1979 Mercury Capri (RS, 5.0 and special editions)

1979 opened the Fox-platform Capri generation, which Wikipedia's trim listing (not tied to individual years) spans as base Capri, Ghia, L, GS, RS and Turbo RS across 1979-1986. A secondary enthusiast source puts total 1979 output at roughly 110,000, with about 9,500 of those Turbo RS models; both figures are the source's own rounded relay of an earlier enthusiast-site count rather than an exact factory tally, and this record notes that a Ford production report or the Mercury section of a Standard Catalog of American Cars would be needed to close that gap.^1,2

Four engines were offered: a 2.3 SOHC four, standard, with a 4-speed manual standard and 3-speed automatic optional; a 2.8 V6, optional, requiring power steering and brakes, with either transmission; a 5.0 V8, also optional and requiring power steering and brakes, with the 4-speed manual standard and an automatic optional (mandatory in California); and a 2.3 turbocharged four reserved for the Turbo RS, offered only with the 4-speed manual, no automatic available. The 4-speed manual was standard across every engine, with the 3-speed automatic optional on all of them except the turbo four.

Mercury's own 1979 catalogue reports skidpad figures from its own testing: 0.76 g with the base suspension paired with the 2.3 engine, and 0.81 g with the optional Rally Suspension paired with the 5.0 V8. A separate Radial Sport Suspension was optional, while the Rally Suspension, bundled with TRX tires and wheels, was itself optional elsewhere in the range but came standard on the Turbo RS; the base and Radial Sport suspensions were not available at all once the Turbo RS option was chosen.

Fourteen exterior colors were charted, nine of them available across the range (including White, Tangerine, Bright Blue, and Black) and five more restricted, four of them further marked not available on the Capri RS or Turbo RS at all. RS and Turbo RS buyers chose from four paint-and-tape-stripe combinations: Medium Green with Lime Green, Bright Red with Orange, Medium Blue with Light Blue, or Light Orange with Yellow. Interior trim varied by model: Capri and Capri RS offered high-back buckets in Danbury cloth-and-vinyl or Corinthian vinyl, the Turbo RS instead had low-back buckets in Bradford cloth-and-vinyl or Cariban-and-Corinthian vinyl, and the Capri Ghia offered Edinboro cloth low-back buckets or natural grain leather; a separate Interior Accent Group added Bradford cloth-and-vinyl or a Cariban vinyl and leather combination with Corinthian vinyl.

The Capri measured 179.1 in overall on a 100.4-inch wheelbase, 69.1 in wide and 51.5 in tall, with a 56.6/57.0-inch front/rear tread, 32.4 cu ft of cargo volume with the rear seat folded, an 11.5-gallon fuel tank (12.5 with any optional engine), a base curb weight of 2,548 lb in the 49 states, and a drag coefficient of 0.48 as stated by the brochure. No price is carried in this record: one drawn from J.D. Power's live valuation pages was removed across this project on 2026-09-24 because those pages can change without notice and cannot be independently checked, and no source this record can stand behind has yet been found to replace it.