1989 Ford Taurus SHO: The Family Sedan With a Yamaha Heart and Only Three Pedals

The engine came first, and the car to put it in came later. In 1984, Yamaha Motor Corporation executives signed a contract with Ford to develop, produce and supply a compact 60-degree V-6 with double overhead camshafts. Accounts of what Ford originally wanted it for are hedged: Wikipedia records that the engine was thought to have been intended for a mid-engine sports car, a program known internally as GN34 that was cancelled, and Motor Authority later described that project as a Fiero rival. Whatever its first destination, the engine ended up in the least likely place imaginable for a 7,000-rpm V-6: a Ford Taurus.^1,2

The result was the 1989 Taurus SHO, for Super High Output, and it was a single, fixed recipe. Every car was a four-door Taurus sedan, body code P54, with the Yamaha-built 3.0-liter 24-valve V-6 and sequential multiport fuel injection, rated at 220 hp; the rating standard is not stated in the sources that carry it. The only transmission was a five-speed manual transaxle, which Wikipedia says Mazda designed and built. There was no automatic at any price. The eighth character of the VIN, Y, marks the SHO engine, and Wikipedia places first-generation assembly at Atlanta Assembly in Hapeville, Georgia.^3,4,1,5

How high the engine revved is itself a small dispute. Wikipedia gives a 7,000-rpm redline, while Motor Authority's 2019 retrospective says the V-6 revved to 7,300 rpm. Neither is a factory document, and the difference may be the gap between a redline and a rev limiter, but neither source explains it. What both make clear is that this was not the 12-valve V-6 of an ordinary Taurus, which Motor Authority says Ford asked Yamaha to rework. Motor Authority noted the outward signs of the SHO's intent: racier styling, 15-inch wheels, bolstered sport seats and dual exhaust outlets.^1,2

The price made the car's argument for it. The base SHO is reported at $19,739, with options priced separately: the Preferred Equipment Package 211A at $533, a power moonroof at $741, leather seats at $489, automatic climate control at $183, a passenger power seat at $261, keyless entry at $137 and a rear-window defroster at $150. Those figures come from an enthusiast reference that does not name its price list, so they are reported rather than verified. EPA ratings of the day were 18 mpg city and 26 highway, from an 18.6-gallon tank.⁴

The magazines were impressed. Car and Driver, in December 1988, called the 1989 SHO a "breakthrough car," and Road & Track called it "one of the great surprises for 1989," as Eighties Cars relays them. The same source reports Car and Driver's 0-60 mph time of 6.7 seconds and top speed of 143 mph, and Road & Track's 0-60 of 6.6 seconds; those figures are relayed second-hand, and Wikipedia dates the 143-mph figure to a December 1989 issue instead. Neither prints a page number, so the issue date stays unsettled. Motor Authority later called the SHO America's first BMW M5 rival, one that could keep pace with the Germans for tens of thousands of dollars less.^4,1,2

How many Ford built depends on which table of the same compilation you trust, and the V6SHO wiki prints both. Its overview table, credited to a 1997 SHO Registry FAQ that drew on Ford Performance Group statistics, gives 15,519 for 1989; Motor Authority's retrospective repeats that figure. The wiki's option-code detail table, whose source document is not named, gives 15,504, and its paint and trim rows each add up exactly to that smaller total, as does its single engine-and-transmission row, since every car had the same power team. The gap is 15 cars. Neither figure says whether it includes Canadian or export cars, and both are best quoted together.^3,2

The detail table is where the 1989 buyer comes into focus. Light Titanium Clearcoat was the most common color, on 6,011 of the 15,504 cars, followed by Black on 4,925 and Currant Red on 4,250; Oxford White, on 318 cars, was the rare one, about one SHO in 49, while Currant Red, a little more than one car in four, was far easier to find. Leather buckets, trim SA, went into 7,808 cars and cloth buckets, trim GA, into 7,696, a near even split. The overview table's color figures differ slightly, with 5,975 Titanium, 4,951 Black and 325 Oxford White among its 15,519, and those differences travel with the two totals.³

The option codes show a car bought for comfort as often as for speed. On the detail table's 15,504 cars, 15,419 had the high-level audio system, 8,206 automatic temperature control against 7,298 with manual air conditioning, 8,191 a six-way power driver's seat and 7,313 dual power seats. The power moonroof went on 7,221 cars, a little under half, and the JBL luxury sound system on 2,962. Regulation left marks too: 2,230 cars carried California emissions equipment and 536 a high-altitude package. Every one of those sedans still had a clutch pedal.³

The ledger for the next few years puts that fact in context. By the wiki's overview figures, the SHO fell to 8,315 cars in 1990, 8,916 in 1991 and 7,801 in 1992, every one a manual. For 1993 Ford finally offered an automatic, and the overview's total jumped to 21,550, of which 17,455 were automatics and only 4,095 manuals, more than four automatics for every manual. Those later totals carry the same two-lineage caveats as 1989, but the direction is unmistakable: the manual-only first year was also the SHO's biggest until the automatic arrived.³

The 1989 SHO therefore stands as the purest version of an odd idea: a mainstream front-drive family sedan given a high-revving Yamaha engine and a manual gearbox, sold without an automatic and without apology. At a reported base price of $19,739, it was a performance car priced like a well-equipped family sedan, which is what it also was. Between 15,504 and 15,519 buyers took it on those terms, depending on the table, and they split almost evenly between leather and cloth. The engine had found a home in a Taurus, and the Taurus had found a following that bought more SHOs in 1989 than in any of the next three years.^3,1,4