Even though the Probe shared its underpinnings with the Mazda MX6, it didn’t share a single body panel. Instead, the Probe was an evolution of Ford’s Ghia-based concept cars dating back to the late 1970s. In retrospect, the Probe was a handsome car and highly aerodynamic. It was also reliable, handled well, and its liftback design provided excellent utility. The Probe GT made Car and Driver magazine’s Ten Best lists for 1989, 1993, and 1994. It also won MotorTrend’s Car of the Year in 1993.
In essence, it was good at everything but excelled at nothing in an environment where buyers were spoiled for choice. Even within Ford’s lineup, the Mustang trumped the Probe for performance driving and the Thunderbird was a superior personal luxury car. On top of all that, the Probe was considered expensive.
So why was the Probe ultimately discontinued? It boiled down to poor sales. By 1997, the Probe’s final year, Ford sold less than 20,000 units compared to 108,000 Mustangs. Ford did such a poor job of positioning and marketing the Probe it was almost destined to fail. A third-generation Probe was planned, but that design became the early-2000s Mercury Cougar, also an unsuccessful car.
[Featured image by Jeremy from Sydney, Australia via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY 2.0]
