Yes, we are back with another installment of my junkyard chronicles. And today, we feature a guest that squeaks in just over our informal (informal to the point of often being ignored) twenty-year cut-off. It also almost didn’t make the cut as I walked past it several times before noticing it’s not just another run of the mill Baby-Fish-Mouth Taurus, that least desired generation that pretty much ruined everything by dint of its polarizing looks. No, while this Taurus is sporting the plainest of wrappers, it does have those three magic initials on its rump: “S H O”
Of course there is much more to the SHO than just the name, originally standing for Super High Output; the first generation sported a powerful V-6 built by Yamaha, was only available with a stick shift, had a slight bodykit and distinctive alloy wheels with a sumptuous (for a Ford) interior and became a bit of an ’80’s legend, then the second generation carried on into the 90’s and offered an automatic as well from 1993 on. So after those first two generations of that Taurus, it was obvious that there needed to be an SHO for the third generation as well, but this time things were dialed up even more. Sort of.
Yes, this generation sported a V8! The only V8 ever in a Taurus for that matter. The engine was still built by Yamaha, but this time the aluminum block was manufactured by Ford using a method patented by Cosworth in their Windsor, Ontario, plant. The bare blocks were then shipped to Yamaha in Japan and then shipped back as complete engines for installation in Atlanta for something of a true international effort and likely great expense. I’ve never understood why nobody at Ford was capable of assembling the engine even if Yamaha did develop the aluminum heads, it certainly wasn’t intended to be an extremely low volume powerplant but I suppose if nothing else, it adds to the “magic”.
The engine, displacing 3.4l and distantly related to the Duratec 25, produced 235hp and 230lb-ft of torque, featuring 32 valves and a DOHC design. The transmission (the only transmission) was the Ford AX4N 4-speed automatic unit. Yes, sadly no manual was available with the V8, which probably didn’t help sales, the Europeans still offered stick shifts for most of their performance cars back then, an automatic would likely not be a consideration for many of those buyers that Ford was hoping to sway.
And a looker the engine is. Barring the fact of the transverse installation, that’s a very attractive presentation and obviously helped sell the car. I remember being at the Monterey Historics in 1995 where Ford brought a new 1996 SHO out of a trailer and started it up for the crowd, it made a lovely sound. That one was a metallic red, and while a pretty color, didn’t look very different from a normal Taurus with the exception of the rear spoiler, my friends and I were thinking it looked a little odd and was perhaps too subtle about its performance pedigree.
Nevertheless, here we are now with this 1999 model, the last year of production for this generation, finished in Vibrant White, an oxymoron if I’ve ever seen one. Sales of the SHO peaked around 9,000 units in 1997 but by 1999 had dwindled to around 3,300 for a take rate of quite a bit less than 1% of overall Taurus sales that year. On the plus side, likely none were fleet.
From the front, there really isn’t anything to distinguish it, the bumper is perhaps slightly different, likely at the bottom, and the side has a slight little skirt hanging down (Note the newer Taurus to the right for a good view of what changed for 2000). The wheels are 16″ aluminum alloys, and the tires were a meaty for the day 225/55-ZR16. So far this all looks correct, I wonder what stopped the SHO?
I was a little taken aback when I opened the door, sure it’s fairly clean and not trashed, but it’s so…sterile. If Euro-stark is what they were going for, then the Medium Graphite interior color missed the mark. It’s just so gray! And plasticky. Not just the leather (and they are leather seats as well as of a different, more bolstered design than the run of the mill models), but also everything else. Yes I know it’s built on the same line as the rental-spec Taurus, but there could (should) be a little more pizzazz. The other interior color option was Medium Prairie Tan, but the Denim Blue for example was not offered.
Wow! I looked at this, blinked, and stepped back out. Then I rubbed my eyes and looked again. SHO-nuff, that is 360,988 miles. I’d be impressed with that out of a regular Taurus, but especially an SHO. This is one of the highest mileages that I’ve seen in these junkyards, but I don’t look into most cars. These cars did have camshaft issues that could ruin an engine, but most of those were at significantly lower miles, and even if that was the problem, at this mileage it’d be hard to complain. Another possibility would be the timing chain, also not unknown to have issues in these cars and with that mileage even it had been changed/serviced it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine.
It’s twenty years old, which makes for an average of 18,000 per year, and it’s in Wyoming, so that’s not implausible at all, it’s likely most miles were long steady-state highway miles, it doesn’t give the impression of being a multi-owner car either. At least there’s no blanks on the gauge faces, but for a performance car they could have added a couple more, no?
It’s got that sort of weird oval-theme stereo and HVAC combo panel, and the passenger has vents that seem to sit in their lap. I just can’t get over how drab this looks, sorry, for a car that cost $29,115 (equivalent to $44,871 in 2019 dollars).
The back seat is positively taxi-spec although at least there are two map pockets as well as HVAC vents. And I guess I can’t complain about the durability, actually this is probably the best Ford leather I’ve seen in some time as far as durability goes, usually it’s cracked and worn-looking within about five years, let alone twenty and this many miles.
