THE FORD PROBE REMEMBERED

Some aspects of 1990s life now appear impossibly distant – Eurotrash on Channel 4, doomed BBC soap Eldorado and the Ford Probe. Here was a car heavily promoted by Ford, including the obligatory pompous advertisement.

And yet is now a very rare sight.

The Probe’s origins date back to 1982 when Ford USA commenced work on a replacement for the third-generation Mustang. Three years earlier, Dearborn bought a 25% share in Mazda, which ensured the new coupe would use the 626’s floorpan and a Japanese power plant. In 1993, Car and Driver reflected that Ford’s designers were handed a Mazda platform and could “only restyle the skin and fiddle with chassis tuning”.

Meanwhile, the reaction from Mustang enthusiasts to a FWD transverse engine car, sans a V8 option, proved highly negative. Ford, therefore, decided to launch the project as a new model in its own right, and the Probe made its bow at the 1988 Chicago Motor Show. By 1993 the second-generation model shared its underpinnings with the MX-6 and the Series 5 626. Power was from two Mazda engines – a 2-litre four-cylinder and a 24-valve 2.5-litre V6.

This time there was greater American involvement in the project, with Ford’s engineers having more significant input in the chassis design. UK sales commenced in early 1994, with Car magazine reflecting “Ford misread the coupe market when it let the Capri die in ’87 without a replacement in sight”. The Probe was set to rival the Vauxhall Calibra, VW Corrado, Nissan 200SX and Toyota Celica. Ford GB promoted it as a sophisticated machine with “sports-car sharp responses and a touring car ride”.

The press reception was mixed, a writer from Motor Sport complaining the Probe “wallows uncomfortably almost as soon as it sees a bend”. The writer concluded that the V6 model was “…more flawed than Ford”. By contrast, a very RP-sounding Jeremy Clarkson was very taken with the Probe when he reviewed it for Top Gear:

Mr. Clarkson also wrote in The Sunday Times: “I have just driven the V6 version on a 1,000-mile test run through Arizona and Utah and I like it. Dynamically, a VW Corrado handles better, and a Calibra is faster, but as an all-rounder it’s not bad at all.” Car believed the V6’s handling was superior to its Vauxhall rival, but it was no match for ‘the fast and fluent VW Corrado VR6’.

However, 1994 also saw the debut of the fourth-generation Mustang, which had such a disastrous effect on Probe sales in the USA that in March 1997, Ford announced its demise. Any surviving example is a reminder of a promising concept that suffered from unfortunate marketing. One writer observed: “You can’t help wondering who would call a car after a surgical instrument.” It was also not a Capri but a different form of coupe, which may not have been appreciated at the time.

And perhaps the worst impediment to UK sales was the appearance of a 2.5-litre in Steve Coogan’s Dearth of a Salesman. After all, motorists such as Gareth Cheeseman were unlikely to enhance the image of any car.