Curbside Musings: c. 1996 Ford Probe GT – The Correct Connotation

c. 1996 Ford Probe GT. Edgewater Glen, Chicago, Illinois. Sunday, July 21, 2024.

I wrote the first draft for this essay from a window seat on an airplane while returning to Chicago after a Las Vegas vacation.  This is an annual trip for me, but the added bonus this year was that it was also in celebration of a buddy’s milestone birthday.  It was also my first Vegas trip with this particular friend group, with all of us originating from mid-Michigan or specifically from the Flint area.  Tim and I were part of the same high school graduating class.

There were several reasons for the selection of this Probe GT as today’s subject car.  It was a different black Probe that I had previously written about at CC when I had made my literary faux pas involving the word “behest”, an incident to which I had recently made reference in my piece on a ’98 Plymouth Neon Expresso.  The other reason is that, as is my normal tradition, I did a whole lot of exploring in Las Vegas, with exploration being Ford’s intended context around this model name, which had first been applied to a series of show cars.  (RIP, Probe I, which was lost in a trailer fire earlier this year.)

c. 1996 Ford Probe GT. Edgewater Glen, Chicago, Illinois. Sunday, July 21, 2024.

There is that fifth grade boy in me that will sometimes snicker when I hear or read a joke made about this car’s name.  Most of the time though, when those jokes surface, I’m just like eeewwww.  I’m pushing fifty, have had a routine colonoscopy, and do not plan to be late for the next one (that’s my health-related public service announcement for today).  Before I had realized that “probe” could mean something most people would probably rather not think about (and it’s difficult to un-make an association), the Probe model name made me think of lunar exploration, and that alone.  I had owned a ’94 base-model Probe which was a great car, and at that time, there would have been no way I would have wanted to be known or thought of in a way related to lowbrow jokes about this car’s name.  “The name ‘Probe’ makes you think of what?  Shut up and forget I asked.”

1997 Ford Probe brochure pages were sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.org.

1997 Ford Probe brochure pages were sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.org.

The beauty of both friend groups with which I have now shared a Vegas vacation experience is that I have always been given total freedom to trek off on my own and take my photos.  I also genuinely enjoy making the acquaintance of locals when I’m in that social headspace, which that city brings out in me.  There will be strangers who will end up feeling like friends after the fifteen or thirty minutes or so we spend conversing while I have a meal or a (non-alcoholic) beverage.  It must be an empath thing, because we often end up finding each other as members of the same tribe.

1993 Ford Probe brochure pages were sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.org.

1993 Ford Probe brochure pages were sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.org.

The second-generation Probe is bisected in my mind between its first two model years, 1993 and ’94, and the 1995 – ’97 models, the latter of which sold much fewer copies as this fashionable, sporty coupe’s sell-by date had by then come and gone.  It was the original ’93 that looked the best to me, including the clean sweep of the dashboard before the front passenger’s side airbag arrived for ’94.  I’m obviously all for saving lives, and I know Ford engineers probably did the best they could at the time, but the ’94 model’s dashboard lost all the aesthetic artistry and magic of the first-year cars.

c. 1996 Ford Probe GT. Edgewater Glen, Chicago, Illinois. Sunday, July 21, 2024.

I also wasn’t a huge fan of the “GT” heckblende between the taillamps of the last three model years, which still looks decidedly aftermarket or homemade.  It doesn’t even light up, though it looks like it should.  I also think the slanted taillamp lens bisectors aren’t the most graceful or organic means of distinguishing the later models from the earlier ones.  There was nothing wrong with the unbroken sweep of the original red lenses with the three small, horizontal, white reverse lights.

c. 1996 Ford Probe GT. Edgewater Glen, Chicago, Illinois. Sunday, July 21, 2024.

It appears that “All American Ford” out of Saginaw, Michigan sold this car, likely from new.  I have always personally identified as both all-American and also with the Probe’s “mixed” foreign and domestic origins, as I’m a first-generation U.S. citizen on one side, and from Midwestern farm folks on the other.  I wasn’t born yesterday, so I’m sure that to some, the Probe looks purely Japanese and I simply look ethnic, but I love the apparent spirit of collaboration when two differing cultures, on a business or interpersonal level, produce results.  The original Probe was no Mustang (which had been the original plan), but I honestly feel like that’s okay, especially given that both cars could ultimately co-exist and attract different audiences in that heyday of sporty coupes of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

c. 1996 Ford Probe GT. Edgewater Glen, Chicago, Illinois. Sunday, July 21, 2024.

I’m unsure of the model year of this example, as a license plate search proved inconclusive.  Given that the “PROBE” lettering is missing from the rear quarter glass, we know that this example is from one of the Probe’s final two model years.  There were just over 30,100 units produced for ’96 and only another 16,800 for ’97.  This was down sharply from this generation’s peak of 89,700 units for the first-year ’93s.  Probes in base and SE trim were powered by a 2.0 liter four-cylinder engine with 118 horsepower, but all GTs of this generation were V6 powered.  This 2.5L mill made 164 horses, which was ample for its starting weight of just under 3,000 pounds.

c. 1996 Ford Probe GT. Edgewater Glen, Chicago, Illinois. Sunday, July 21, 2024.

Having been car-free since 2003, I have probed my city, neighborhood, and vacation destinations using public transit, the occasional rental car, and often just my own two feet.  I will occasionally ask the probing question of friends, acquaintances, and sometimes even the relative stranger if I get a sense that I’ve showed enough of myself to feel free to do so.  This is the correct connotation of which I will continue to think of the name of Ford’s other sporty, four-place hatchback of the 1980s and ’90s.

Edgewater Glen, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, July 21, 2024.