This sequence still brings a tear to my eye.
It’s never made fully explicit in the show but it seems pretty certain that the white 1976 Mark II Capri 2.0s is an offering by Daley to McCann to seal their partnership and perhaps to mend old wounds.
What a great piece of product placement for Ford. Waterman was riding high after The Sweeney and at its height Minder had over ten million viewers.
How many Capris were sold in the early ‘80s to blokes who fancied themselves as the hard but fair ladies man Terry McCann?
But Ford’s marketing execs know such exposure can cut both ways.
When Steve Coogan put his cringe worthy computer hardware salesman Gareth Cheeseman in a Ford Probe it battered the marque’s UK sales.
In media land it’s known that admen on car accounts shake in fear when they hear rumours that Partridge is thinking of changing his motor.
Perhaps Coogan could accept bids from motor brands not to place his characters in their cars.
If so, no doubt ad agencies will rapidly create new departments headed up by expert and dynamic ‘Product Displacement Managers’.
