This is one interesting road test between the old and the new.
Well, it was Old and New way back in 1988. This is the cover story of R&T’s March issue:
And those of you who are interested to read more about the MX-6, I’ve uploaded a detailed review of which recently.
It’s entirely subjective, but I like the Mustang more.
Saw an MX-6 just yesterday, a faded gold color but otherwise a fairly decent older car.
Drove a Probe LX with a V6 and automatic transmission about a year ago and have driven several 60s and 70s Mustangs with 6s and 8s….this comparison is a real apples to oranges kind of test. Each has it’s good and bad points, and I’m guessing I’d regret my decision whichever one I bought.
Still, I’m guessing the Mustang would have been my choice in the end.
I grew up with Fox Mustangs. Had two friends that had ’em new, a 83 and a 91. I drove a Probe Turbo. I remember loads of torque steer. I’d take the Mustang for ease of power adding mods. I did also drive a regular probe. I liked it better than the Turbo. Alas minimum wage in the 80’s paid for none of ’em. It barely paid for my 87 plain jane F150.
The Probe was easily modded as well. You could just about double the boost pretty easily and safely.
Of course, torque steer and wheel spin would then be even worse…and at that point, the Mustang makes more sense.
Nice read, I’ve been anxiously awaiting it!
I owned an ’84 Mustang GT and an ’89 Probe GT. Their performance was closer than these two. The Probe struggled off the line with wheel hop, it was much better with a rolling start. The Turbo was a problem area. I avoided trouble by following the recommendations of the mechanic who owned it before me…using synthetic oil and always letting it idle a bit when hot before shutting it off.
I’m surprised the ’86 Mustang was faster than this one. I’m guessing it was a bit lighter and perhaps had cleaner aerodynamics despite the old sealed beam headlights. When I was younger I preferred the ’87 restyle, but today I think I lean towards the ’86.
I would sum my experience by saying the Mustang was more fun, but the Probe was a better car and a better daily driver.
A man’s car vs. a woman’s car….
When I think woman’s car, I think white Mustang convertible.
I don’t find the first gen Probe GT to be feminine. Perhaps in DX or LX trim, but the same could be said of a Mustang LX. The curvier second gen Probes with their purple and turquoise and rose paint jobs are another matter. But that was the 90s, a lot of guys liked colors we would consider almost exclusively feminine before and after that period.
Both are guys’ cars (in GT form, of course)….just different kinds of guys. Probe is Tom Cruise, Mustang is Tom Selleck.
Phil is right…base level Mustangs…especially convertibles are often ladies’ cars, whereas GTs are more male-centric.
Ill say this though: The base Probe would be a MUCH better car all around than a base Fox Mustang with that craptacular 2.3 I4. In some years, I think there was no V6 on Foxs, which is a shame. That Cologne built 2.9 was no barnstormer but its far superior to the 2.3. But that also speaks to the cars’ intended missions.
The Probe is a stylish and economical sporty coupe. Its more about the image and appeals to those who are into the high tech stuff. Its just a different car from the Mustang. And while a fwd car can be a good all around performer with a smaller engine, rwd is less efficient and will bog down smaller engines.
The base level Mustangs likely only exist to make the GTs (the ‘real’ ones) palatable to the bean counters. Like the ’04-’06 GTO proved out, with out the base models to fill up some volume, the business case for an affordable high performance only coupe is just hard to make. But its those upper level ones that carry the desirability and sell the low end ones.
Why is that?
C’mon, men drive Mustangs too Suzu.
Having driven both, my friend owned a well worn Probe GT otherwise identical to the test car, this article pretty much sums it up well. The Probe drove like a boring FWD economy car, until you punched the accelerator, where it then felt like a boring FWD economy car with a turbocharger. The 5.0 Mustangs on the other hand were like stepping into a time machine, to an era where dinosaur muscle cars roamed the earth, and while I can appreciate that many/most people just want isolated, smooth and soft sophistication, so they can listen to Kenny G, I most certainly don’t. I like a car that feels mechanical, I want to have the sensation that I can get into a Bullitt like car chase through the city streets at any minute, even if I’m just on my way to the store to pick up fruits and veggies. The Mustang was the last of a breed of cars like that, and was really carrying the torch as far as still being perfectly livable as daily drivers(compared to F bodies), which is what the first gen Mustangs excelled at as well.
