Holy smokes. A 1989 Ford Taurus SHO with only 73,000 miles on it for sale for $6,999 down in Columbus at one of those drive now, pay up-the-ying-yang later used car lots. No job? No credit? No money? No-no-NO-problem! So, why isn't old car guy loving me rushing down I-71 to gobble this thing up?
Well, for starters, I don't need it. The wife and I are down to "three-dailies" since our boys moved out and along with our 1977 Corvette, we still have more cars than we need. Just so you know, we've had as many as six daily drivers and it's so nice to have so few cars out in the garage now. If that sounds rather hillbilly, well, what can I say. If the brake shoe fits, I might as well wear it.
Furthermore, despite the world-changing, seminal significance of the OG Taurus SHO, so many different cars that can suck its four-doors off have come and gone since it first burst upon the world thirty-four years ago that it's become an all but obscure footnote in automobile history. And I'm not going to buy something like this just to bore someone to tears lecturing them about how historically significant it is.
Lastly but not leastly, I've always thought "first, second and especially third-gen" Tauri, that's no typo I meant to write "Tauri", homely if not ugly. I didn't care for the "jelly-bean" look back then and I care for it perhaps less now. In my humblest of opines, Ford didn't sort out Tauri's styling until 2000.
That's not to say I won't take a proverbial trip down memory lane and reminisce about the Taurus SHO, which is pronounced "S-H-O" and not "show". "S-H-O" denotes "Super High Output" which is in reference to its Yamaha designed and built, 3.0-liter, iron-block, aluminum-head, DOHC, 24-valve V-6 that makes 220-horsepower and 200-foot-pounds of torque.
Those numbers are no big deal now but back in the day, as they say, that was a dizzying amount of power from a fairly modestly sized, normally aspirated, V-6. And in particular, one stuffed into a garden variety grocery-getter.
The Yamaha V-6 was apparently deemed so powerful that Ford didn't offer an automatic in the SHO until 1993. And the manual it was sold with was a notchy five-speed built by Mazda. Ford certainly did a lot of outsourcing for this car. I have no idea what's going on with the rear suspension on this car; that certainly ain't "O.G".
First-gen "SHO's" could do zero-to-sixty in 6.7-seconds and match the then current, Fox-body, 5.0 V-8 Mustang GT in the quarter mile and top speed. In hindsight, it's less remarkable that the Taurus SHO could perform as well as it did as how spectacularly mediocre the Mustang was.
The best thing Ford with the SHO was in quelling torque steer and other fun things that occur when an inordinate amount of horsepower and torque is set spinning through the front wheels. Ford did a spectacular job of modifying the front and rear suspensions to smoothen out most front-wheel-drive improprieties and at the end of the day, created a sweet and dare I say contemporary riding automobile.
Drive one of these today and you'd be hard pressed to not think it a more modern ride. However, kids, back then, this was one remarkable riding and handling automobile. Forget how fast it was. Power gets old real quick if you have no control.
These cars set the world back on its rear tires because it could perform as well or better than cars costing two-and-half-times more than Ford charged for them back then. Still way more than I could afford at the time or was willing to spend, but the value proposition was insanely good if you had the means to drop twenty-grand on a car.
Despite what I don't see in these things, it's got two too many doors as well, the crack-historian in me finds it somewhat a shame such a significant car is now nothing more than a cheapie used car that will have difficulty finding a buyer because it's got a stick-shift. With an automatic, it might just make for a wonderfully off-beat first car for a high schooler or college student. Just do yourself a favor and pay cash for it.
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