The Forgotten Ford Probe Was A Good Car With a Terrible Name - And Was Nearly The New Mustang

good morning this is bill from curious cars and out of europe of naples on another lovely florida tuesday again the weather's nice today we've had a nice crisp chilly morning going into sunshine high 70s maybe even low 80s which i'm not a big fan of in march but what the hell and otherwise i can't complain it's not hot it's not humid i am dealing with a little bit of uh condensation on the car but not much it's being accentuated by dalton's incredibly crappy detail even by his standards this is particularly crappy but we'll get into that as we go bird activity at a minimum i haven't seen the goats in over a week i keep looking maybe they're behind the motorhome peeking their heads around waiting for an opportune time to leap out and get me but uh so far so good so frankly we're pretty much animal free this morning i haven't even seen peter's enormous cat which god damn is that thing menacing so i think we're pretty free and clear to go forward and i'm happy to do that today because i have uh and i know a lot of you maybe my age aren't going to be particularly excited uh but so what i don't care i'm actually thrown i am excited i have a 1990 ford probe and what a probe it is only it went under 17 000 miles on this thing i was very lucky to find it this is a first generation probe and when i saw it it brought back a flood of memories because of course this car uh when i graduated high school in 89 this is a 90 so this was kind of in my heyday of being a kid caring about cars reading the automotive magazines and being in tune with everything that was coming out from everybody and i remember the probe quite well well you know it wasn't at all in my mind until i saw this one and then wow a lot of the stuff came flooding back and what's fascinating about the probe is that it's a huge story i mean for such a i don't know by all intents and purposes it's just kind of an anemic little the economy car god that's a terrible detail i can see all anyway um you know there's not a at first glance there's not much to it that differentiates it from a lot of cars uh but uh we'll get into why it is it's an enormous story enormous story for ford and uh for the general public and for a variety of different reasons uh yeah you have to go back okay so in the early 80s late 70s there was a big energy crisis and ford paid attention uh you know again with the gas lines the high prices the uh you know the v8s all becoming shadows of them for their former selves emissions that sort of thing and they thought okay well it's time to revolutionize our car lineup and change it from what it was this antiquated thing into something a lot more modern and they got to work on creating and here's where it gets kind of interesting a front drive mustang the fox body mustang at that stage in the early 80s was of course rear drive v8 powered in gt form and uh not a very advanced car but even then beloved by mustang enthusiasts but they thought okay we're going to modernize the lineup let's get to work on something a little different so they got one of their designers a guy named toshi sato and he was given the project to create a front drive mustang so he immediately got to work by 1984 he finalized it it was called the st-16 this car that was their code name for it and it started heading towards production you know it's again it's this is such a long and complex topic it just isn't that simple there's so many different things to cover uh the probe series of concept cars the probe one two three four and five they were all yeah not really geared towards making this car in fact the taurus is much more their ultimate uh conclusion but you know they were part of this car's design and part of ford aerodynamic aerodynamicizing itself there was a designer named um what the hell was his name don copka he was he was the guy who made the 67 mustang later on he became kind of fascinated with aerodynamics and in the late 70s he came up with this idea to do some minor tweaking of the aerodynamic surfacing of some of the ford lineup and through his efforts raised their corporate fuel mileage by almost 2 miles per gallon which was a huge impact at the time and got noticed it was essentially the way he put it it was three billion dollars worth of results for a 10 million dollar investment and that elevated him in the ford lineup as you can imagine and uh so they gave him uh a free reign to sort of come up with a team to come up with more designs uh he used a guy named hugh banson this is a guy you may not have heard of you dance and german guy also a ford stylist he created the original 73 mercury capri in the united states just the ford capri in europe a very successful car and he was also fascinated by aerodynamics so he sort of started on the designs and uh you know got involved with the probe one two three four concept cars and ultimately he went on to design uh many of the cars which would become the identity of ford through the mid-80s onward he created the scorpio that was entirely his own he had a lot to do with the ford sierra which was predicted to not do well and instead did fantastically well this year actually made it to these shores as the merkur if you remember the mercure scorpio and the uh what i think is a very cool