British Leyland's Ford Capri? MYSTERY LOST COUPE - Project Condor 

Did anyone see the bit right at the end? ;)

The world where BL made the Condor coupe with a Rover V8 in the front forcing Ford to respond with a V8 Capri is sadly, one we will never know.

The Condor coupe looks from the front, like a mix of 1970 Chevy Nova and Camaro. I quite like that.

The Condor Looks absolute stunning, what a shame it doesn't appear 😢

in Australia, BL also snatched defeat from the jaws of victory . they held onto old , dated models far too long , and by the time a new model came along it was far too late.

As always, snatching defeat from the Jaws of victory

a tale of self destruction

Condor bares more than a passing resemblance to the Peugeot 504 coupe.

Oh dear the Allegro coupe was even worse than the saloon, the only option for the Aggro was a 5 door estate that would have been a good seller

The styling on the Project Condor at Austin Styling was by ex. Ogle designer John Worker , who also did the project Zanda mid engined concept. He was very influenced by Italian design (Bertone ) hence the Cromodora Dino aluminium wheels and the Alfa Montreal /Lamborghini Jarama retractable ''eyelids''over the headlights.He also went on to work at Chrysler UK on the Avenger and later Alpine .

Another great video and platform sharing was the way to go.. Condor and ADO 70 did look stunning. Well done with the research. Thanks.

Its that Condor moment..

Was that how the Allegro could have looked !!? 😮 it has a Bugetti Veyron look to it !

A friend of mine used to work for a metal recycling plant in Birmingham . The horror stories he told me about concept cars being crushed on a Sunday .

Fascinating stuff Tom. I really look forward to your videos.

Great stuff, again. That Condor looked so sweet. What might have been.........😢

I'd like to know more about the ERA rear engined prototype that shared design concepts with the Chevrolet Corvair. I'd also like to know about Issigonis's V8 Alvis and the role Alex Moulton played. Then there was the Dragonfly or Duncan Drone that Leonard Lord squirreled away. Also the gas turbine A125 and the prototype 2.6 Litre MG Magnette from 1956. What about the role Morris engines played in the competition to build a DOHC engine. Only one design ended up in the MGA. What about the Morris Navigator marine engines or the Austin purchase of Sizaire Berwick? Going back to WW1 what the Austin aeroplanes and the relationship between Morris and White and Poppe? How about Hugh Rose the Riley engine designer who married Riley's daughter and defected to Lea Francis. There are thousands and thousands of topics

A superb looking car, easily matching the Capri for desirability with its Camaro-esque rear fender and roofline. The front and rear visage needed tweeking, but still an attractive design.

You never really got to see anything of the Condor , but the Capri would just out strip it in Sales the V6 Essex model was a Beast ( I had one an tranferred its running gear into the younger Mk2 Capri ..it was a Monster ) , however the Austin Healey AD06 at apx 3.20 looked bloody Awesome..Cant believe they broke those Prototypes ..Great vid.

Great looking car. Italian-esque design visuals.

Another great video. 🎉

Very excellent presentation. They had everything in the bag, yet politics and poor management dropped the lot

I have seen that one car at Gaydon and was blown away by how lovely it looks

Very good, Tom. The Condor looks like something Bertone might have designed. It reminds me of the Corvette Rondine. How about a video on the Paramount ?

I have a love/hate feeling towards these vids, I love finding out about great cars, but hate the politics that denied the world of them. When I was at school I thought that designing cars would be a great job, but watching these vids, it must have been so annoying to have so many restrictions on designs, and dreadful to get so close to production, just for a project to be cancelled.

Project Condor was a nice looking car. So was ADO21. I'd have seen these had they been built and sold in the U.S. because we had someone just down the road who worked for a foreign car dealership (BL, Volvo) and always had something from BL as a demo, whether it be a MGB, TR6, or even a Stag. His convictions stopped at the driveway's edge, though. The family car that I recall them having was a Buick LeSabre.

