Junkyard Find: 1989 Ford Probe

Here's the new 1989 Ford Mustang! Well, that was the original plan for this cousin of the Mazda 626, but Mustang fans would sooner have accepted Leonid Breznhev's face on the $20 bill than tolerate the sacred pony's nameplate on a front-wheel-drive, Mazda-based car. So, the Mustang continued to be based on the increasingly elderly Fox platform until 1993… or 2004, if you consider the fourth-gen Mustang to be a Fox (which it was). Meanwhile, this car was sold as the Probe, and hardly anybody bought it. Here's a first-year example I shot yesterday at a Denver self-serve junkyard. One thing I've learned about the Probe during my tenure as a 24 Hours of LeMons judge is that the Probe (regardless of engine) is much, much, much quicker around a real-world road course than a Fox Mustang. This one probably wouldn't be all that quick on the race track, though, what with the automatic transmission. Another thing I've learned about the Probe in LeMons racing is that it tends to be very fragile. Engines, transmissions, suspensions, everything just falls apart under any sort of abuse (Fox Mustangs aren't exactly reliable in LeMons, but they hold together much better than the Probe). This one made it to just over 100,000 miles. It appears to have served as a company car for the Pistola y Corazon Tattoo Shop. Kit-car builders like these dash-mounted turn-signal controls; the RX-7 of the same era also uses this design. from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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