In some sense drivers, human drivers — whether they are babies or fully grown — have model years, too. I’m a 1989MY José.
This question from our editor, Erin Marquis, got us staffers excited about the cars that share our birth year, so we’re asking you, too: What car would you want to buy today that was from the year you were born?
Our own Kei car broker and expert, Mercedes Streeter, answered that hers would be a ’92 Honda Beat. Our in-house racing game expert, Adam Ismail, went with a ’93 Mazda RX-7. Sure, these are wonderful machines, but I had something else in mind.
When I thought of my own birth year, all I could think of was one car, one model. A car whose legendary existence is contained in three syllables: S-H-O. Yes, I am lucky enough to share model years with the machine that Ford and Yamaha came up with together, the 1989 Ford Taurus SHO.
This is the same machine that MotorWeek put up against the likes of BMW and Maserati. The same bonkers machine that MotorWeek found so little wrong with, all they could do was complain about a stiff shifter and the lack of an automatic transmission.
Holy shit, how the tables have turned. I would have thought it was the lack of ABS brakes that upset MotorWeek, but it seems like the four discs provided enough bite for the lighter Taurus.
All of which is to say that the ‘89 Ford Taurus SHO was such an awesome car that the complaints about it were merely that it was not similar enough to the boring sedan it came from, and that is a very good problem to have.
Ford would try to recapture the magic of this sedan, but I think the first generation was best, and not just because it shares my birth year. What about you? What car would you buy today that was made in the year you were born?