A near-decade of the Ford Probe, which was a car that proved quite interesting when it was first rolled out by the Blue Oval folks back in 1988 for the 1989 model year, seemed to have gone by in the blink of an eye back then. Put forth as the replacement for the Ford EXP two-seater, it was built off the well-liked Mazda G platform, and made in front-wheel-drive only. It was also supposed to replace the Mustang, though that never happened.
Ford engineers and executives had also conceived of the Probe as being a model that would do well once oil prices rose, which the company believed would be soon. With that in mind, engineers developed in conjunction with Mazda a couple of different 4 and 6 cylinder iterations which managed to deliver good performance and good fuel economy, though the car never managed to live up to sales goals set by Ford.
The Probe's sleek, ultra-modern style - kind of wedge-shaped and swoopy - appealed to many, but also left others a little turned off. It shared most of its mechanicals (including engines) with Mazda's 626-series of automobiles, and came off Ford's joint-venture assembly plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, where one line would produce Mazdas and the other, the Ford.
Sales of the car, however, even after its redesign in 1993 led to it winning Car of the Year awards from a couple of different automotive magazines, were perennially disappointing and the plug was finally pulled at the end of the 1997 model run.
Engine power was always good in the model, with even the small 2. 2 liter inline four cylinder engine putting out an adequate 110hp. An early turbocharged version of that same power plant managed to kick out 148 horses, with a normally-aspirated V6 putting out just 5 horsepower less. In all, there were just two generations of this able import fighter.
For its era -- especially considering how Ford during those years had a corporate-instilled unwillingness to react swiftly to changes in the market place -- the Probe turned out to be a very nice vehicle. It was truly designed to be a platform for interesting technologies and the engines offered, along with the chassis and other bits and pieces, made the first generation model anything but uninteresting.
As far as time has shown, the years since the discontinuation of the model have demonstrated the essential goodness and durability of the redesign inherent in the second generation. The hot-rod version -- the Probe GT -- can still be seen on many a road even today, with its normally aspirated V6 putting out 164 horses quite often being modified and tuned to put out tons of additional power.
Andy Zain is the admin of
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