car the mercur xr4 ti a really stupid name frankly but of course it sounded very european at the time but he had a lot to do with that style and that style came from i want to say the ford probe 3 concept which was much more down to earth than the first one a little less down to earth and the second one and then they went crazy from there the ford probe concepts were insane in fact i heard they hit the auction block in 2002 and some collector bought a bunch of those things but uh anyway that's an aside so anyway uh this guy hugh you uh he developed what essentially became ford products from the tourist sable and beyond and had a huge impact on the way cars look and drive today love him or hate him and anyway so this guy toshi back to the japanese guy is developing the front drive mustang it's going to replace the fox body mustang in 1987 maybe 88 i think 87 auto week magazine gets a hold of the whole concept the must and they put a big front page article out saying here's the new mustang gt and uh on the front cover was a pretty good uh you know 99 there picture of the ford probe gt and yeah predictably ford purists mustang purists went friggin insane they exploded mustang magazines prompted people to call and write forward a very very big outcry over what people saw as an infringement on their constitutional right to rear drive v8 power and doughnuts in the walmart parking lot enter a guy named ken dabrowski interesting cat and in fact there's a whole side here with him he lives in naples which i found out through a friend of mine and friend is a very strong word when it comes to life uh you know life is more of my sort of my buddy but um who knows things but anyway uh ken dabrowski owns this big parcel of land behind life shop and apparently the homeless were having orgies every night on this big parson of land i'm not making this up uh drinking giggling into the night in the mornings they were using some bathroom near him and it started to offend him so he started a letter writing campaign uh to have the homeless removed from this place i know it's all very heartless but you know i get it i don't necessarily want homeless encampments in my backyard either they probably should find their way to some good shelters of which we have plenty of in naples uh problem with the shelters as they don't allow drinking but anyway so this guy ken dabrowski ended up clearing the land getting you know the homeless out of there and life was happy but in the meantime we found out that he was the chief of ford small car line in the uh 1980s and on top of that he was also a mustang fan and you know when he figured out that they were replacing the mustang with this car the probe the st-16 concept car he jumped into action and he got a guy named john connetty i know this is all very convoluted but i promise it's heading somewhere and that john cotty was chief engineer of small cars at ford and a very big car enthusiast big mustang guy pretty much any svo car has his signature on it uh if you remember some of those cars that was another car you uh benson was responsible for influencing the svo mustang and uh you know some of that stuff but anyway so uh comedy decides that this will not stand but ford management is absolutely set on changing the probe into the gt and they set up a skunk workshop they call it in an abandoned montgomery ward warehouse car service center outside of dearborn they assemble a team of dedicated mustang guys who work after hours and into the night to create a mustang under budget to try to pitch it to ford management to not get rid of the rear drive v8 powered uh ford engine they they massage and tweak the fox body make it better and stronger and wider eventually they came up with three different designs which they called the uh you get ready for this the bruce jenner the rambo and the arnold schwarzenegger thank god they didn't pick the bruce jenner because god knows what the car would have become but they did pick the arnold schwarzenegger for its looks and for its brawn and that car became the 1994 mustang which was never meant to be but through their efforts and through the outcry of ford purists it was but of course ford had invested a shitload of money in this probe project uh i imagine a little toshi was pissed about all of this going on he really must have been just livid and of course the whole team that wanted to aerodynamicize the mustang and front drive it and oh my god it's all very convoluted but anyway ford had made a big investment it was going to be one of their first true global cars sold not just in america but all over the world and they had collaborated with mazda who they purchased the stake of in the early 1980s and they built the probe basically on the mx-6 platform which was a very good platform but it really was more than just badge engineering in fact in a lot of ways the probe ended up to be a better car than the mx-6 so yeah you can't just accuse him of slapping some badges on a restyled mx6 anyway they didn't want to get rid of all that they even had an assembly plant going for it so they came up with the idea of making the probe and they said it was replacing the ford exp which was this weird little forgotten now car that you know when i out show a picture of it people may remember it and it came out in late 88 as a 1989 model and was