Zaks Life

"… Hiding at right-arms length away from the tiny

dashboard of the Ford Zakspeed Capri Turbo is a small, knurled

brass knob. Twist it clockwise and the horsepower figures

instantly leap as if the engine was main-lining nitrous oxide;

it is your very own passport to hyperspeed.

Ford of Europe's hotshot factory backed race car uses

This warp-factor unfair advantage sparingly. Overboost and

your hard-worked pistons will resemble distorted remnants of

the Chernobyl meltdown. But judge it right, set the turbo

pressure at 1.6 atmosphere for the rolling start, check the

Porsche opposition as a fast disappearing dot in your mirrors

Then slack off the boost and cruise untroubled to the flag ! …"

September 5^th 1975:- Jochen Mass drove the last Koln factory-entered Capri at the Norisring:- Fords last official factory appearance. On July 29^th 1978 a Capri re-appeared but this time dressed in Zakspeed and Mampe (a drinks concern) colours, Fords ovals identified the involvement of the German factory with this exciting new Group 5, sub 2-litre contender in the German Championship.

Instead of a lumbering 1000kg saloon with over 400bhp from 3.4 litres within a fuel injected V6, the new project had an aluminium space frame, clothed by a squashed and aerodynamic Capri outline. Power came courtesy of a turbo-charged 1.4 litre version of Cosworths BDA four-cylinder.

Wieghing 780 kg the new Ford made a spectacular debut for the supporting event to the German GP at Hockenheim, managing a fastest practise lap of 2 minutes 8.9 seconds (118.1 mph) as against Harald Ertl's BMW 320i turbo by Schnitzer, which managed 2 minutes 10.1 seconds for a practise lap. After that performance, Capri driver Hans Heyer said, "this is a beautiful car. With 50% of the weight at either end it handles really good; it's six seconds faster than our Escort per lap! Everywhere you are going at least 30km/h faster into the corners.

After practise the car, which had only completed one days testing prior to the meeting, was modified with an external oil cooler and pump for the rear axle. In the race itself it led a single lap of the five it completed, before the engine (one of three such units, which had completed all the test bed work as well as practise) expired, leaving Ertl's turbo a safe victory. However, the Zakspeed Capris went on to secure a very successful racing record.

The Turbo Capri had already begun to take shape in the team Chief Erich Zakowski's mind at the end of the 1977 motorsports season. Under the direction of engineer Thomas Ammerschlager who pursued the entire Capri project from the theoretical side, the initial blueprints for the car came into being at Ford-Werke in Cologne. Following wind tunnel and torsion tests, the Zakspeed Team, with it's fund of empirical knowledge went to work in Niederzissen, a small town near the Nurburgring.

The Turbo Capri began to take on its initial configuration in the form of 70 m of aluminium piping. Firstly under the skillfull guidance of Zakspeed Chief Mechanic Helmut Barth and his colleague Bruno Bunk, a sturdy roll-cage was fashioned from 40mm thick piping on a special plate. Such a structure was supposed to fulfil a stabilising function as well as a protective one, and so Erich Zakowski (a practical man by nature) lent his hand to the task. He welded together a detailed model of the roll-cage, cut a piece off here added a piece there, turned it around in his hands and tinkered with the model until he arrived at the cinematically most favourable design. Based on that, the aluminium pipe framework that gives the Turbo Capri it's support and stability was built.

The roll-cage (which in it's finished form weighs only 70 kg) was welded to the upper part of the original Capris body. For the floor panel made of sheet aluminium, Zakowski borrowed a design concept commonly used in Formula 1 cars. The panel was glued onto the body, as is normally done on monocoque type cars, thus giving the Capris corset a great deal of rigidity.

Planning: Light Metals for Hard Racing

The design for part of the front suspension was based on a method that originated in formula racing: aluminium wishbones in the shape of isosceles triangles in conjunction with screw-adjustable ball joints to guide the front wheels. The rest of the suspension was taken care of by MacPherson struts which, except for the shockabsorber units and the axle journals, were made of light metal. The Bilstein shockabsorbers worked according to the single-tube principal with gas padding, each holding a concentric titanium coil spring supporting a vertically-adjustable aluminium spring plate. Two Girling disc brake callipers were used on each front brake disc, these were also cast from an aluminium alloy. For temperature and weight reasons the brake discs were internally ventilated and horizontally perforated and could be water-cooled under extreme conditions.

As with the front wheel suspension, the rear axle was designed for substantial weight reduction. Here, where it could be most advantageous it was not only a matter of reducing the overall weight, it also had to do with the unsprung mass. This was kept as low as possible to allow for good road surface contact. For the above reasons, light metal was used in the rear wheel area wherever it was sensible and feasible. The rigid rear axle, representing a relatively large unsprung mass, was made of aluminium as was the practise with Group 5 Escorts.

The rear shockabsorbers were similar in structure and operation to the principle involved on the front spring struts and also consisted of coil springs made of titanium. However, the Turbo Capris rear axle did present internally ventilated and perforated disc brakes of different dimensions. Due to it's having better traction and a lower vehicle centre of gravity as a result of the 19 inch high rear wheels, the Capri was able to employ brake discs on the rear axle as had been used on the Escorts front wheels. Compared with the brakes on a conventional 16 inch wheel with a diameter of 285mm, their diameter was 302mm. On the rear axle the Capri could manage with only one brake calliper per brake disc.