Driving your modified Mustang around town and to from your office on a daily basis isn't practical or desirable. Most modified Mustangs end up with very nearly the entire suspension replaced, and therefore most have a ride that's tough to live with on the streets. For a track enthusiast there isn't any compromise: it's either 150% percent a track car, on it's way there, or a piece of junk that is spending it's last days carrying you around on weekdays. As you move your project car towards optimization to a specific purpose such as track events, you take it away from optimization for street driving. And then it basically becomes a pain in the neck to live with on a daily basis. And of course with the effort and money you put into a project car, even the risk of a door ding becomes too much to deal with - so it's not worth taking the chance. A lesson most car enthusiasts will eventually learn is that you need a "normal" car for daily use. One that's not a pain in the neck to drive, and that you don't have to worry about if it gets dinged. But what is "normal" to driving enthusiasts? If "normal" means mediocre in terms of handling or performance, then that will rub off on the driver and the driver will become mediocre too. So a compromise is needed here as well... must not too much of one. Something that can be lived with on a daily basis but which will still contribute to keeping your driving skills sharp.
That's why I bought these Taurus SHOs as daily drivers. They have good performance and handling, well above the average, and you can drive them in the "real" world - aka you won't mind if you get a door ding. You can live a "normal" life with these, and they won't inhibit your life. They'll also go thru whatever Mother Nature throws at you.
But being a "driving enthusiast", a necessary attribute is stealth. Driving enthusiasts - truly skilled drivers - drive at an above-average speed. The SHOs look enough like an ordinary Taurus (which are known in the hobby as a "Taurus SLO") from a distance that they they won't attract attention from the revenue hounds (aka the radar police) around towns or on the highway. These cars blend in: to the untrained eye, the SHO and SLO are visually identical. That's a very good thing for drivers like us.
I also used these cars as daily drivers while my company had me on extended assignments living away from my home in Texas. I spent two years each in two very different cities (Toronto, Canada and Redmond, Washington). While I was there they comfortably (and quickly) took me to various ski resorts, SCCA Pro Rallies, and on driving trips. They made superb daily drivers in both climates and didn't cramp my "life" as a dual purpose street/track car would have.
My two SHOs are "bookends" to the entire SHO history: my '89 was built before the SHO even went on sale - it was one of the first thousand built. My '97 was built while Ford still favored the SHO idea. Shortly thereafter, however, the decision was made to permanently end SHO production - although it would take until 1999 to shut down the pipeline.
SHO enthusiasts refer to my two cars as the 1st and 3rd generations. I look at what they refer to as the 1st and 2nd generation as the same car, since the "2nd" was merely slightly reskinned but was otherwise identical to the 1st. Even the "3rd" is just a rework of the 1st & 2nd, although the somewhat refined suspension carries an all-new V-8 engine and structural integrity took a much-needed and enormous step up.
As of the original date of this writing, 10 years after the original premier of the SHO, Ford has yet to eclipse them. We have yet to see a truly high-output V-6 engine and a sporting FWD chassis in a regular production car. The SVT Contour comes to mind, but it was built in very limited numbers and disappeared quickly (and owed far more to the European branch of Ford than it did to SVT in the U.S.). The new Fusion and Five Hundred have no analogy to the SHO at all, and their original 200-220 HP 3.0 DOHC V-6 Duratec engines don't approach the SHO engines in enthusiastic response or in state-of-the-art HP/liter output. This is a sad statement to make about lack of progress at Ford so many years after the first SHO engine premiered!
Now, given the 2008 rename of the Ford Five Hundred into Taurus, there is some speculation in the enthusiast Internet that perhaps Ford will bring a new SHO model to market. The concept of an AWD SHO with either a V-8 or a twin-turbo V-6 would indeed eclipse the original models... however the concept doesn't answer the issues Ford had in selling the original SHOs and the financial and marketing state of Ford is far worse than it was in the eighties or nineties. And there is no budget at all for development of narrow-market enthusiast cars, given the financial crisis of the company as well as the pressing need to catch up to the mainstream market.
