General Banter > Car Talk

Poetry in motion: The 1990s Ford Taurus SHO

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OldiesButGoodies:
Have always been attracted to this stupid car for some reason:





One reviewer in the net summarized the reality of SHO ownership beautifully:

"Hell, the engine is the highlight of that car by a long, long, long shot. It's everything else around it that's junk. I had an '89 SHO and I have never owned a car so unworthy of the engine that moved it; in that way the SHO was the 80s/early-90s interpretation of the 60s/early-70s muscle cars that had great engines but handled like balls. It was a really fun car to do stoplight battle with -- stunned a whole lot of people who didn't know any better and thought it was just another old, tired 15-year-old Detroit-crap family sedan. But the chassis was awful despite Ford engineers making a valiant effort to tune it for high-performance duty; there's only so much you can do to turn a 1980s-era mid-size, mid-market, FWD American family sedan into a performance machine. The brakes were frighteningly inadequate. Overall it was a downright scary car to drive near its limits. The Yamaha motor was just way too much motor for that car."

That is beautiful prose, IMO!

Will skip it.

OBG

scorpio333:
Never owned one, but have driven one. And the regular ol V6, which eventually had the head gasket go like so many of them. He about sums it up, that car was horrible on back road bendies, like a waterbed on wheels. I'd like to trade our Mustang in on the latest Taurus SHO someday.

schwarcw:
I inherited a 2003 Mercury Sable station wagon with the big V6.  The car was beautiful with a leather interior.  I got the car with 29K miles.  My son finally traded the car in last year with 240K miles.  It was still running great.  The paint was oxidizing, a little surface rust, yellow head lamp covers but the interior was near perfect.  The dealer sold it for $1,000. 

Sir Thrift-a-Lot:
I think that the engine in my Freestyle is a first cousin of that one.   I'd like to wind it out once but I'm literally afraid of blowing up the transmission.   They don't have a great rep and are very expensive to service, so I baby it.

Jim Pittsburgh:
Maria and I owned one.... silver. great engine and ZERO torque steer which was just amazing. That car would really scoot. Made it from Boyce Rd.& Rt.19 to Sandusky Ohio in that thing in exactly 2 hours and 3 minutes one time with the help of a radar detector. It did have crappy plastic stick on body moldings that started falling apart at 35,000 miles. Our's had a manual transmission, that melted the clutch plates at 16,000 miles. dealership blamed/ charged us, but found out that it was built with the heat shielding missing from the front of tranny and stopped payment on the repair.... have Maria tell you about our test drive in Columbus  with the kids in the back seat lol!

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