Why Ford's European design chief isn't bothered by Capri backlash

It's easy for high-ranking executives to isolate themselves from more granular public feedback towards their models, but for designers there can be no hiding place.

Few of them need to be more in tune with public perception than Ford of Europe design boss Amko Leenarts, who is trying to change so much of what we know about the brand while at the same time bringing back revered nameplates.

From “the death knell of Ford” to “sign me up! I can’t wait to be a Capri owner again”, these were the extremes of views just on our own letters page when the new Capri was revealed a few weeks ago.

I met Leenarts at the Car of the Year ‘Tannistest’ in Denmark, wearing a bright yellow Capri jacket and matching yellow trainers. “You have to live it!” he says.

His exposure to the reaction culminated in the car being taken to a Capri owners’ group meeting. “Out of 30 or so of them, two wanted to order one on the spot,” he adds buoyantly. “If that’s the percentage of the hardcore…”

Ford has followed the reaction closely, not just reading it but looking at the profiles of those making the comments online.

Older blokes seem to make up the majority of the ‘nay’ camp. “But that’s okay,” says Leenarts, eyes smiling and the outline from his tin hat not quite visible. Comments from the other 28 members of the Capri owners’ club and also the “harsh” crowd at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, where the car made its public debut, are clearly still fresh in his mind. “Every time we have people spend time with the car, there’s a flip,” he says. “Some people still might say ‘it’s not a real Capri’ and have the last word on it, but it’s quite balanced in the end.”

Part of that design process involved tracking the Capri’s theoretical successors, and Ford imagined a lineage that showed how it would have evolved into today’s car anyway (see the video, below).

Obviously that’s conjecture, yet the early decision to call the new car Capri, plus that retrospective design process, shows there’s more to this than a marketing exercise – but it’s clearly no bad thing if everyone is talking about you.

“It spurs a lot of conversation,” continues Leenarts. “We like it. We love the passion about it. There are positives, negatives, but at least there is no ‘it looks like another car’.”

That said, there were those who said it looked like a Polestar 2, something Leenarts brings up himself unprompted: “I was talking to a guy from Polestar only yesterday. He said: ‘Can I say something?’ I’m like, now it’s coming… But he said to me now he’s seen it in the flesh, it doesn’t look like a Polestar.” Leenarts waves his hands in the air: “Thank you!”