Yesterday the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance took place. The huge exhibition features cars worth hundreds of millions of dollars and is the climax of Monterey Car Week. Here you can see cars you’ve only dreamed of. That’s what happened to me when I discovered the Ford Probe 1 Ghia concept car just hours before it burned to the ground.

I was hanging out on the Pebble Beach Concept Lawn watching people taking photos of the bb Targa Hybrid when an old friend in the industry came up to me and asked me what my favorite car at the concours was. The best class this year consisted of 20 “wedge” cars and is probably one of the coolest collections of cars I’ve ever seen. It’s phenomenal and we’ll keep writing about it.

The final wedge was the Ford Probe 1 Ghia Concept and I told him that was probably my favorite car there, mainly because I love weird old Fords and it accurately predicted a lot of the future. I went back to the car twice, spoke to the team that brought it in and just absolutely loved it.

@exoticsimage

$10 million car catches fire at Car Week #carweek

♬ Original sound – DreamCars

Luckily I didn’t miss sample 1, because a few hours later it no longer existed.

Why the Ford Probe 1 is important

The OPEC oil embargo, fuel economy regulations, and the resulting skyrocketing oil prices sent most of the major auto companies reeling in the mid-1970s. Automakers had these heavy, powerful, blocky cars that propelled themselves through the wind on the power of pure horsepower, and gasoline cost $0.33 a gallon.

Change was coming, but automakers couldn’t just throw out their entire product line overnight. Ford designer Don Kopka, the man behind the 1967 Mustang, had an idea: If we can’t completely redesign the cars, maybe we can make them a little more aerodynamic with a few cosmetic changes? He estimated that implementing his changes cost about $10 million and resulted in an average 1.5 MPG improvement in fuel economy, which would have cost about $3 billion using conventional technology.

It was around this time that Ford decided to design the car of the future and decided it had to be sleek, as this article from Christie’s auction house describes:

Probe I was developed at Ford’s Dearborn Design Center, where Kopka was the executive director of the Advanced and International Design Studio. Its sleek and pointed aerodynamic shape, flat hubcaps, pop-up headlights and faired rear wheels achieved a wind tunnel drag coefficient of 0.25, about 37 less than the 0.40 typical for a two-door, four-seat coupe at the time. It was introduced at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 1979. Probe I was extensively exhibited at trade shows and events after its introduction and received a lot of media attention, giving the impression that Ford was up to something.

In fact, as The Bishop explains in this article, the Ford Probe was originally intended to be a next-generation front-wheel drive Mustang on a chassis supplied by Mazda. This concept did not go over well and Ford eventually decided that they could build a front-wheel drive Ford (called the Probe) and a rear-wheel drive Mustang at the same time.

Most people call this car the Ford Probe 1 Ghia, but it’s possible that Ghia just built the thing and had little to do with the design, which is attributed to Ford’s Dearborn design office.

Eventually the concept passed into private hands and was last sold by Christie’s in 2002 for just under $50,000, which is a bargain for something that would take you to Pebble’s lawn, although it was described as being in less than perfect condition:

Built on a Mustang chassis of the period or perhaps a Pinto, the Probe I package called for a collection of the advanced technological features that show concepts seem to be equipped with. Little of it works, but it would be easy to cut a slot in the console and then say it “can be started with a universal credit card that can also be used to buy gasoline and pay tolls.” Probe I once had the 2.3-liter Mustang/Pinto four-cylinder engine and an automatic transmission, but these have long since been removed. Ford claimed the Probe could achieve fuel economy of 39 miles per gallon.

Probe I is finished in red with black underbody accentuating the deep rear wheel skirts. The body is made of metal and has a fixed tinted glass roof. The windows are also tinted. The wheels have disc-shaped hubcaps to reduce turbulence. The interior is trimmed in red cloth and tan leather. The gauges appear to be functional.

The Probe I is showing its age, and not in a good way. The exterior is in little better than OK condition, with a fair number of scratches, edge chips and a small dent in the driver’s door. The interior appears to be in fair condition.

The team that bought it has obviously put their love back into the car, restoring it to its original glory and installing a 2.3-liter turbo engine, possibly from a period-correct Mustang II Cobra.

See it for the last time

As you can see in the video above, we unknowingly had yet another chance to enjoy the Probe 1 Concept. The vehicle was in great condition and had many working parts, including the largest parking brake I have ever seen in my life.

Since it’s a Pebble, the car was driven on grass, so it’s a racer. Even more impressive, the car had more than 1,100 miles on the clock, which is unusual for a concept car. That’s the same as the concept car’s 1.1 million miles.

Unfortunately, shortly after we saw the car, it was loaded onto a trailer and the accident occurred:

As you can see in the video below, there is not much left. Here is a photo of the burning:

It’s not clear what happened to the car, but it looks like the fire started in the trailer. We’ve contacted the Monterey Fire Department and will update you if we hear anything. The Scott Grundford Company, which restored the car, released photos of the charred car with this update:

The owners of this car have the other Ford Probe Concepts and it’s possible they can restore this one, although I’m not entirely sure how. I don’t have much to add other than that this sucks. I feel terribly for the owner of the car and for car culture in general. It’s a huge loss (probably not the $10 million mentioned in the TikTok above, but in this case the story is more important than the money).

I’m just glad we were able to experience it again and capture it on video for posterity.