The original intention was for the Marina to feature MacPherson struts at the front. Roy Haynes convinced Syd Enever to get involved in the early stages of Condor, as he recognised Enever’s very underutilized talents. According to Enever, creating an MG out of the Marina basis would be no problem as long as a bracket he had devised could be fitted to allow improved rear-axle location. Essentially a bracket spot-welded on the under-frame to locate a panhard rod. However in spite of Haynes original intention for the Marina, the project was ultimately forced to make do with Minor-derived front suspension on cost grounds (without even the updates the Ital belatedly received) and that of course had a negative impact on Condor. BL was a misbegotten combine with too many cooks in the kitchen in very short succession (BMC, ex-Ford and Leyland).

P6 is still beautiful to me.

Great looking car. I notice it has the great looks of a Vauxhall Victor FD and Toyota Celica. Shame it never happened.

6:00 looks heavily influenced by the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.

"Hey this looks like it might sell" "Scrap it"

hindsight is mans worst enemy Tom

Great video 👍 The honest answer is a escort or mini sized car as history tells us look at all car manufacturers around the world it's the bread and butter cars that save the maker then they decide to go luxury and struggle 😊

Wonderful car design, it could be very succssfull car .

I remember the they did a special edition princess wedge model it was two tone i think silver and purple i did look at one once, do you have any info on this model pls

The ADO 68 Condor looks a bit transatlantic and is overall a stylish effort. I joined Austin Morris in 1972 at Longbridge in the Sales and Marketing division. Was not aware of this design -we did however visit the ''Elephant House'' Styling Studio quite often though.

ADO 16 had Hydrolastic suspension. Hydragas came along with ADO 67 or Allegro in 1973.

Could you do Triumph engine based cars ,Amphicar or Swallow Doretti ,Bond Equippe maybe?

Hey up mate good video, funny but when i gave it a thumbs up was on 302 a classic ford V8

Sorry, Tom, I love your videos and the research you must do. I'm also still a Rover Fan, but to me Nothing beats the styling of the "Hockey Stick" Capri. Unfortunately I never got the chance to own one and being in my 80's, it's a bit late in life now.

3:13 very much like the Peugeot. 6:16 front end looks like a Bristol beaufighter.

Damn shame it was canned. Nice looking coupe.

The poison thread through the British car industry starts with Morris and the merger with Austin, it can be put simply as Nuffield, BMC, Leyland, AR, MG-Rover could never sell enough cars to make a decent profit and develop ongoing new products.

I can't decide whether the industrial unrest or management incompetence was more to blame forwhat happened to BL.

The nationalised British Railways was just the same as BL. Internal politics between the former companies and lots of strikes.

the Condor is a fine looking car. to my eyes it looks quite similar to the Vauxhall Victor FD in that picture. I was a big fan of the FD & FE styling back in the day

The unions made Mrs Thatcher prime minister through their leader's cockiness and political ambitions, I was there, I know.

I started my driving life with Leyland and it's successors started with a Mini 850 complete with sliding windows. My Brother destroyed it after it was passed on to him. That was followed by an MG Midget 1500 which I spent considerable time and money trying to keep on the road. That got sold. Controversy next, a Canley FHC Triumph TR7 in Pharoah gold. I used it as a daily driver and it remains one of my favourite cars and one I continue to defend to this day. Some moron drove straight into the back of it whilst I was stationary waiting to turn right and wrote it off. As an aside I once went to the dealer to try and by a paint touch up, they told me that they were making their own batches up as and when needed so there weren't any. In fact the paint was so thin by the time of the crash the paint had started wearing off on the roof. I then bought a DHC TR7 which I never liked as much. Due to my divorce it sat on my Mothers drive rusting and she complained about it so much I had to scrap it. A rather tatty alloy wheel remains in my possession. And that's where the story ends About a decade ago I fancied buying a Rover MG Mg but every one I looked at was a shed. I ended up buying a Focus ST170 instead and still own that now...