actually an instant success i mean it sold very very well so well in fact the dealers found that the supply was well under what the demand was and they were able to you know sell cars at sticker or even add to it in fact that guy in life we were talking about a minute ago his brother bought a new pro but i believe had to pay thousands over the sticker price to get it so in 89 the probe was a hot commodity and i think with good reason and we'll get into that as we go but uh anyway instead of uh replacing the mustang it was now sold alongside the mustang uh ford did not develop the mustang further beyond 1987 it kind of inched along with minor bits of nothing revisions until it hit 93 uh the final year of the fox body and actually not really because the 94 then went on to 2004 as sort of a revamped fox body so when you think about it that fox body mustang ran from 79 through uh 2004 which is pretty miraculous but anyway this gd platform based mazda the goddamn platform uh it sold pretty well and was a good car and was immediately beloved by the press and the gt form with the turbo actually kept up with the rear drive mustang was within a tenth or two of it and acceleration times frankly it handled a lot better four-wheel independent suspension and was truly a much better built car so uh you can see where ford was going with this thing and uh if it worked it was you know it parallels the 911 story a little bit i mean the 928 if you remember that car was supposed to replace the 911 and ford pure at fort pierce porsha purist went insane and kept the 911 going well past its intended life and the same is true of the mustang that said the mustang has done quite well the way ford continued developing it and in fact has become a global car it's sold in like 160 countries now something people may not realize it just seems so american only but in fact you can go down to your local ford dealer in surrey and pick yourself up a new mustang and you know many thousands do each year so the ford mustang is considered one of the best-selling sports cars in fact i think the best-selling sports car uh in uh in the world and that would not have happened uh if the pro people had their way and that this car had become the mustang as intended so anyway sorry for all that long-winded crap it is and i mean we're barely scratching the surface i mean absolutely barely there's so much more to it than that but um anyway they took the name from those concept cars of the late 70s and early 80s which were frankly a pretty cool series of concept cars if you've ever looked them up it's worth doing that they were well ahead of their time kind of fascinating and interesting to read about but anyway let's just get into this probe so you know by today's standards it looks fairly normal i mean it doesn't really leap out of the crowd it could be any car but by 1988 standards this thing was a time machine it looked like you know the delorean and back to the future the very very few cars had this level of aerodynamics uh this level of uh yeah modern design things were much more boxy and square and uh you know it just it really stood out in a crowd for good reason look at that giant wrap around rear window uh you know you've got this big long side window that wraps around into a big long hatchback back window you've got flush mounted tail lamps you know for aerodynamics you've got flush mounted door handles flush mounted glass all of this stuff was not really uh in vogue at the time or you know certainly not being done uh the way that it was in this car audi was doing it but you know not many other cars and this thing was just a revelation and it was very slippery and it actually handled and performed very well so all right let's just get into the trunk and we're going to try to ignore how shitty the detail you know he looked at the score oh it's 70 000 miles it's clean i don't need to do anything yeah of course not anyway very good in luggage room in the uh ford probe as people pointed out at the time you see i've got my bag of crap in there and it's dwarfed you could fit a lot more in you had split folding rear seats to enlarge the cargo area i like this cover here because it would work very nicely as uh sort of infant or toddler containment you know if you put your toddler back here uh he's got a nice big playpen area to roll around and this cover can gently go down on top of them to keep the noise down and the commotion to a minimum while you're driving and enjoying yourself up front so kudos to forward on that nice hard almost insulated tonneau cover uh absolutely love it uh and uh there you go nice big area to put stuff uh you know because of the design it has this high threshold so you do have to lift your crap over the top of that but um yeah you know you can't have it all and if they had put the taillights up into the hatch door uh that thing would have become very heavy and you know needed a lot more strut power to keep going have a look under the hood these flush handles yeah it is just it's all very cool all right so under here if i can get in we're gonna find again more shitty details but surprisingly heavy hood for crop rod and not struts but there is a 2.2 liter uh four-cylinder fuel-injected engine three valves per cylinder in this naturally aspirated form that you got in this gl or the gt had 110 