The trunk space is decently spacious, and the rear seats fold down. This one was a bit of a mess, and no longer latched, likely due to the junkyard personnel and protocol, thus all the pictures are with it open. I was too lazy to lift something heavy onto it. Mustn’t scratch the paint, etc.
I still remember when this front end first saw the light of day. It wasn’t a happy day. And it hasn’t really gotten better with time either. In fact I recall this actually coming up in conversation with people at the office, and we weren’t really a car-talking group at that time either, but this, this was worthy of general conversation. At least it got the Taurus noticed, but not necessarily in a good way. The midcycle significant refresh did wonders for it, if it had been originally offered with the looks of the 2000 year model, I don’t think it would have suffered the way it did and the later Fusion may even have been named the Taurus all along.
What else? Well, let’s see, here’s the VIN tag showing it was built in May of 1999, which is right at the end of the line for this car as the last 3rd gen Taurus SHO was built on June 18, 1999, a month and maybe 250 cars later.
That reminds me, no power antenna on the SHO either. But someone took the regular one from this one. So far no takers for the alloys or the engine, although that’d be quite a gamble. This may well be its best angle, and while time has blunted the impact of its looks somewhat, it’s still not accurate to say they’ve grown on me. I vastly prefer the one after this, although sadly it wasn’t offered with this engine.
This last picture likely shows the actual reason it’s here, it suffered from hail damage, an increasingly common phenomenon here on the Front Range. The windshield is broken which was visible before, and there the moonroof is destroyed. Along with likely numerous dimples in the metal that are difficult to see on a dusty white car, coupled with the miles, this was likely claimed by the insurance company or the owner didn’t see it worthwhile to fix.
Note: a rerun of an older post.
Almost seems like an Oxymoron to see the feature SHO in that “style” of Taurus.
I had an 89 SHO. Bought used for $900 in 2004 ish. 95K ‘shown’ on the odo. But didn’t the 89 Still only show 5 digit Odometers? Why, yes…. yes, they did. (Sitting in DMV looking at my papers is when I noticed it was LAST registered with 165K on the clock). My ‘new’ used SHO had 195K, NOT the 95K the guy said it had, or I somehow missed. (I shoulda paid closer attention). Too late, I was here 5 min from registration.
The car turned out to be a great car (thanks to Yamaha) for the 2 yrs I owned it. Very fun w the 5 speed. Smooth, quick enough. Nice (older) leather, very fancy for a Ford.
I miss the ole SHO. Occasionally I peruse the ads for another. Possibly a Gen 4 though, as the OGs are getting rare ($$).
That is some impressive mileage on this SHO. This one is the definition of a spicy product (the engine) delivered in discrete packaging (the body) with that white paint. The interior could have been uplifted quite a bit with the substitution of a more interesting steering wheel. The shock one is aching generic and boring. On the plus side that interior seems to have worn like iron or perhaps had one very careful owner.
Jim, when you are finding these gems, do you ever find out why they are there? I guess what I’m asking is why is this car in the junkyard? Am I missing something? It sure looks to be quite clean and fresh (even with those miles) and too nice to be in the junk yard.
They usually don’t know. But this one did have hail damage all over it that on a dusty white car doesn’t show up well in photos. Imagine someone hitting it with a ball peen hammer several hundred times, it;s visible on the windshield and the sunroof is broken. With that mileage it’s not worth much anyway and hail takes out a LOT of cars around here. Insurance (if insured) pays out and the owner moves on. For some people a big hal storm is sometimes a blessing in disguise…
Thanks for clarifying that. Heck, as long as it runs and was still solid enough, I’d take it.
all those rather pedestrian hose clamps holding the nest-of-snakes together atop the engine. are these original? seems like Ford coulda dressed it up a bit more, as the rest of the engine design looks rather nice.
fwiw, i inherited the next gen tore-ass 2000-or 2001 from my neighbor. Just take it. he was not a car guy, that brown/burgandy thing just a commuter ride that he schlepped his young daughters around in. everything in the interior was sticky with kid food and the like. requiring a long detail shop visit to make habitable again. needed the brake pedal trans interlock replaced to get it to move. but still, it was VERY “Value Engineered” throughout. AC had quit and there was a big disassembly involved to get at the compressor. chose not to do that. the cooling system had this medusa’s ugly sister sort of steel tubing rig on the back side of its vulcan mill. all needing replacement& no fun to get at. more cheaping out, for sure. IIRC, needed a gas tank replacement in my ownership tenure. i sent it on its way to son’s school friend for 500 after i had all the running gear & leaks sorted. and then for him, the damned steering rack failed in 6-8 months. too expensive to fix. next gen from this SHO was better looking, with worse engineering.
I might be in the minority in this but I always felt the puckered little rear end was the far worse styling offense on the third gen Taurus than the front, which I find more weird looking than ugly. The SHOs narrow little trunklid spoiler is one of the stupidest looking appendages ever fitted to a car, and this one with the trunk open hiding it from sight does it a huge favor.
