Laptop - 1980 Mercury Capri

The 1980 Mercury Capri was Ford's Lincoln-Mercury division version of the Fox-body Mustang — same chassis, same engines, slightly different sheet metal at the front and rear, and a price point set just above the Mustang it was effectively cloned from. Lincoln-Mercury launched it in 1979 as a North American replacement for the imported Capri (the Capri II built in Cologne, Germany), and the new car ran through 1986 on the Fox platform that defined Ford's small cars across the decade.

The Capri arrived at the moment Detroit was rediscovering performance after a decade of malaise-era detuning. The 1980 5.0-litre V8 produced 132 horsepower — embarrassing in retrospect, but enough at the time — and the car was an immediate fixture of late-1970s and early-1980s American teen movies and television. Charlie's Angels kept Capris in the parking lot. The car appeared in the opening credits of The Greatest American Hero. The 1980 RS was the trim level the Mustang owner's older sister bought.

Mercury built around 850,000 Fox-body Capris before discontinuing the model in 1986. The original interiors — ribbed vinyl on base trim, cloth bucket seats on the RS, with the distinctive Capri-only dashboard — have aged into a particular kind of late-1970s suburban Americana with its own quiet collector following.