So what platform was Condor based on?

What engine(s) would the Condor have used? The Capri was a legend because of its choice of engines. There was the 3 litre Dagenham V6 and then the Cologne 2.8i V6. The Opel Manta was not really a competitor to the Capri but separate (lower) niche on its own.

Quite glad that one failed. Looks like an Allegro crashed into a Vauxhall

The condor looked like ut would of been a game changer , even as a prototype it looked amazing, mind you Good ole BL had a habit of messing up the final product, such a shame, even the allegro looked good in the design stage

Wonder if those BL strikers regret what they did now. They went on strike for anything. No hot water in the toilts. They changed the company supplying the canteen with pork pies. Stopped allowing people to sleep off hangovers in the mornings (a safety issue. Operating machinery) Price of a cup of tea went up to 12p from 10p. Mass meetings and show of hands. STRIKE

Great video,,

Condor is a much better-looking car than Capri and Manta. The Capri looked like a "Mini-Mustang", and was sold here in the States through Lincoln-Mercury dealerships. As someone who thought the Mustang was over-rated, the Capri never would light my fire, as Jim Morrison would sing. The Manta looked better to my eyes, and was also sold in the States through Buick dealerships. But the Condor prototypes look fresh and different. I see a hint of Peugeot 504 Coupe / Cabriolet in the front end and some first generation Chevrolet Camaro in the fender "muscle curves", but I don't think anything was copied directly, or even at all. It really looks unique compared to the others. And this would have definitely been a missed opportunity, especially for our market here. Sports cars that had been BL's money maker here were quickly losing the huge appeal, whether due to lack of significant development or just market conditions. A small car like this was where the market took off, also bolstered by various models from Japan. Condor would have been an ideal car for an American showroom at the time. These offered more practicality than a Triumph TR6, Spitfire, or MGB to any new families, so could appeal to the man (or woman!) who wanted sporting appeal, but needed to carry family around at times. Also fuel economy considerations be a practicality component. The only wrench in the works would be BL quality / reliability / durability. Marina was sold here as the Austin Marina, superceding the “Austin America” (aka 1100 / 1300), but not for long. But in concept, it presented a fresh product in a growing niche, that would have more of a potential market because of practicality. BL didn’t have a very complete line here, thus couldn’t compete against American manufacturers with tiered divisions from the bottom of the ladder to the top. BL had rungs missing, with just Land-Rover long before the SUV boom, the aforementioned 1100 and replacement Marina, the MG and Triumph sports cars (no saloons like 2000 or Dolomite for us!), the Rover P6, and Jaguar. Really only the sports cars and Jaguars had any real imprint. A full line of great cars could have kept buyers in the BL family. I envision how Condor could have been a key player in such a strategy.

And unfortunately all frittered away by greedy management big headedness and sheer ignorance all so as the hard working car workers were starved of the right to a decent standard of living. It was not strikes by the workers that caused their downfall it was management government politics that ruined this once proud manufacturing company.

Unions had a lot to do with the destruction of english and australian manufacturing of cars and car parts, but the condor gives me looks of the australian austin kimberley and tazman vairents based on a stretched austin 1800 platform but we also had the force 7 and p76 models that the british FCD up for the australian market

so what was this car based on, floor pan ect

Condor has some Fiat 128 Coupé lines :-)

Many times you comment on how the Ford Capri and Cortina share the same platform and there was a similar plan for the Condor. However, you never say what platform the Condor was to be based on! Maxi? Marina? P6? 1100? Triumph 2000?

I wonder how many millions of pounds, millions of necessary funds, were spent on all those projects and prototypes, that never materialized..

"...a British Leyland sized problem!"

ADO 70 reminds me ofba Datsun Cherry 🍒

Lord Stokes, ruler of disfunction. This guy bankrupted the car industry. Fish rot from the head.