horsepower which is shitty today but wasn't bad by 1990 standards it's all mazda built despite the ford stamp on the valve cover and as such it's actually a pretty damn good engine same one that came directly out of the mx-6 very very reliable very smooth very proper and it's what american car buyers were sort of buying at the time they they were envious of the japanese technology and reliability and smoothness but they still wanted an american car and ford thought it was going to deliver that with this and to a large extent it did uh here's something interesting the shock towers on this g platform are pretty high uh ford has this swooping hood uh so they had to think fast and they came up with what we'll call these power bumps in the hood uh to let the shock towers clear that's kind of a elegant solution to kind of an annoying problem i mean they're not the first company to put you know bumps in the hood to cover under the hood but uh it worked pretty well in the probe and uh you know you look under the hood of this thing and it could be like an accord i mean it's obviously japanese it just does not look like an american engine and that's because it isn't it's very much mazda but anyway a very nice setup front-wheel drive this one's mated to a four-speed auto you could also get a five-speed manual and uh it turned out to be a pretty great engine and let's get that back down later on there became other engine options uh in 1990 in the lx platform uh you could opt for a three liter ford v6 the same one that was in the taurus and the sable uh that had i want to say 140 horsepower 5 less than the gt with this 2-2 turbo and was uh of course torquey and smooth and the way v6s are so uh so that was kind of a nice feature uh interesting alloy wheels uh this one being the base gl has front discs rear drums no anti-lock uh and the gt at the time you could get optional anti-lock brakes but they did come with four-wheel discs uh you know what i would rather have had a gt to review yeah probably but you know unfortunately there were no 16 there's a bird coming in right there is he scouting for others i hear some of the trees over there go on now go on anyway yeah i would have rather had a gt review but you get what you get there's only so many 17 000 mah probes going around and this one popped up but anyway there it is you see those rather interesting alloys with the strange uh you know simulated vented discs behind it uh gl badging swooping body work interest in the way the mirrors swoop into the fender there as part of their aerodynamics there's no obvious c pillar or d-pillar it just sort of looks like glass that continues all the way around in a wraparound style looks nice and again pretty avant-garde at the time uh you know there's the rear alloys the re it still has a power antenna by the way which looks really ungainly and weird when it's up you don't expect it in these cars anymore it's just in fact i'm going to put that up right now just for the hell of it so you can see what i'm talking about there it is going up yeah have a look at that so there's the original power antenna working which is quite neat but it just seems strange this big vintage looking power antenna on this you know moonlander looking car so very very weird in the modern looking pro badge let me move this car forward a little bit try and get out of the sun it's been our enemy lately having to start earlier and earlier and no clouds to speak of i'll go up to here that's where i was yesterday in front of these trees all right so what do we do we were under the hood oh my god i've got my ipad in the back here getting in my way and now i guess we'll get into the interior the interior is kind of fascinating now this car borrowed heavily not just from the mx-6 which of course is the whole platform as the mx6 but the fs series rx-7 uh from mazda which was one of frankly the coolest if not the coolest rx series ever made a very very neat car it took the instrument cluster from that and to my delight it took its pop-up headlights which i absolutely love i am a sucker for pop-up headlights uh i just think that's the coolest thing ever and i miss it and i wish we could get him back but yeah what a shame but anyway there they are and they are directly from that uh from that rx7 unit uh one thing that's interesting about them using pop-up headlights is you can imagine what a difference that makes for aerodynamics it's like two big air brakes when you put them up at night it surprises me they didn't try to integrate the headlights in some sort of flush way that wouldn't upset the aerodynamics of the car so uh who knows if that was stylistic or just uh something by necessity uh in the backseat for canadians yeah they're gonna be chipper enough i mean the legroom uh the headroom's even worse because of that sloping back window uh but uh you know it's nice and wide looks like it has a nice bucket and uh you know stuff them back there they'll be pretty happy they'll get where they're going they'll be fairly fine uh the first year didn't have three-point belts in the back uh second year did so very nice to keep your canadians safe and you know it's new back there again i mean i don't know who owned this thing i mean who buys a base probe and drives at 70 000 miles over 30 years it absolutely shocks me and makes me feel like