Car of the Day:August 19, 2012

Today's police car of the day is Ertl's 1989 Ford Taurus SHO.

Wikipedia.com The Ford Taurus SHO (Super High Output) is a performance sedan based on the Ford Taurus that was originally produced by the Ford Motor Company from 1989 until 1999. It returned in 2009 for the 2010 model year. The SHO (originally spoken as individual letters, as of 2010, pronounced "show") was built by the same team that produced the Ford Mustang SVO. It was originally created as a limited production model for 1989 through 1993. However, the car proved to be very popular and quickly sold its planned 15,519 units in its first model year, leading Ford to order more engines and begin series production. The SHO would go on to be produced for ten years in three generations, totaling 106,465 vehicles as of late 1999.

For more information and pictures of the real car please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Taurus_SHO

This Taurus SHO was released in the "Speed Strips" series, by Ertl. Each Speed Strips car has a multi-picture comic strip inside, and each came with a small viewer, which clipped into the base of the car and the user could rotate through each picture in sequence. Although the novelty was fairly unique, so was Ertl's decision to cast a Taurus SHO. Matchbox's Sable comes close, but no other first-generation Taurus (SHO, or not) exists in small-scale at this time. The Speed Strips series only yielded one release for each casting, so this police version was the only paint scheme available on the car. Eat your heart out, Robocop!

The SHO differed from the normal Taurus on the exterior by having different bumpers, side cladding, and fog lamps. The interior also differed, with sports seats and an 8000 rpm tachometer. The SHO became the only Taurus to feature a manual transmission since the 4-cylinder MT-5 was discontinued in that year.

The first generation Taurus SHO can accelerate from 0-60 mph in 6.6 seconds with a quarter mile time of 15.0-15.2 seconds. Car and Driver reported in their December 1989 issue a top speed of 143 mph.