So instead we'll look at my two SHO models as examples of the original SHOs. Given the originality and uniqueness of the SHO concept, as well as a still very-active enthusiast base, the SHO can be considered a "classic" and collectible.
1989 SHO
I bought it in Dallas at an enormous Ford dealer (who didn't know what to do with it), and remember accidentally laying two streaks of rubber while leaving the dealership. The engine response was immediate, and the response across the broad rev range was (for lack of a better word) "endearing". This was one of those cars that you like and want from the very first test drive.
I put more miles on this car than any other I've owned. Although the seats were terribly uncomfortable, I took several long trips in this car, including the big drive from Dallas to Toronto and then back home again two years later. My best "fun" trip was a run from Toronto down to north-central Pennsylvania to see the SCCA Pro Rally in June '92. I followed the rally around the Susquehanna National Forest from noon Saturday until the early hours of Sunday morning. I gave up spectating around 4AM and then had an absolutely unforgettable drive out of the mountains back to the motel. Whoever that was in the Beemer, sorry, you had no chance of keeping up with me! When I drove the car back home to Texas from Toronto, just south of Buffalo (the hellhole of the rustbelt) an enormous winter storm hit. I made it all the way to Erie PA before they closed the state thruway down and stranded me at a motel. The next day I drove it all the way home to Texas in a single drive - particularly enjoying each increment of temperature increase all along the way from zero degrees up into to the 70s. Somewhere around Tennessee it broke into the 50s for the first time and I knew I was nearly home at last - and my average speed increased even more!
The early "Tauri" weren't built very well, but the saving grace of the car - and the reason I purchased it - was the fabulous SHO engine. I'm a fan of small-displacement high-RPM high-horsepower engines and this was probably the best engine of it's time. 220 horses (although some people believe it was more) from only 3 liters (70 HP/liter) - was state-of-the-art output at the time (the highest output/liter engine you could buy). 7200 RPM redline; 5-speed manual transmission (sourced from Mazda). The engine itself was built by Yamaha for Ford. It used a very "Yamaha-typical" DOHC 32-valve valvetrain (very similar to other heads Yamaha built, especially for Toyota). The original intent in the design of the SHO engine was for Yamaha to start with the basic Ford 3-liter V-6 engine and add it's own heads. However, it very quickly became apparent that this would be totally inadequate so Yamaha designed an entirely new and unrelated engine. The engine was also intended to be a family: a 3 liter version for the first SHO, a 3.2 liter version for later automatic transmission-equipped SHOs, and a 3.8 liter 5-valve engine for the planned supercar code-named "GN-34". Claimed performance was 0-60 in 6.9 seconds, with a 142-MPH top end. I'll confirm those claims; my car was easily faster from 60 and up than either of the '89 and '91 Mustangs (4.9 liter, 5-speed, 225 horses) I owned at the time, only falling behind them in low-end torque.
SHO V-6 engines are absolute jewels. If anybody has any doubts about the superior attributes of a DOHC design, drive either this engine or a naturally-aspirated Cobra 4.6. That said, this particular engine still has a fatal flaw in the long term. It uses shims for valve adjustments, which MUST be adjusted at 60k miles or the tips of the exhaust valves will start to wear, and by 80k miles the car will be somewhat slower. The heads are classic Yamaha and would look familiar to any competent Toyota engine mechanic (some of Toyotas performance DOHC heads were also designed by Yamaha). Many people have had to pay their Ford dealers as much as $2500 bucks to adjust the valvetrain - its a very long and intricate procedure for a dealer that hasn't done many of these - if any! Special tools are also needed. Likewise, the timing belt has to be replaced at the same time (Ford's new "modular" motors don't ever need valvetrain adjustment - no shims - and use much longer lasting timing chains instead of belts).