The fatal problem with these besides the weird looks, or the automatic transmission for that matter is the little niche of SHO buyers had come to expect from the package for the previous 6 years was a Taurus with a 200 horsepower 3 liter 4 cam V6, and that was available in not the SHO but a run of the mill Taurus with the all new Duratec V6 for substantially less. To an extent as well the SHO during the second generation had a truly unique facia utilizing the Sable fenders, and actually had a cleaner more tasteful appearance to them than standard Tauruses. No more here, it looks like a period aftermarket ground effects package applied to a Taurus, so long Q ship
That’s broadly true of most of Ford’s wares, IMO. It felt like they really had their styling together in the 80s and early 90s—especially in comparison to what GM and Chrysler were doing—and lost their mojo by the mid-late 90s. Their quality and presentation seemed to decline then, too. For instance, I always thought the boxy Panther Town Cars of the early 90s were elegant and stately. And even if they were nowhere near the quality and refinement of the global flagship luxury sedans of the day, they at least belonged in the conversation from a presentation standpoint. Not so of the goofy 1998 redesign, not to mention the fact that it felt markedly cost-cut. And the less said about the jellybean-era F-150s versus their forebears or successors, the better.
For what it’s worth, I don’t *hate* the gen. 3 Taurus, but I can’t call it tasteful and handsome like the first two, either. It alienated a ton of buyers and drove the nameplate right into the ground.
I never did think the Taurus looked good .
360,000 miles is pretty good, I agree someone loved and took good care it it, not even cloudy headlights .
-Nate
Looks like Ford forgot how to build DOHC aluminum V8s since the 500HP GAA for the M4 Sherman tank. It was a basically a cut-down, derated V12 aero engine, a design that had no buyers until the Army took interest. It was probably the best among the various Sherman motors.
I don’t know why the Army didn’t try the same thing earlier with the Allison V-1710. The Sherman was designed around radial engines, making it tall compared to British and German tanks.
What you don’t say is that the 3.4-liter V8 in this Taurus SHO was a 60-degree unit, which was/is pretty rare. In fact, the only other modern production 60-degree V8 I can think of was the optional 4.4-liter V8 installed in the Volvo S80 and XC90 during the mid-late aughts, also a Yamaha project, and also done under FoMoCo (although its development likely commenced before FoMoCo purchased Volvo in 2000 and it bore no relation to either the Duratec 25 or to the SHO V8). And Volvo specifically did it because a narrower angle allowed for more crash space in a transverse application. That was the other thing…no one other than General Motors was really doing V8 cars on transverse-FWD architectures, so both the Taurus SHO and the V8 Volvos were notable in that regard.
Going back to 60-degree V8s, allegedly some of the prototypes of the Nissan 4.5-liter V8 (VK45DE and VK45VD) had 60-degree bank angles, but the eventual production engines were conventionally 90-degree V8s.
Actually Ford was manufacturing all aluminum DOHC V8s in the modular engine family since 1993 for the Lincoln Mark VIII, SVT Mustang Cobra and FWD Continental. The latter of which was actually on the same platform as the Taurus making this whole Yamaha V8 SHO exercise all the more confounding.
My alternate proposal if I was on that team who concocted the V8 SHO would be use the Continental DOHC 4.6, and instead of having Yamaha build an engine we don’t need have a driveline supplier build a 5 speed transaxle to stand up to the power/torque of the bigger V8. Now that would have made the third gen SHO something
Why is it in a Junkyard? It’s not smashed or rusty. In the rust belt cars like this would never be scrapped.
See the picture from the high point of view and text in the article there for the likely reason.
Au contraire, I used to find these in Chicago area junkyards very commonly, so commonly I had at one point a pile of instrument clusters I pulled since the unique 150mph speedometer and 8K RPM tachometer could be retrofitted into 1997 Thunderbirds and Cougars. They were never wrecked and rust never stood out to me on the ones I came across. Of all those clusters most had only about 100k miles on the clock, nothing even close to this.
This one having severe hail damage as Jim has said it may as well be rusty. It would take substantial costly bodywork and panel/glass replacements to get it right before even factoring in the cost of the repaint alone.
What killed most of these was the cam gears coming off of the camshaft. The catastrophic destruction is not unlike a timing belt failure. The gears are only press fit onto the shaft. For a time, there was a cottage industry around pinning and/or welding the gears to the shaft. This one must have had it done to go that long, or he drove it extremely easy and never revved it high.
Never mind this thing — go get the Ranchero two rows back
Back in 1971, we were living in Worthington Ohio and had been warned about severe storms headed our way. About 8:30pm golf ball sized hail started pounding everything. My dad got his car into the garage. But for the neighbor two doors down, things were sad. He had just picked up his special order Lincoln Mark III, and it was destroyed. He just pulled up in front of his house and sat there since his garage was full.
Dad spoke to him a few days later and the insurance company totaled the car. He told dad he wouldn’t buy a new car again-just cheaper used cars.
Great article. I like knowing how/why cars get into crusher zone. But more over, why there are demo derbies! But that’s just my cheap “hey if it runs…” attitude