Oldies vs speed metal? They sure botched that metaphor. Speed metal was the Mustang all over….and as often heard blaring out of them when out in the wild. Probe, that’s new wave.
My BIL had an LX 5.0…fast car without the insurance premiums of the GT, but also taller gearing which he addressed. My childhood friend and later neighbor Becky had a Probe of this vintage with the 3.0 V6/automatic. I drove it a few times…basically a tame, economical car with style. Perfect for a 20 y/o girl.
I’d call the Mustang Hair Metal and the Probe Techno.
The Fox body aged far, far better than the Probe.
Yup. And where are your fwd, soft core sporty coupes now? All but extinct yet the old school rwd powerful muscle car is alive and better than ever. You could argue that BMW 3/4 series, Lexus with the RC-F, Nissan with the Z cars and G37, Audi with the RS5 and a few others have seen that and want a piece of the pie without directly challenging Detroit head to head.
You’re absolutely right- The only FWD sporting model I can think of still on the market is the Mini, but that’s kind a of an oddball.
My fault for not being more clear. Mini, GTI, Focus RS…there are plenty of sporting FWD cars. But hot hatches, rally sedans, etc are a different animal from sports coupes. The Probe, Beretta, Avenger/Sebring, 3rd/4th gen Eclipse etc were fielded as an alternative or outright replacement for old school rwd V8 performance. It didn’t work out like that at all.
Forgot they were still making the GTI actually (don’t know how I did that). But, yeah, the FWD performance market is pretty much limited to the hot hatch segment now. Great point.
I think the issue that arose was ponycars like the Mustang, the Camaro, the original Barracuda or whatever were relatively cheap for automakers to develop, because they were essentially whatever compact segment chassis was being built at the same time with a sleeker bodyshell grafted to it. The attempt to shift the Mustang to FWD was pretty much the same formula, not because FWD was desirable for a sporty car, but because the mainstream RWD compact chassis ceased to exist after the Fox, so the only option was to either continue the long used template and settling for FWD or go to a bespoke platform.
Some credit has to be given to GM for the Mustang staying RWD as well, as they faced that issue for the third gen F bodies, the second gens since the X went FWD with the Citation. That proved staying uniquely RWD could be managed.
How, without sharing hardly anything at all with mainstream FWD product lines, can GM and Ford market the current Camaro and Mustang at such a low price point (for the extremely capable base V-6 models)?
From reading the responses here, I am put in mind of comments made about other magazine tests, that is, they could just as easily have tested the models folks on a budget would consider….the Mustang and Probe BOTH with 4 cylinder engines and manual or automatic transmissions.
A V6
Interestingly, Ford did not offer a V6 Mustang during most of the years that the Probe had one, so a direct model year V6 Probe versus V6 Mustang could only be done in the 2nd generation of the Probe….but THAT would have made an interesting comparison test, too.
I drove a regular probe with the 2.2 Mazda and a five speed and can tell you they were significantly faster than the 2.3 Mustang. I think the Probe was like 4 seconds faster to 60.
I recall a long time ago that Ford was planning the next generation Mustang to be based on the Mazda MX-6 FWD platform. Mustang loyalists demanded Ford to leave the Mustang the way it is (RWD with live rear axle and V-8). The FWD platform became the Probe, which was built alongside the Mazda MX-6.
Fox-body Mustangs are as popular as ever and Probes are long forgotten. The market has spoken.
They do dribble on about the ground pounding power of the Mustang, however an Australian racer imported a couple of specially prepared Rousch Mustangs and his comment after practice for Bathurst, was “it couldnt pull a sailor off your sister” and under race conditions couldnt get past a Holden V8 and a Camaro, Ford didnt see fit to export any Mustangs out this way but some have turned up used and seem to make a nice cruiser, plenty of MX-6s arrived but not many probes.
