In 1989, Ford took their sales leading Taurus and took it from sedan for the mere mortal to a sports sedan for the gods. Turning a management mis-fire into a minor miracle, Ford execs took engines from a dead deal with Yamaha and inserted the 3.0-liter V6's into their pedestrian four-door and watched as the performance boosted up to 220 hp and 200 lb-ft of torque when coupled with the 5-speed MTX-IV manual tranny. They called this special sports sedan the Super-High Output, or SHO. Other than the SHO one-off wagon for Car und Driver the only real change to the SHO came in 1996, when we saw the death of the SHO's manual tranny but it also received an upgraded 3.4-liter V8 and saw its power output pop to 235 hp and 230 lb-ft of torque. Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking — this is all well and good, but why should I care right now? You should care because a small group of FoMoCo enthusiasts is all hard-up over the recent re-naming of the five hundred to the vaunted Taurus nameplate. They're so gung-ho over the decision, they've gone and created a web site urging FoMoCo to bring back the SHO — they've even put together some concept sketches of what a new SHO Taurus could look like in the gallery below. So if you're interested in seeing a high-po fo'-door in Ford's future, head on over and have your voice heard.
Related:
SHO on the Block: Conan Gets His Taurus Appraised [internal]