Among the great names of the car industry that have stayed with us for decades, the Mustang has remained a legend and icon of muscle cars for over 50 years now. Creating the "pony car" class of small but mighty powerhouses, its hard to imagine the muscle car segment without the Mustang existing within it. But, as terrible an idea as it seems today, in the '80s Ford considered changing their prized pony from a traditional RWD muscle car into a small FWD sports car, much to enthusiast's dismay.

Facing challenging times, Ford looked to create a new performance car that would represent the changing times of the late '80s and help regain profits for the company. That car would become the Ford Probe, and while it isn't remembered fondly today, it marked an important chapter in Ford's history.

The Probe was not a revolutionary or particularly fast car but did represent a turning point where American manufacturers finally accepted the rising popularity of Japanese imports and began to incorporate their technology and methods into American cars.

Why then, did the Ford Probe almost bring about the death of the Mustang as we know it?

Tough Times For Muscle Cars

1987 Ford Mustang Fox Body GT White Convertible parked
Via 94.7 WCSX

Introduced in 1964, the Mustang's evolution entered a period of automotive turmoil by the time its second generation, the Mustang II, rolled around in the mid-'70s. With the gas crisis neutering the traditional big V8s that muscle cars were based around, and new federal regulations forcing manufacturers to rapidly adapt, times were tough, and American performance hit an all-time low.

At the same time, Japanese manufacturers who had been focused on developing efficient cars for decades gained an opening into the American market. By the time the '80 rolled around, imports were taking over the performance game. With sports cars that used smaller efficient engines like the Supra, 300ZX, and RX-7 outperforming most V8 muscle cars while still being affordable, it was clear that traditional muscle cars had lost their stride. Even the greatest muscle car of this period - the Buick Grand National - had forgone the traditional big V8 in favor of a turbocharged V6.

Yet, the Mustang was lagging behind, still being built with traditional muscle car construction like live-axles and a pushrod V8, all without being able to keep up with import competition from the factory. Ford took note, and considered the Mustang too outdated, and not reflective of the time as the same generation had been in production since 1979 and sales were dropping dramatically. Things got even worse, as Lee Iacocca had recently left Ford to join Chrysler, and veteran leaders like Henry Ford II had retired.

With fears that the Mustang would soon be completely irrelevant, Ford decided that the next generation of Mustang would be a small sports car, ignoring the traditional muscle car formula to build a car that could stay on top of future trends and gain worldwide popularity.

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Probing The Market

1989 Ford Probe sports car parked at evening
Via Motor1.com

These talks of a small sports car weren't out of the blue though, Ford had recently acquired a large stake in Mazda, eventually developing vehicles on platforms shared between the two companies like the Ford Ranger and Mazda B-Series. Now having a hand in one of the Japanese companies that had been taking sales from American cars, Ford decided to collaborate with Mazda in order to make their new sports car.

With Mazda gaining success with sports cars like the RX-7 and MX-5, Ford looked to the MX-6 which was already in development. Confident these lightweight FWD sports cars were the future, the MX-6 chosen as the basis for what would become the Ford Probe, and development began. Despite outcry from engineers who wanted to save the Mustang's traditional form, Ford's finance and product planners stuck to the MX-6 platform, touting the fuel economy and Japanese sports car style to be the way forward.

Catching wind of this development, Autoweek published a story in 1987 about Ford and Mazda's partnership, exposing the MX-6 based car they were developing as the new heir to the Mustang name. This prompted immediate outrage from Ford fans, furious that a FWD lightweight Japanese sports car without a V8 could be called a Mustang, it was seen as near blasphemy. Thousands of angry letters were sent to Ford corporate, demanding the Mustang not be replaced by such a car.

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The Mustang Lives On

Black 1994 Mustang SN95 Parked
Mecum Auctions

Yet, as soon as these letters came in, fuel prices began to fall, and Mustang sales rose. Seeing this outpouring of support for the Mustang, Ford gave in, renaming the MX-6 based sports car to the Probe in response, and releasing it in 1989 as its own model.

Despite being developed mostly out of fear, the Probe was not a bad car. While not particularly quick, the Probe was properly peppy, using either a Mazda Inline 4 with a turbo option, or a Ford V6, letting it put out up to 164 HP. While not impressively powerful, the Probe's lightweight platform gave it good driving characteristics, and it went on to win Car & Driver's "10 Best Cars" award in its inaugural year of 1989.

Despite this success, the Probe was in no way capable of replacing the Mustang, and the Ford engineers who protested had known this all along. Since 1989, a team of these designers and engineers who wanted to save the Mustang had been secretly meeting after work hours on a new generation that could truly be called a Mustang. Their efforts would pay off in 1994, when their design was put into production, and introduced to the world as the SN95 generation Mustang.

Sales of this new Mustang were a hit, and at the same time, the recently released second-generation Probe dropped in sales dramatically. By 1997, the Probe was only selling 15,000 units per year, a fraction of the 120,000 sold yearly after its introduction. In the end, the Mustang survived to this day, following its outdated but beloved muscle car formula with continued success, while the Probe only managed to last from 1989 until 1997, when it was finally discontinued.

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