Discontinuation
From the beginning, sales of the EXP were never as strong as the marketing executives had hoped they would be. This can be partially attributed to the fact that it never delivered the performance that a car in the two-seat market segment required. By the late '80s, insurance rates on two-seater cars were also rising. An additional and totally unrelated situation faced by Ford may have also hastened the demise of the EXP.
In 1982, with the economy still in a recession, Ford began work on what was to be the new fourth generation Mustang. The goal was to replace the rear-wheel drive muscle car design with a sleek, fuel-efficient, front-wheel drive "design of tomorrow". It was also an attempt to counter General Motors' GM80 plan, which was to offer a front-wheel drive Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird by 1990.
When Mustang loyalists got wind that Ford was planning to drop their beloved pony car in favor of a Japanese-derived front-wheel drive car, criticism quickly mounted against it. The current Mustang's sales began to rise and the future of the rear-wheel drive Mustang was no longer questioned. With easing gas prices and under the strain of a massive letter writing campaign from Mustang enthusiasts, Ford reconsidered the decision. By this time, Ford had invested a significant amount of time and money in the new design and they were unwilling to simply cut their losses and scrap it. With the upcoming dealer debut already planned for August 1987, Ford turned to its inventory of already owned names. They picked one they had been using on a series of radically designed, aerodynamically advanced concept cars, from which the car's design was originally premiered. The new car was renamed the Ford Probe.
This left Ford with a difficult problem, as they did not have the resources to produce three sport coupes. The logical choice was to drop the one that had the poorest sales figures. By October 1988, and after more than 225,000 EXPs and LN7s had been produced, the last EXP rolled off of the assembly line.
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