price from £48,075

If Netflix had stuck with its original business model of sending DVDs through the post, it’s safe to say it wouldn’t have survived – let alone become a $670 billion company. And, similarly, as popular as the Ford Capri was in the 1970s and early ’80s, it’s hard to imagine a car like that being successful today, given how few people now buy traditional coupés.

That explains why Ford was never going to build one of those when it decided to revive the Capri name. Instead, it’s created a coupé SUV that provides the sort of elevated driving position that so many car buyers love.

It’s perhaps a little disappointing that the finished product looks more like a Polestar 2 than a Ford when viewed from the side. However, the designers did clearly take inspiration from classic Capris when it came to details like the headlights and the shape of the side windows.

As for what lies beneath the skin, here the new car borrows heavily from the Ford Explorer electric SUV – and by extension a host of Volkswagens. You see, a few years back, Ford signed a deal that gave it access to VW’s electric car mechanicals, with the Explorer and Capri the first and second Fords to use these.

The best-selling Capri is likely to be the 77kWh Extended Range RWD (rear-wheel drive), because this will be the most affordable version at launch and can officially travel up to 389 miles between charges. That’s 15 miles farther than the equivalent Explorer, due to that car’s less aerodynamic shape. Meanwhile, rivals such as the Kia EV6 and Volkswagen ID 5 manage only 328 miles and 344 miles respectively.

Alternatively, if performance is your top priority (and you’re prepared to spend more to get it) there’s the Extended Range AWD (all-wheel drive) Capri, which ups power from 282bhp to 335bhp and cuts the 0-62mph time from 6.4sec to 5.3sec. True, it’s less efficient, but the official range is still 369 miles, aided by a slightly bigger, 79kWh battery.

As a bonus, the AWD has a higher maximum charging speed: 185kW versus 135kW. This means a 10-80% top-up is possible in 26 minutes – two minutes less than the RWD needs. Although, that is assuming you can find a public charger capable of delivering 185kW of energy.

The interior of the new Capri is lifted from the Explorer almost unchanged, so the dashboard is dominated by a huge, 14.6in touchscreen.

This has the novel feature of being able to be tilted at different angles to suit the preference of the driver and to either reveal or conceal some storage underneath. Plus, the screen responds quickly to prods and its resolution is impressive.

However, when we drove the Explorer, we found the small icons for switching between menus fiddly – something made worse by the fact that most menus don’t have a back button, so you need to return to the home screen if you make a mistake. For this reason, it’s a relief that wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto phone mirroring are included, allowing you to bypass Ford’s software.

Other standard equipment in the Capri includes keyless entry and start, a heated steering wheel, heated front seats, a massaging driver's seat and a rear-view camera.

To this, Premium trim adds ambient interior lighting and a powered tailgate, while swapping the standard seven-speaker stereo for a 10-speaker, B&O system.

The Capri's rakish roofline means rear head room is a bit tight for six-footers, but smaller adults will be fine. And the  Capri is actually more practical than the Explorer in some respects, because it’s longer and so has a 572-litre boot capacity to the Explorer’s 470 litres. By comparison, the ID 5 gives you 549 litres and the EV6 490 litres, although the latter is the only one of the three to have additional luggage space under its bonnet.

You'll pay £2200 more for a Capri than an equivalent Explorer, meaning a starting price of £48,075 – at least until the planned 52kWh-battery version joins the line-up some time next year.

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