SOME BIG SHOES TO FILL

its launch in the UK, the press really rather took to the Ford Probe. ‘The thirty-something audience that Ford is aiming for grew up with the Capri,’ wrote Jeremy Clarkson. ‘We are therefore bound to welcome the Probe like a long-lost school friend.’ The year was 1994, and the iconic Capri had been dead for a decade. During that time we hadn’t been starved of sporting Fords – the Escort RS Turbo and Sierra Cosworth had seen to that – but by the early 1990s this giant among car makers seemed to be losing its way somewhat. A global recession had dampened appetites for simple, blokey sports machines,