an absolute dinosaur that this car that i do remember and that still looks fairly modern today and was very modern at the time now qualifies for florida 30 year old blue antique tags i mean if that doesn't depress the out of me i don't know what does i mean unbelievable anyway those rear seats are split and do fold down again for extra cargo uh all very nice stuff and here we got birds going ape over there [Applause] i got my phone ringing in my pocket i'm gonna take one second to see who it is i'll probably call back nine times well all of a sudden there's some real creepy sounding birds around so i'll be happy to get in this thing and drive away but uh super quick okay from the outside we've got you know what appears to be very nice fit and finish uh this seems like all mazda to me the way the vents go you hear that thing it's pissed off and weird i'm nearby keep an eye out anyway the way the vents go into the door panels mean window cranks this is not something you really see anymore but maybe in base pickup trucks uh sort of interesting pleated vinyl with uh you know soft plastic door pulls all very nice tightened together as you would expect in a low mileage car but i bet even in a high mileage probe all that stuff stayed together having so much mazda influence the seats nice cloth and vinyl whatever they've got good adjustments they're pretty comfy to sit in the dash very reminiscent of the ford mustangs plastic wonderland at the time and again not surprising god damn that thing's nearby i need to start carrying my gun in my pocket i can at least scatter it with a shot uh but anyway reminiscent of the ford mustang at the time with the big plastic dash and uh yeah column that uh well anyway let's just hop in the damn car that bird is really unsettling me fire this thing up nice way the doors close too with the proper nice thud uh you know people weren't you can't even get the key in when you're one-handed like this that was a nice bit of engineering you see a little glowing green light that helps you find the key at night a little stuff like that is nice um but anyway um you know it's all very familiar to anyone who's driven an rx-7 this big uh instrument hump which when you move it the whole cluster moves with you which is nice and you know keeps the gauges aimed they don't become obscured by the wheel when you tilt it in a different way let's get that back down again like it low here is the base gauge cluster which gives you you know pretty full gauges you've got your tank your speedo your fuel gauge your oil uh pressure your volts and temp and it's all that you need they did have an optional digital display on the lx and gt models which people really didn't like i mean i suppose you know it's nice that it had it but people didn't like the way it worked uh they did like this rx7 switch gear uh at the time and so do i i like the way the lights work you uh twist this little roller here to make them pop up uh down again your turn signal lever is this interesting little stalk uh very nice the way it works with the steering wheel your hands hit it just like good ergonomics in this car uh your wipers over here i don't know what would have been here in a more equipped model uh also the um gts had some sort of a trip computer under this panel here over the vents uh but uh and this one no uh you've got a very standard-looking ford climate control unit works good cold ac ford cassette deck with four speakers sounds pretty good yeah there it is sounds great yeah anyway there it is uh you got a cassette deck this could have been an optional cd player and a different trim level you've got your ashtray here nice you've got your big shifter unit here with the manual shift button that'll turn off the overdrive and let you hold out shifts uh they could have had a ride control the gts you could stiffen and loosen the ride with the switch there supposedly it worked good but who knows you do have powered mirrors in this one which i do believe is an option also a weird little vent here that you can use to aim at yourself and then of course still that one on the side uh in the glove box you've got uh the original wheel lock thing uh what the hell was this for elegance some french emergency handle the automatic belt oh for these stupid automatic faults i can't believe i haven't talked about them yet uh in 1990 you had to have either an airbag or a passive uh restraint meaning that you know if you do nothing the car is still going to restrain you a lot of car companies can quoted ferrari by the way the testerosa in 1990 had this uh this big track where uh the belt stays attached it's reminisce the old volkswagen rabbits from the early 80s had the same uh it just went into the doors but so when you close it [Music] it comes back and you know tries to choke the life out of you but then here's the issue with that is you have to put on the lack belt and when you've already got your shoulder belt on you don't really think about your lap belt and i don't know how that works but i have this feeling if you're in a head-on collision without your lap belt your groin is going to go forward and impact on the steering wheel and then your mustang will become the bruce jenner model so definitely make sure you get that and that belt on but anyway down here i've got a set of books and other records which