1981 Mercury Capri (RS, 5.0 and special editions)

Conceptcarz gives 58,946 Capris produced for 1981, a single reference-site figure this record does not treat as independently confirmed. The Black Magic edition also appeared for the year, running through 1983 per Wikipedia, though no production count for it was found in an accessible documented source. 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.^1,2

The 2.3 SOHC four was standard, offered with a 4-speed manual, a 5-speed overdrive manual, or an automatic. The 3.3 six was optional, with either the 4-speed manual or the automatic. The 4.2 V8 was optional as well but required the automatic outright; the 5-speed overdrive manual, geared 3.98, 2.14, 1.49 and 1.00 in its non-overdrive gears, was itself only available with the 2.3, not with the 3.3 or 4.2.

The Black Magic package, per Wikipedia, dressed the Capri in black with gold striping, gold metric TRX wheels, and a gold cat's-head emblem on each side of the front valance. The brochure's own interior listing separately describes its cabin as black vinyl low-back reclining buckets with gold cloth inserts, offered over either a black or a white car; standard buyers elsewhere chose vinyl low-back buckets (Capri and Capri RS) or luxury cloth low-back buckets (Capri GS), both also available in leather-and-vinyl, in a shared palette of Caramel, Black, Medium Red, Medium Wedgewood Blue, Pewter, and Vaquero, with Caramel not offered in the cloth version. Optional Recaro cloth buckets, open to every Capri except the Black Magic, came in Black, Medium Wedgewood Blue, or Vaquero.²

Fourteen exterior colors were charted: eleven standard across the range, three of them (Bright Yellow, Pastel Chamois, Dark Cordovan Metallic) restricted to the plain Capri and Capri GS, and two further optional "Glamour" colors, Medium Blue Metallic and Medium Bittersweet Metallic. Capri and Capri GS buyers alone could add one of four Specialty Tu-Tone combinations: Black over Light Pewter Metallic over Black; Medium Pewter Metallic over Light Pewter Metallic over Medium Pewter Metallic; Medium Red over Light Pewter Metallic over Medium Red; or Dark Blue Metallic over Light Pewter Metallic over Dark Blue Metallic.

The Capri measured 179.1 in overall on a 100.4-inch wheelbase, 69.1 in wide and 51.4 in tall, with a 37.2-foot turning diameter, 30.3 cu ft of cargo volume with the rear seat folded, a 12.5-gallon fuel tank, and a 2,623-lb base curb weight in the 49 states. The brochure's own EPA estimate for the 2.3 with the 4-speed manual was 23 mpg city and a 34-mpg highway estimate (23/33 in California), and its aerodynamic drag coefficient of 0.41 is explicitly flagged in the brochure as a European measurement rather than a domestically run test. No performance figures, such as acceleration or braking distances, and no identification detail such as VIN or data-plate decoding, were found in an accessible documented source for the year, so neither section is populated in this record.