Interesting Coupe Speaker "Development"

[negusm]

OK, back to talking about REAR speaker covers for a 1985 Coupe. My quest may finally be over.

Tom Gentry (I hope thats the right Tom) sent me some pics of the rear speaker covers in his 1985 Coupe. He tells me its an early coupe. Mine is "fairly" early too.

Now the pics he sent me threw me for a loop. HIS rear speaker covers are indeed RECTANGULAR/SQUARE like Sandy said he thought they should be. Hank in FLorida has been telling me they were oval in 1985 and switched to rectangular in 1986.

Now what REALLY got me was that the speakers BEHIND the covers were ROUND! Now the ONLY way I can figure you could get ROUND 6" speakers installed CLEANLY into the rear of a 1985 Capri is to have ordered the car with that RADIO DELETE option as asc did. The rear speaker holes would not have been cut from Ford and asc could put whatever they wanted back there. From what I have read, starting in 1984, 4 way speakers were STANDARD....meaning almost ALL cars except asc cars would have the standard Ford 5x9 speaker cutouts.

Now for the cool part (for me anyways), *I* ALSO have rear interior quarter panels with ROUND cutouts! I always thought the panels had been replaced at some point as I had NEVER seen ROUND speakers in the back of a Mustang/Capri. By pure luck I NEVER cut the panels for larger speakers and after my accident even though one panel was damaged a bit, I never threw it out.

So I called Hank in Florida and asked about getting some of those covers. He told me the covers in TOM's car are asc VERT speaker covers! HE sent the exact same pair of covers. They fit and cover the holes in my rear interior quarter panels PERFECTLY!

COMMENTS?

Picture of Tom's Speaker:


Pictures of the covers I got from Hank:


Pictures of my rear interior quarter panels:

[85McLaren]

The same thing on my 85. When I bought it, the speakers where missing, but covers where put over them. They were little round ones. I too have never seen capri/mustang rear speakers round. I have owned 3 86 capri 5.0s and one 86 mustang GT and they all had the 5x7/5x8 speakers.

Jason

[negusm]

The same thing on my 85. When I bought it, the speakers where missing, but covers where put over them. They were little round ones. I too have never seen capri/mustang rear speakers round. I have owned 3 86 capri 5.0s and one 86 mustang GT and they all had the 5x7/5x8 speakers.

Jason

Cool.

Tom mentioned that he thought it was entirely possible (and I tend to agree now) that asc may have grabbed whatever was available to finish the job. In this case it makes perfect sense to grab the vert speakers to finish off some coupes. Or possibly they planned on using the vert speakers but they looked too small in the coupes and switched later.

The big PITA is going to be resurrecting these panels now. One is pretty decent. The other sat outside for 8 years...I was going to chuck it...its not "too" bad but needs some real work.

About the only other thing I could do is run into a 1983 Mustang/Capri with the base radio and where somebody had not added rear speakers yet. Unfortunately, they never made grey panels in 1983...

-Mike

[jeffmclaren]

Hmm, that is interesting, but my '85 coupe has the standard 5x8 cutouts, and they don't appear to have been enlarged or anything

[negusm]

Hmm, that is interesting, but my '85 coupe has the standard 5x8 cutouts, and they don't appear to have been enlarged or anything

I don't know if you could tell if it previously had round holes if somebody came along and cut them out after the fact.

I have been meaning to measure (I have a red quarter panel that has the 5x8 cutouts) but I believe The 5x8 cut out would completely remove any evidence of the round holes. The holes are actually smaller than 6"....they would take a 6" speaker though.

-Mike