is fantastic that they save get this crap out of here let's see i love seeing all of this stuff with the car i really really do look at that a ford's 1990 version of the protecto plate you know this is all nice for collectibility i don't know if anyone wants to collect a ford probe you know theoretically it was an important car but i suppose if um you know you've got everything else in your ford collection well why not add a sixteen thousand mile ford probe to the list can't hurt it's not expensive uh we do have a window sticker which i love seeing and i'm actually surprised how expensive this car was uh okay so here we go 1990 probe two-door hatchback ford keep in mind this is the base model uh this is the gl which has a base price of 11 470 and by the time they're done you get up to 14 689. uh that includes the alloy wheels the stereo cassette um uh air conditioning looks like that was pretty expensive so is the auto overdrive transmission and the preferred equipment package with tilt wheel and tinted glass steering column cluster whatever there's all the um uh standard equipment and the fuel mileage was again fantastic i mean you know the joke as you will and the whole ford mustang probe thing they were replacing the mustang with what was a pretty good car and i mean again with the gt turning in pretty quick performance times you really have to say they they weren't completely out of their minds i mean the only thing that was missing was v8 power rear drive and donuts in the walmart parking lot uh as i read somewhere a guy who does this international race of lemons if you know that series kind of a fascinating thing uh the ford probes actually get around the racetrack no matter what style gt you know normally asp or whatever kind of a lot faster than the fox body mustangs do in stock form so the cars do handle well and that's what motorweek they did a few reviews of these at the time because they were hot cars they were very impressed with the acceleration and the handling of the ford probe and found it to be world-class car and driver put it on its 10 best list uh it was uh it was very much heralded by the automotive community at the time despite being despised by whoever the hell it was mustang purists here's the original bill of sale for the car fascinating again nice bit of history uh all kinds of paperwork that comes with it i don't know what half this crap is but it's nice that it's all still with the car and i'll take photos of it for the uh for the photo set uh also all your owner's manual owner's guide and i don't know what's in this little fake leather thing tire maintenance warranties anyway all the nice original equipment books and stuff that comes with the car and it's very nice to see that all of that is still there and with it i've got a bag floating around up top what you'd expect you know sun visors interesting looking overhead light you've got a powder your nose cocaine mirror from the 80s you've got a very standard looking uh rear view mirror although it does stick out on an interesting big stalk there to get it forward from the slope back windshield and uh there it is so let's go for a drive just a manual shift and here's another thing that was interesting to me is i had not driven a probe back in the 90s and that friend of mine had one i didn't really drive it i didn't know much about it so the first time i really ever drove a probe was last night that i can remember i mean one may have come on the used car lot when i was a kid at the buick store or something but i don't remember it but this was the first conscious time i drove one and i'm lucky enough to be driving one that's essentially new so i get to feel the way that it did back then i mean nothing's worn out on this car you know it might as well be a new car despite being 31 years old and man this car drives nice uh again way better than the fox body to be frank and i like the fox body but this is a much more modern feel you know what it feels like is a very high quality mazda platform which it turns out it is a very high quality mazda platform so it really should drive that way the uh steering wheel feedback is nice the uh sensitivity from the power steering is nice i can't remember if it's variable assist or not if it tightens up as you go but i think it does and that seems to work very well uh the shifts are kind of imperceptible i mean you know it's shifting but it shifts smooth uh the handling yeah very responsive uh the gl wasn't sprung as stiffly as the gt so you do get some body roll and look at dalton's crabby windshield i swear to god not a day goes by that i don't want to pummel him but supposedly he's leaving in june to go to tennessee i'm going to admit i'm going to admit this secretly to you now i will miss him to a certain extent but you know the way you get used to having like let's say you end up with some sort of a dog with three legs and no brain and one eye and it just becomes part of the family because it's there you get what was it in that silence of the lamb's thing you covet you know you covet what you see every day so you see this little screwed up dog every day eventually your heart goes out to it and when it goes away you're gonna miss it and i feel something similar for dalton if he does go away in june i'm going to spend you know minutes missing him this guy's