As I pace around the sparkling gray 2018 Ford Taurus SHO, I ask myself what is this car and who is it for? SHOs of the past were the “Super High Output” vehicles in the Taurus range, packing extra punch and having an aura of sportiness to them. The current Taurus has grown so large that it seems unfathomable to expect speed and agility from it. Can this car really dance? And who buys this car, and why?
Actually, I know who bought this car and why. This SHO is my father-in-law’s latest acquisition, the replacement for his end-of-lease Chrysler 300. Like the 300, the Taurus ticked the boxes: AWD for snowy winters, heapings of torque for onramp blasts, ample seating and stowage for four adults, and favorable leasing terms. For him, the SHO is a practical purchase with a side-order of fun.
The SHO shares a garage with a 2017 Dodge Durango, and somewhat unexpectedly, the Taurus is actually a whisker longer (and a fraction narrower) than the three-row SUV. I find the Taurus’s styling a bit Hot Wheels; a muscled-up, chopped roof, 8/7ths caricature of a full-sized sedan. The SHO’s 20” wheels (shod in 245/45 R20 Michelin Primacy mxm4 all-season tires) make the enlarged proportions work.
I slide into the driver’s seat and inspect the cabin. I spend so much time in luxury cars these days that I need to remind myself to not benchmark a Ford against a Mercedes. The Taurus SHO is a normal car smartened up, not a luxury car dumbed down. It is easy to find the normal car roots in the cabin. The steering wheel is rather plain with its silver-painted garb, the door lowers and center console bins are rendered in inexpensive plastics, and textured vinyl is used where a luxury car might apply leather. But soft, foamy plastics cover the dash and other touchpoints, stitched leatherette smartens up the door cards, and nice leather covers the heated and cooled seats. The SHO stitched into the seatbacks is a nice touch too.
The Taurus’s cabin hints at the model’s design brief. The high seating position makes entry and exit easy for those who have lost their limberness of youth. The ease of ingress and egress is accentuated by a flat seat cushion and narrow rocker panels. The rocker panels also cleverly hide behind the doors, so they stay clean of muck and dirt and avoid soiling your pant legs.
On the rear bench, I find generous leg and shoulder room. Two adults can comfortably sit here; three adults will fit in a pinch. Taller individuals—ahem, 6’ 2” me—will be inconvenienced by the roofline and have their crowns firmly pressed against the ceiling. Those with big shoes—me again!—will find their feet unable to slip beneath the front seats.
The rear compartment gets identical high-quality leather and soft-touch materials up front, suggesting that this car is designed to carry discerning rear passengers. It is easy to imagine four retirees dressed in their weekend best, heading off to a night at the opera in the Ford Taurus SHO.
Actually, Ford may have had different backseat passengers and a different destination in mind when it designed the Taurus. The Taurus arrived as the venerable Crown Victoria Police Interceptor was being decommissioned, and the Taurus is Ford’s full-size sedan to fill the old Vic’s shoes. The Taurus’s commodious rear bench leaves space for a partition between the cops and the perps. (Though reviews of the police car say the partition makes legroom quite bad for the perps.) Its voluminous trunk swallows the tools and accessories of the trade. And its optional turbo-six and AWD give Johnny-law a leg up in pursuits. This car is sized and designed for men in blue.
Now that I’ve got this SHO on the road (ha!), I am reminded of the Ford Panther platform that underpinned the Crown Vic and Lincoln Town Car. My grandfather was a Lincoln man, and I drove his Town Car on multiple occasions. I loved its throaty and grunty engine, its great visibility from the high, quasi-SUV seating position, and its ability to soak up Michigan’s worst potholes. The Taurus SHO shares the cop car sound, low rpm pep, and high sight level. (I am not convinced of its pothole invincibility.) The Taurus is more firmly suspended than the Lincoln and walks a balance between body control and ride comfort.
The country hill roads arrive, with their dips, twists and whoops. The SHO waltzes through the corners at speeds well above the posted limits, with its quiet cabin and isolated ride quality hiding the speed. Mostly it’s the growl from the EcoBoost V6’s intake and the turbo’s hiss that indicates the SHO is hustling hard. The body roll is an additional hint: The SHO tips but grips, delivering planted cornering but not masking its 4,300 lbs weight. Those two tons are felt in transitions, where it takes a tick for the suspension to settle after initiating a turn. There is enough compliance in the suspension that quick, flick-flack transitions—like those you’d find in an autocross slalom—outpace the chassis’ ability to change its cornering set. On real-world roads, where corners are not so tightly stacked, this is not a problem.
As my pace increases through the hills, I can feel the SHO’s 60/40 weight distribution affecting the balance of the car. The SHO is nose heavy, and understeer prone as I inch towards its limits. Entering corners with a bit of trail braking helps press the front tires into the pavement and keep the car on the driving line. Existing corners, the SHO’s front-biased AWD evenly pulls the car onto the straight. Missing is the rear-drive shove favored by the newest crop of performance-oriented AWD systems.
The Taurus has several driving modes; I favor Sports mode as I fly through the pastoral scenery. Sports mode exaggerates the throttle response and keeps the transmission in manual mode when I use the shift paddles. For the enthusiastic driving I’m doing, I find it better to pick my own gears via the smooth acting paddles rather than let the six-speed automatic transmission think for itself. There is a one-second delay between my paddle clicks and the gear changes, but it’s a consistent delay and thus workable for spirited driving. The transmission delivers upshifts smoothly but downshifts catch a little as if the computers could blip the throttle a fraction harder.
The SHO’s steering doesn’t protest the exercise in the hills and is accurate and well-weighted for back road driving. It is an electrically-assisted system, with the rubber-bandy resistance typical of such systems. While most of the time the wheel is silent, coarsest pavement textures can be felt through the rim. The steering suits the SHO’s near-luxury demeanor, being neither too firm nor too quick for typical, day-to-day use.
Thankfully I don’t encounter any cops among the cows. Police forces that are renewing their fleets will find the Taurus, when ordered with the optional twin-turbo V6, to be much quicker and more agile than the Crown Victoria it replaces. A large percentage of the new cars sold today could outrun a Crown Victoria (though not the radio!); the Taurus takes the fight to quite a few more cars.
I enjoy my frenetic meandering through the colonial farmland, but fundamentally the SHO feels more like a highway cruiser than a canyon caver. It rides smoothly and quietly. Its 365 hp twin-turbo V6 sounds good and pulls well from low rpm, hiding its turbo tendencies and masking any lag. (I suspect Ford sized its turbos for low and midrange torque.) The car is peppy but not startlingly fast; the two tons which hold it back in the corners hold it back on the straights too.
And a cruiser it is. Sitting high in the heated and cooled driver’s seat, I’m ready to trot all the way down to Florida, scaring left-lane highway trolls out of my way with my cop car grill and blasting around absent-minded B-road doddlers with a stab of the gas and a whoosh of turbo torque.
This low-optioned but still well-equipped Ford Taurus SHO has an MSRP of $44k. It is hard to find another large sedan of similar capability—AWD, +350 hp and ample seating for four adults—that can compete with the Taurus SHO. The strongest competition is the sexy new Kia Stinger GT, but when you consider the $6k in discounts that Ford has on the SHO’s hood, it is no longer fair to compare the two cars. The Ford Taurus SHO is a compelling machine in a niche of its own.
Mike's Steering Column 