The engine has huge modification potential. With some mild tuning and exhaust pieces, you can get +100-horses without going into the engine (and this engine already has excellent cams and a fabulous intake - perhaps the most exotic intake to ever come on an American car). The exhaust system was extremely restrictive - allegedly a Borla could unleash 52 extra horsepower! The engine is built to live at engine speeds of 9000 RPM - although Ford's belt-driven accessories wouldn't be able to survive and it had to be toned down considerably for production. There are tuners around, and a supercharger is even available.
What became of my '89? I made a killer trade-in deal: a Ford dealer near Fort Worth gave me an incredible 10 grand for it, as trade against a new '94 Cobra (which had just come out a few weeks earlier, and was marked up by most dealers by anything from 3500 to 5000 dollars). My SHO had 89k miles on it! I had replaced some misc. parts on it (like the proprietary driving lights), gave it a fabulous polish job, and just drove it into the dealer (door ding and all). This part of my story is unique - I had never seen before or after anybody getting very much at trade-in for one of these. In fact I expected the worst when I went to the dealer. The dealer must have had a relative or somebody who wanted a good one. Mine had every single service procedure performed on it - all in the warranty computer system - and had most suspension parts replaced as well. No mods beyond stock of any kind other than a K&N. It ran great.
1997 SHO
My next - and last - SHO was a '97 model, obtained purposely as transportation for my stay with Microsoft in Redmond WA. It's secondary role was to assist me in playing tourist in and around the State of Washington - which given the nature of my employer was something I was very rarely able to do!The '97 SHO was a very different animal than the original generation. Where the earlier generations were built very crudely, these were built to far higher standards. As an example, the entire side of the body is a single steel stamping - resulting in excellent integrity and torsional characteristics.
The SHO V-8 DOHC engine is based on the DuraTec family - it is (very) basically a 2.5 liter DuraTec with two extra cylinders with some changes in the bearing support area. The block is cast by Ford on the same line as it's V-6 relatives, then sent to Yamaha in Japan for the addition of unique cylinder heads and intake. Then it travels back to the Atlanta assembly plant (3rd-gen SHOs were built only in this plant) for installation. The engine makes 235 horses (from 3.4 liters - 69.1 hp/liter), and torque is 230. It is very noticeably a V-8 engine and has much more torque than the earlier SHO engines. While it is hobbled by the automatic transmission, it still can reach the same top speed of 142 because of the far better aero of this new body. Speaking of which, I applaud Ford for its bold styling vision. A few elements don't wo
rk well (the rear window/deck is terrible), but overall the car is sleek and long.
The picture to the left is of my SHO riding the "Kitsap" ferry across Puget Sound. As I said, I had essentially no time to play tourist, but the SHO was ideal for what little time I had.
This SHO only failed me once, but in a major way. When I starting planning my return to Texas, I had wanted to drive the SHO and enjoy the long trip and numerous sights the many miles and states had to offer. However, at literally the last moment the transmission lost it's clutch pack and the SHO was undrivable. At the expense of my company, it was shipped to Texas where I had it fixed over the course of a couple of days at the local dealer and on warranty. This is the only service the car ever required in it's life with me, and it was dead reliable otherwise. Of course, I didn't keep it long enough for the infamous cam breakage issue to happen to me - I only put 24k miles on the car.
As you can see, when I got back to Texas I took it out on Texas World Speedway - once and only once. The car was entirely unruffled. I did, of course, have the SARC switched off.
Comparing the two as daily drivers, the '89 wins hands-down. The immediate pick up of it's engine is it's best advantage. The steering is quick enough for point-and-shoot driving in traffic, and the car is noticeably smaller and more maneuverable than the (comparatively large) '97. It's also feels considerably lighter on it's "feet".
Comparing the two for road trips, the '97 wins hands-down. It's smooth, it has very quick power and can downshift itself as needed. It also has far better seats they don't torture you as you drive the car (thanks to the increased length of the bottom of the seat, your legs are properly supported).