Black and Gold. 2lt Capri.

At one point, if you left me in front of the Trading Post and a telephone, no Capri was safe in Melbourne. 

I remember going out and looking a two Capris in one day, buying one and trying to scrape together the cash to buy the second one on the trip home.

The Escort boys call the disease "Escortosis". I definitely had it at one point but I had a double dose of "Caprititus" at the same time.

The Capri I managed to buy was from a middle-aged woman in Footscray. Her husband had forced her to sell her V6 Capri when she fell pregnant with their first child and she regretted it, eventually dumping the husband and buying another Capri years later.

The Capri she bought was a 2.0lt conversion and never really stood up to her memory of her much loved V6 that she sold years earlier.

Owning such a car in inner city Melbourne wasn't the most practical choice so she advertised it in the Trading Post.

I managed to pick up the Capri for a princely sum of $800. A bargain nowadays but back in the early 2000s it was it's full money.

When I got the car home, I cleaned it out, got it running a little better and added another coat of paint to the already well covered, battered and bogged body shell.

I counted at least 4 coats of paint in separate colours over the original Yoken Yellow.

My Black and Gold tribute to the John Player specials of the mid 70s was well known in the Narre Warren South area.....namely from me hooning around the block with a holely exhaust barking like a baboon escaped in the suburbs.

Thankfully the cops didn't have ANPR cameras back then otherwise I would have lost my license many times over.

The car was sold to a guy in Geelong who had intentions of fitting a V8. Not sure if it ever eventuated.