The most interesting statistic is the 0-100 time: 18.0 seconds for the Mustang, 19.0 for the Probe, even though the Probe had 80 fewer horsepower. Aerodynamics? Gearing? Was the Probe underrated? The Mustang certainly wasn’t, at 225 horsepower. Most dynamometers have proved that to be accurate, if not conservative.
To be fair, these are about the slowest acceleration times you’ll find printed for a 5-speed 5.0 Mustang, and they were pretty undergeared from the factory, but cars have certainly gotten a lot faster in 25 years. A new Mustang GT will probably get to 120 before this one gets to 100.
Aerodynamics? Gearing? Was the Probe underrated?
Probably a combination of these. Aerodynamics, for sure. the Probe was very slippery for the times; the Mustang not. Turbo engines often have unusual torque curves that might have been especially favorable to its gearing. And frankly, 145 hp seems a bit modest for 1988. That’s what the similar-sized T-Bird Turbo Coupe first made in 1983.
Paul, the 86 Mustangs were rated at 200 hp due to more restrictive heads. The 87 up 225 hp models on a chassis dyno (at the rear wheels) in stock form put about 180 hp down. So the 86 would have been proprtionally lower.
I think everything you mentioned was possibly a factor. Plus, a transaxle is a more efficient way to put power on the ground…less rotational mass. Granted, fwd loses some of that advantage due to from-a-dig traction issues, but the turbo’s high RPM power making bias helps offset that.
***Granted, fwd loses some of that advantage due to from-a-dig traction issues, but the turbo’s high RPM power making bias helps offset that.***
That’s true, but according to the rating, the Probe’s power peak was at 4300 RPM, 100 fewer than the Mustang’s. It sounds a lot like the modern Mustang’s Ecoboost, which is tuned for mid-range power at the expense of revs. I’ve driven one of them, and they’re pretty much done by 5500 RPM. They’ll rev higher, but there’s no real point.
I don’t understand why folks still perpetuate this silly notion of “the turbo’s higher RPM power making bias”. MoparRocker; show me one turbo engine that makes its peak power higher than a comparable NA engine.
Turbo engines intrinsically and inevitably have a relatively low power peak. And it’s always like that, except for an all-out racing engine. The forced induction creates a large torque boost in the mid-range, which in turn creates lots of horsepower without the engine having to rev high.
Yes, older turbos had a a hole in their very bottom of their rev range, which may be why folks think they need lots of rpm. But turbos are all about that fat mid-range torque boost, and putting that to advantage.
I remember Wheels mag termed the MX6 an “unguided missile” here in Australia. A lot of power thru the front wheels. We only got the Ford Turbo in the five door TX5 Telstar (a made in Japan sister of the 626). Previous Telstar’s were Aus assembled and there was an out of the box, very mild and sophisticated turbo version.
Bryce, they tested a Kiwi MX6 and it had a twin cam 2 litre — needless to say, a better car. Yes, headline to the story was “Guided Missile” I recall. As for the Mustang, the dreadful, 4.6s sold here was tagged by the same mag as “Engine in search of a car”. Don’t know what they would have said about a cheap Fox Mustang if they tried to sell them here with a dodgy conversion to RHD and priced them anywhere cost in our market. Still, my favourite comment from Wheels was for a dodgy Isuzu sold with Holden badges: “Does even one person know of this car’s existence?”
Maybe it’s too much judging a late-80s car by 2010s standards, but I still think the Probe was missing a couple doors.
That would be a 626 sedan.
I think nlpnt means it has a similar profile to a lot of sedans today, which I can see.
Interesting to read this article, it is essentially what you would expect with hindsight and presumably at the time, apart from a big difference in braking performance! I wonder if the Probe GT actually ended up with a higher price tag than the Mustang GT as predicted, and if so why?
At the same time as Ford was toying with the Mazda-based Mustang replacement, Ford Australia was looking at a Mazda-based Falcon replacement. I dare say it was an easier call for the large family sedan to continue, especially after the Falcon overtook the smalller Commodore to lead the market from 1982-onwards.