The car may look swoopy and modern, but the mechanicals would still be out of date without a huge financial input. 🥴

Believing the accounts in this video In regards to strikes, you have to be under the impression that at the start of the 70's all these factories had state of the art safety for workers but this was far from the case. As for the roots group, their business model involved building half a car in Coventry and then driving all those cars up to Scotland. This would have made the cars too expensive however the balance was taking out of the wages of workers. A stupid business model with the expectation of workers to pay for the folly. So I think it was quite reasonable for workers to down tools. As for the guy saying he suspects B.L. workers strike for no reason, I don't suspect, I KNOW paint shop staff had reduced life expectancy and health problems, other workers faced the prospect of life changing injuries or even death every time they turned up for work. Somthing, for some reason, never mentioned when this topic comes up. If you have been watching, from 2022 onwards, the government pay all lost earnings to a privatised railway so they can prolong strikes in the hope of turning voters hostile to unions, you might feel you are experiencing deja vu.

We are very good in this country of shitting on ourselves!

😢😢😢

Love your videos. Always informative, showing prototypes never heard of by most of us. But you also highlight P1ss poor management, beligerent unions and the shambles that BL became. As a youngster, I remember the endless news reports of yet another strike, the work to rules, the staff working overtime... actually taking sleeping bags to work to sleep through their shifts. A shameful note in our history that saw the decline of imagination and manufacturing in the UK.

Also in the words of Michael Edwards... The Metro will not save the British Car Industry but ... just prolong the life of it 🤨

The Unions and Labour always undermined British industry, smile to your face and stab you in the back every single time. People fall for it every time, the promise of ‘easy fixes and good times ahead comrade’ except it never works out that way.

BL such a disaster for our once great car industry, so many cars that could have been, this was no exception.

Red Robbo. What a ....

The Mini-based Pininfarina coupe and roadster were truly stunning designs. So many Italian versions of cars on your channel showing the rubbish Brits how it’s done. Roy Haynes was decent but Harris Mann never designed anything beautiful, and David Bache (nice Rovers, awful Austins) made everything look a bit stodgy. William Towns should never have been paid for his work. But Michelotti? Gandini? Giugiaro? They should have been given offers they couldn’t refuse - and the last word on what gets built - by BL. Nice channel, sir.

BL just had to many people born in 1880.

Probably was for the better if everything else that they built at that time was anything to go by?!

“Working with out enthusiasm”. Well 8:38 self entitled managers, perhaps you should have done something to help that? The management were god damn snobs and rubbish

I always wanted a Sterling , we had a dealer near the main gate to fort bragg home of the 82nd Airborne in Fayetteville NC I would stop in at the dealership and walk around looking at the cars smoking my pack of method Sterling cigarettes

Just absolutely tragic! I don’t know who to blame; the workers, the company, the government or all three! But regardless it left the motoring world much less less interesting, and more importantly, far less innovative.

People keep going on about bl build quality. But if you look in to it ford and vauxhall were no better

1100 had hydrolastic, not hydragas.

Being a young boy in the Seventies and reviewing them now, I think the biggest part for the downfall of the british automotive industry were the unions and countless strikes. If one company goes down you can blame it on mismanagement, but when a whole industry goes down - cars and motorcycles alike - the reasons are far beyond "simple" mismanagement. In my opinion, Englands economy simply was striked to death by its own workers!

The unions and lazy workers let us all down and our country. I feel sorry for those workers who had pride and wanted to work and produce quality cars.must of been heartbreaking

Looks like an updated Fiat Dino. Just add V8 power...

Cannot seem to get a video that doesn't show and talk of the vomit inducing allegro

I have BL memories, lots of them, and none of them fond ones. Their cars were shite. Their management was inept, disjointed, lacked commitment and demonstrated zero imagination. Their workforce were apathetic, selfish, short sighted and behaved in an unjustifiably entitled manner. The most amazing thing about the whole mess that was British Leyland is that it took so long for them to eventually bite the dust.

Too many different models and marques!

