When my friends graduated from college in 1988, Jim and Greg bought themselves Ford Probes. They were sleek, sporty, and cost more than I could afford. I had an opportunity to ride in one on several occasions, and they seemed like nice cars. In a world of strange bedfellows, this was a sporty hatchback. That's rarer today, but back then there were quite a few sporty hatchbacks coming out of Japan. The answer the unasked question, no, they didn't have great engines. They were peppy, but they weren't true sports cars. At $12-15k, they were just too dear for me to buy.



To be honest, I don't recall who had which color.

Greg's probe met with a sad fate. He was driving out to the restaurant in Katawba when he hit a patch of gravel that slid him off the road, tipping both him and Steve over nose first. Fortunately my friends wore their seatbelts and everyone checked out fine. The car received a bent frame and so got totalled.

I suppose that Jim eventually just replaced his.

The interior was pretty straight forward. It was much of what you'd expect from a Japanese designed car mated up with American dash design. The interior is now modern enough that you wouldn't blink to buy a car like this today. The car featured a seat belt head which automatically retratcted when you closed the door, relieving you of pulling on your own shoulder harness. However, you did need to buckle your own lap belt, so I'm not sure what good the system really did for you. Maybe it was for all the women who didn't want to muss their dresses? I don't know.



According to Wikipedia, this car was to replace the Mustang. You can see how well that worked out. However, I do think that this car was far more appealing to the female market than the Mustang. This car definitely had more girl street cred than most sporty cars, but not so much that the boys avoided it. However, the REAL MEN drove mustangs because REAL and MAN.