One of Ford’s wildest aero experiments has reappeared in the most everyday place possible. A genuine Ford Probe IV concept, long thought to be lost or scrapped, has surfaced for sale on Facebook Marketplace in Texas, giving a private buyer a shot at a piece of design history that helped steer Ford into the aero era.
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The “Missing” Probe IV Turns Up In Texas
The car listed is chassis 001, one of only two Probe IVs Ford ever built in the early 1980s as rolling aerodynamic labs. While its sibling, chassis 002, lives in the Petersen Automotive Museum as the running prototype, this one is the display and wind tunnel model. It has no engine or usable drivetrain and was never meant to drive on public roads.
Underneath the long, teardrop body you find a wood main structure with steel subframes at each end to carry suspension and wheels. The body is composite, with manually adjustable ride height and an electrically operated front air dam that could drop for wind tunnel work. Inside, there is a full four seat show car interior, but functionally this is sculpture on wheels. The listing uses a placeholder price and invites offers, which makes sense. There is no blue book for a non running, one off Ford aero prototype that spent decades out of sight.
Why The Probe IV Still Matters
Ford unveiled the Probe IV in 1983 as part of a series of concepts that pushed drag reduction as far as possible. The headline figure was a claimed drag coefficient of about 0.15, a number closer to a jet than a family sedan at the time. To get there, the designers smoothed almost every surface, from covered wheels, flush lamps, hidden wipers, a sealed front end that pulled cooling air from behind the rear wheels on the running car, and a totally flat underbody paired with active ride height control.
That work did not stay in the lab, as the Probe concepts helped shape the rounded “jellybean” look that would define cars like the original Taurus. They sit at the opposite end of Ford’s story from heavy hitting trucks like the F 150 Lightning. One car explored how little drag you could get away with, and the other proved there was real demand for a full size electric pickup even as Ford rethinks its EV strategy after a bruising year.
The Marketplace Probe IV is not a driver though, it will never cruise to Cars and Coffee like a clean 1957 Ford Thunderbird. What it offers instead is the chance to own a physical chapter of Ford’s aero research program. The running Probe IV sold at auction in recent years for a six figure sum. This static chassis should land below that, but it is still closer to museum grade industrial design than a normal collectible.