🥝✔️

I can't enter into any of the rights or wrongs of the 🇬🇧 motor industry but everyone knows what the results are today. History cant be reversed, it's done and we have to move on. It was fascinating to see the early CAD being used, very Open University looking 😂. Also Citroen at Slough began to develop an independent car based on the 2CV platform. It became known as the Citroen Bijou. It was a 2door, fiberglass coupe bodied 425cc aircooled car. In the design of it there was a link up with another fiberglass body manufacturer. Only 200 or so were produced. Wikipedia has it covered. Images are on Google images. Cheers DougT

Its a damn shame that British Leyland was so self destructive , that Condor model could've been a winner. It has some lines reministent of the mk1 Toyota Celica , but as usual British Leyland ruined iits chances

I'm starting to notice a theme in all these videos now... :/

Nothing was going to survive BL and the unions. Even the cars that actually got made were sabotaged by deliberate go slows or poor workmanship. We all know what killed the British car industry. This car was just another victim.

Another tantalising “might have been” that you pitch as a winner. It never came to market so we will never know. There is/was never one car that would have saved BL. Even the Metro, a successful programme, needed a full model range around it to strengthen to company but Maestro and Montego failed to really capitalise on the Metro “tide”. Anyway, BL launched many “winners” such as the SIII XJ6, the SD1 and the Princess but stoppages, poor development and reliability didn’t bring home that much needed capital to reinvest. Basically, if Condor came to market with the same issues,it would still likely go down in history as a might-have-been anyway. All a great shame because, as a kid, we would have loved to have lusted over a top-of-the-range Condor in the same way we would over a Capri, Manta or Rapier. Heck, I’d have settled for a long door Marina TC Coupe!

Someone will have to build one... !!

Three factors that led to the downfall of British Car Industry, not just British Leyland! 1) Successive governments that kept chopping and changing their minds over industry project funding! 2) A complete lack of properly trained Owners & Managers in the industry, 3) Unions that completely lost their focus on why they were set up in the first place! and that they were involved in a two way street, where they had to produce the goods if they wanted the benefits they claimed! All three never saw themselves as part of a team that had to work in harmony to achieve their own goals! They all operated on a them and us basis in opposition to each other! They all had the mentality of little empire building within the whole rather than all working to the common goal of making high quality products customers qued up to buy and in turn make the business profitable! The unions brought about their own downfall and the introduction of robots, with all their petty squabbles and stoppages!

The car at 9.17 mins is in the Ferrari class ... (if not better) ...... but it was the "sign of the times" 🙂 . What i,m about to say is 100% STUPID ................... (but the truth) . It's because it was THEN !!!!!.............. (early '70s)............. no disrespects to anyone 🙂 . We all suffer the same traint in our lives 🙂 . Yeh if the DGT had been launched ........ it would have knocked the rest of the cars into a circus ring with clowns driving them 😞 . They had to say "NO" 🙂

It's sad that the unions and the management destroyed BL. Must admit Ford are making some crap cars. I've got a company new 24 Kuga ST line X hybrid, I didn't order it ,it was just available when I started my new job. Basically it's crap, cheap plastic interior, dreadful dash design. It jumps when you turn it off in hybrid mode, the engine ticks over very high. It looks strange when you look at it. Sometimes I think it's not that ugly, then sometimes it is. To be honest, it's comfortable on long journeys, which I do a lot of. When you look at other makes of cars, I think Ford are a budget brand now, and how long will they be able to keep going now the Chinese are making good cars.

Starting a video with an ad is a mistake

Looks like a pregnant Corvair.

So in what weird, alternative universe did you wite this that you thought that regurgitating the sad excuses of the useless management team of Donald Stokes was a sensible idea? British Leylands troubles were a lack of investment caused by warring management teams and a subsequent loss of government support. This tired 'blame the workers' line was popularised by far-right newspapers in the seventies and eighties and I thought had been long put to bed. Next time consider doing background reading beyond old copies of the Sun.