Twenty years on, Ford has discovered a new SHO formula and it's at least as hot-rod cool as the factory-built sleeper that baby boomer gearheads embraced in their 20s.
This time around, instead of a snarling Yammy under the hood, Ford has opted for twin turbochargers and direct fuel injection - what Ford calls EcoBoost - that has the 3.5-litre V-6 churning up 365 horsepower. All-wheel drive (AWD) is standard, so that thrust pretty much sticks to the pavement at launch, rather than slipping at the front wheels.
Moreover, the handling and equipment level here make the Taurus SHO ($48,199 base price) a reasonable rival for luxury sedans costing twice as much.
Yes, the SHO certainly lacks the cachet of, say an AWD Audi S6 ($99,500) or a rear-drive BMW M5 ($106,900), but compared to these top German road-eaters, this Ford is just as big and safe, equally well-loaded with gadgets, nearly as tight and well-balanced in the corners and half as much money.
Frankly, it's taken guts for Ford to spend scarce funds on juicing a mainstream four-door sedan that only a handful of nuts would even consider buying. Perhaps this shows something about Ford's commitment to returning to its roots.
After all, Ford once was a car company with serious engineering, rather than a pickup and SUV maker blindly chasing profits by exploiting what everyone could see would be a short-term SUV fad driven by cheap gas, gluttonous buyer tastes and easy consumer credit.
As in 1990, however, this edition of the SHO (for Super High Output) was not really in Ford's plan until fairly recently. A little history.
Twenty-odd years ago, Ford had lined up a bunch of racy Yamaha V-6 engines to put into a two-seat sports car that died in the planning stages. Unable to send the engines back to Japan, Ford chose to shoehorn the creamy V-6 into its best-selling Taurus, a mainstream family sedan that by 1990 had literally saved the company's finances and reputation.
Voila: the Taurus SHO, a high-performance car in civilian guise. It was small-volume, sure, but the Taurus SHO helped boost both Ford's and the Taurus's reputation. It was the perfect "halo" car.
For 1992, the Taurus was the No. 1 selling car in the world. A total of 409,000 were sold that year, and between 1992 and 1996 Ford moved more than two million Tauruses in all. The SHO's halo certainly helped here.
Yet by mid-decade, Ford had become consumed with SUV madness. The 1996 Taurus arrived as a monument to an odd combination of Ford's hubris and neglect.
The outrageous styling was a disaster. Who makes a family car with a smaller back seat and trunk, not to mention confusing controls and lousy headroom? Some within Ford were mildly embarrassed, but overall few cared much at all; billions of dollars in profits from SUVs and pickups were filling Ford's coffers. Meanwhile, the Taurus SHO simply faded away.
A decade later, the SUV boom busted and Ford had squandered tens of billions in cash and shareholder value on buying and rebuilding Volvo and Land Rover and Aston Martin and Jaguar. It was all a pathetically vain quest to become a multibrand global powerhouse.
By 2006, new CEO Alan Mulally had flown in from Boeing and one of the first things he did was to ask a poignant question: What happened to the Taurus?
This simple and obvious prodding was a metaphorical knee to the groin of Ford's management. How could Ford be so foolish? Why kill a strong nameplate like the Taurus? Were you all daft?
And so by the 2008 model year the Taurus name was back, this time on a rebadged Ford Five Hundred. But it took until this model year, 2010, for Ford to make a serious commitment to reinventing the Taurus.
Now there is a whole Taurus lineup with a new look, more gadgets, refined road manners and everything starts with the front-drive SE ($29,999) and its solid-enough 263-hp V-6. The line tops out with the fast but not at all furious SHO.
The Taurus SHO is Ford's flagship model, just as the Taurus line is Ford's top model range. The new design is elegant. All-wheel-drive is available on all Taurus models, though of course it's standard on the SHO.
Moreover, the SHO's 365-hp engine produces an outstanding 350 lb-ft of torque - more power than many luxury V-8s - yet rates a very good 12.3 litres/100 km in the city and 8.0 on the highway using premium fuel.
