Multitude of Pun Options: the SHO is back

Trust me, no matter how clever you think the phrase “Fo’ SHO” would be in the byline, it’s not worth my integrity to do it. So there, it’s just in the body, and you can send any hate mail to me through my secretary, Alan Mulally.

So you might know about the Ford Taurus on sale right now, but probably not. Frankly, I’ve only noticed one on the road, and that might be because of it’s DARPA-developed stealth capabilities: complete and utter blandness. Originally the Taurus was the bread-and-butter Ford sedan, outselling all others for a number of years in the 90s, until falling off because of underdevelopment. Instead of injecting some much-needed dollars into the nameplate, they killed it and introduced the Ford Five Hundred, which was a huge underpowered boat that nobody bought. After that proved to be a mistake, they had a brilliant idea: rename it the Ford Taurus again! I forgive you if you don’t remember that earth-shattering day.

The coolest aspect of the original Taurus was the SHO (Super High Output) variant of the original car. A manual transmission and a screaming beast of a V6 (which was designed by Yamaha, which has a history of making really good motors for cars, and helped develop the high-output engine in the Toyota Celica) made it a surprisingly fun, cheap ride. The car would invariably fall apart around the motor, but the motor was a real jewel. It was one of the best V6 motors ever made.

Ford is bringing the SHO back, and it’s a similar formula – big motor in a sedan. This time, it’s a twin-turbocharged Ecoboost V6 making a whopping 355 hp. It will also apparently get 25MPG and is all-wheel drive. The Taurus is now a much bigger car that it was originally, so this is going to be a little bit of a different proposition (more big Mercedes sedan than hot-rod Accord in functionality), but Ford is claiming it will outperform a BMW 550i and be considerably cheaper at about $37,000 MSRP.

My take? It’s still a big bland car, and for $37,000 I would much rather get a Hyundai Genesis or (if I needed AWD) a turbocharged Subaru Legacy. However, the original SHO had a whole heap of die-hard fans, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to forgive it any defects and hoon the living daylights out of it. Plus it’s a cool idea, and using turbocharged V6s instead of big, thirsty V8s is responsible of Ford.

[Source: Jalopnik, Freep.com]