Sales of the Mustang remained strong, although in the 1980s Ford gave serious consideration to replacing it with a front-drive model (which eventually appeared as the Ford Probe instead).
By the mid-1980s, the pony car survivors (Mustang, Camaro, and Firebird) enjoyed a period of renewed popularity as progressively more and more powerful (yet relatively fuel-efficient) V8 engines were offered in performance-oriented versions of these vehicles.