going to be pissed we're leaving out here but what the hell so anyway there you feel the ex feel that acceleration uh 10 seconds to 60 in this model uh but again by the standards of the time it wasn't bad uh it was like seven seconds plus in the probe gt with a quarter mile in the 15s this thing had a quarter mile in the 17s and just wasn't wasn't all that slow uh very comparable to other cars at the time you've got that sloping hood line with the little power bumps and the center power hump the steering responsive nice tight the brakes despite being rear drum have a good feel to them with very little fade and good stopping power there's no squeaks or rattles everything feels nice tightened together the way it should on a well-built japanese car even if it's wearing a blue oval and all in all i can see why people like these things they drove nice they're really a nice driving solid reliable dependable car the reason they failed the reason the probe fail here so here's the story of the probe it was built in this form for model year 89 i want to say to 92 then in 93 the second gen came out which was maybe a little bit more current styling not quite as avant-garde and you know looked nice and they made that through 97. they were going to make a third generation probe but uh that got the kibosh and it became the mercury cougar uh actually although the probe was supposed to be succeeded by this horrible little car called the zx2 uh an escort looking zx2 i maybe some people liked it but this car the probe when it didn't compete with the camaro and the firebird as a mustang although in a way it did because you know people who might have bought one of those might have also bought one of these but when it didn't do that it then got itself thrown into the mix with the acura integra uh the honda accord coupe uh the plymouth laser crow whatever the hell that thing was the the eclipse version mitsubishi eclipse dodge version of that and a whole plethora of other really good two-door coupes at the time that were smaller and sportier and more high revving which is what sport coupe buyers of the time wanted otherwise you could say it's going into the personal luxury market like with those gm10 cars the regal and the oldsmobile uh cutlass and that sort of thing which was a dying genre uh you know people wanted uh suvs more by the time the the 90s were rolling on little suvs and whatever else they'd be driving uh in europe again people like the hot hatch this was not a hot hatch even in the gt form it's kind of a big heavy car uh it doesn't turn 8 000 rpm and really couldn't compete with you know some of the the high-end you know citroen i shouldn't say high-end because they're base models but with real fancy engines and sporty rally looking things it didn't fit in so it was a car that tried to please everybody and ended up pleasing nobody at all or very few people it did a lot of things good but it didn't focus in on any one genre great so mustang guys are going to hate it no v8 power no rear drive hot hatch guys are going to hate it because it's too big and heavy suv people are not going to like it because it's not big enough it just was a victim of marketing and product placement and you know if it had been a mustang it had a better chance for survival because of the name but as a probe yeah it just became the answer to the question that nobody asked and it quietly drifted away into non-existence but it was an important car at the time and uh the styling would be what ford became it became this aerodynamic you know kind of clever car company uh building pretty modern good-looking stuff for the masses all over the world a big global company and the probe was one of their first true global cars not just uh you know okay this thing's pretty good we can sell it here uh it was designed to be global from the get-go and thus sort of ushered in this new era of ford uh that really modernized the company so anyway there it is this car is for sale at auto house of naples and you know if you don't like this one i guess you could go find the other 17 000 mile probe up the road i'm you know where do you find something like this uh you can call the guys at 239-263-8500 on the web at autohousenaples.com uh there's some argument that because of its importance and weirdness the probe will be a collectible car in the future i don't know i mean i'm not going to go out on a limb and say that i think anything becomes a collectible car when it's well preserved in nice shape and you know is interesting to people because it brings them back to a point in their lives that they knew before and the probe does do that very very well so anyway thank you for having a look really appreciate it i'm going to try to keep the videos pumping hopefully i got more stuff for tomorrow and we'll take it from there thanks for having a look so so you

Channel: Curious Cars

Views: 140,499

Keywords: 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, Ford, Probe, GL, GT, LX, Mustang, Fox Body, Mazda, G Platform, MX-6, RX-7, Concept Cars, History, Bill, Curoius Cars, Autohaus, Naples, FL, Florida, Review, Test Drive, Humor, Doug DeMuro, Hoovie, Jay Leno, Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear, Donut, Tavarish

Id: S5SvYjBJXlI

Length: 44min 19sec (2659 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021