While performance, space and looks aspire way up-market into A6, M5 and Lexus GS 460 territory, the truth is this: the natural and obvious rivals include the Buick LaCrosse, Chevrolet Impala and Toyota Avalon. Ford's car - big on the inside and with a big trunk, too - bests them with more eye-catching looks and sportier suspension, steering and brakes.
Ford has done wonders with the cabin, too. Aside from being roomy, the interior is trimmed with high-quality materials. Sure, the gaps between some pieces could be tighter, but this misstep is balanced by excellent soft-touch panels on the doors and dash.
The SHO's leather seats with suede inserts are pretty, too, though more side bolstering and under-thigh support would be welcome - especially given that Ford bills the SHO as a "driver's car" with an interior designed to evoke a "cockpit feel." Rear leg room is good, too, though not as generous as the old Five Hundred/Taurus, or even the 2010 LaCrosse.
To dress it all up, you can switch between seven different lighting colours, but it's the ambient lighting scheme that is truly delicious. It's soft and welcoming.
This car comes with plenty of gadgets - from Sync voice activation and optional back-up camera to 10-way-adjustable seats, dual-zone automatic climate control, heated and cooled seats, HID headlamps, dual exhaust, push-button start, Sony surround sound and more. You can also add a navigation system for $2,300 and adaptive cruise control for $1,500.
Yet for all the apparent electronic complexity, the control layout is fairly easy to understand and manage. A high-sitting centre stack puts the controls right in your eye line. And the Sync voice controls actually work.
The EcoBoost V-6 is a strong and sophisticated engine. Gearheads will be interested in the water-cooled turbocharger and electronically controlled waste-gate to pressurize the intake charge up to 12 psi above atmospheric. From there an air-to-air intercooler makes the charge denser still. Finally, direct fuel-injection squirts a fine mist of unleaded into the combustion chambers at the most opportune moment.
This is fancy stuff and the outcome is just over 104 hp per litre of displacement. That's enough to launch the big SHO from 0-100 km/h in less than seven seconds, perhaps even less with a drag-strip rolling start. There is no discernible turbo lag, either. The six-speed shifts reasonably well, too, and my test car had paddle shifters on the steering wheel.
For all its power and size - and at 1,919 kg the car is 299 kg heavier than an Avalon - the SHO is fairly nimble and the Haldex AWD system certainly provides grip. (AWD is nominally set to a torque split of 55 per cent front/45 per cent rear, but it can shift 100 per cent to the front or rear wheels as necessary.)
The suspension soaks up all but the worst bumps and the car stays planted in fast corners. The electric power assist feels very natural and the weighting is on the heavy side, which is as it should be in a fast car. The brakes, upgraded from the basic Taurus, come with big rotors and calipers. The car feels sure in hard stops, but the pedal isn't grabby.
Obviously, Ford has done some work to the body structure in a car riding on a platform that dates back to the first-generation Volvo S80. That's a good thing.
For one, it means this car was engineered to be safe by absorbing energy in a crash. And, indeed, the Taurus is rated a Top Safety Pick from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety - the highest safety accolade. Standard safety features range from side-impact bags for head protection to electronic anti-skid control.
We like all that and we like the fact that Ford - working feverishly to reinvent itself in a tough market and before all its borrowed money runs out - has rediscovered its roots in cars like the SHO. If you're setting out on a new path, it's smart to know where you've been.
This new SHO shows Ford has dug into its history and, in the right way, wants to go back to the future.
2010 FORD TAURUS SHO
Type: Large, high-performance sedan
Base Price: $48,199
Engine: 3.5-litre V-6, DOHC, turbocharged and intercooled
Horsepower/torque:
365 hp/350 lb-ft
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Fuel economy (litres/100 km):
12.3 city/8.0 highway; premium gas
Alternatives: Buick LaCrosse, Toyota Avalon, Chevrolet Impala
Like
Lots of turbo power and it comes on fast yet in a smooth way
Gadgets are relatively easy to manage
Big trunk and cabin
Safety scores and nimble (for a big car) handling
Don't like
Poor rearward visibility and the low roofline hurts visibility in most directions, too
Front-seat bolstering and under-thigh support is not sporty enough
jcato@globeandmail.com
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