SHO' Nuf! 1995 Ford Taurus SHO in the stable!

Yes, that's right. None other than the "Cone Bone" itself. As one of my other cars is in the process of (hopefully) being totaled once and for all, and I don't want to replace it with another payment, I was browsing through the local Automart magazine when I came across this. A minty (and green to boot) 1995 Ford Taurus SHO sedan owned by an elderly couple and loved as only the elderly can, with a sincere lack of go-pedal use as evidenced by the almost EXACTLY 80,000 mile odometer (80,006 to be exact). The car has never had any accidents, the paint was original, the leather looked fantastic and even the tires were in great shape. Unfortunately, the ever-present northern snow effects have left their mark on some of the car from the waist down, but the listed price was already a great deal and needless to say, I got a substantial discount off that which really made it impossible to resist. With a total coin out the door of around 2.5k (my total budget to begin with) I thought I'd give it a shot. I didn't get to take the new addition home yet as I am waiting on the plates from my totaled car to come back from insurance, but read after the jump to see my first impression.

The story behind the Taurus SHO is typical Ford, resulting from a little mismanagement, and a little luck. Ford had originally commissioned Yamaha to build a heavily modified in-house intake for their ubiquitous Vulcan 3.0L V6 at some point in the mid-late '80s to be used in a coupe that never actually made it to production. After extensive testing, it was discovered that Yamaha's top end enhancements were SO good that the bottom end couldn't keep up. As a result Ford ended up farming out the buildup and modification of the entire engine to Yamaha to ensure reliability. Unfortunately for Ford, the development and initial orders to Yamaha had already been placed by the time the coupe project was axed (that's the typical Ford mismanagement part).

Not having a clue what to do with the inevitable shipment of motors soon to be arriving at their front door, Ford quickly amassed a plan to create a wolf in sheep's clothing version of the one vehicle that had already been using the engine architecture to begin with, the venerable family-hauling, grocery-getting, suburbanite Taurus (that's the luck part). While this probably sounded quite comical in the late 1980s, the Taurus can probably share some kudos in the eventual success of several vehicles in this niche that came along later; including the Cadillac CTS-V, Jaguar S-Type R and Chrysler 300 SRT-8. All which start out as relatively docile family haulers.

My brief stint with this freakish creation during my test-drive and tire-kicking session proved to be mildly enjoyable if not downright entertaining. The power from the Yamaha engineered powerplant does not slap you in the face like my Crossfire SRT-6 does, but comes on smoothly and surely with what surprisingly has the be one of the most enjoyable engine cacauphonies this side of an F40. At 4000RPM however the engine snaps out a satisfying burst of power that these cars are known for. It really does make you forget for just a moment that you're driving a Taurus. The engine is really the bones of this entire car.

Unfortunately, the transmission (an automatic in this particular example) is standard Ford fare and does a merely OK job of keeping up with the magic the motor is capable of. There was a standard manual transmission throughout the car's run, but ironically, it isn't really any better as it was designed by Mazda to be used in the lowly 323 compact car of all things.

Handling however splits the balance between overly taut and Town Car soft extremely well, the car corners well, brakes decently, and doesn't feel like a handful to sling around. Sure it's no M3, but for what essentially was an accidental car, it gets the job done.

The interior in this car was surprisingly comfortable and I could see it being perfect for long-haul driving (the motor has an extremely docile low-end when you want it to be by the way) despite the substandard materials quality that is typical of any '80s-'90s Ford product. Ford really excelled on the seat design of this car given the application. Those seats also have a myriad of power adjustments to find just the right comfort level for most anyone. There's also a fantastic JBL Audio system with cassette (iPod lovers rejoice!), CD player and satellite audio controls which are curiously placed to the right of the instrument cluster binnacle rather than on the wheel as has become common these days. This car also had the optional power operated sunroof.

A nice package for what amounted to all of $20,000.00 in the mid-'90s.

Stay tuned, we'll be picking up the car Tuesday and a full review will be forthcoming.