1989 Ford Taurus SHO Is Today's Bring a Trailer Auction Pick

• The Ford Taurus SHO turned America's most popular sedan into a legitimate sporting machine.

• A high-strung Yamaha V-6 is paired with a five-speed manual.

• This first-year SHO has seen just two owners and 37,000 miles.

Up for auction on Bring A Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of the Hearst Autos Group—is an example of a groundbreaking performance sedan that brought power to the people. "Ford Taurus SHO Shocks the World," we said, with only minor hyperbole, after testing the new sports sedan upon its debut. Okay, so the Taurus SHO wasn't quite a BMW M5, but by the standards of the day it filled the same brief—and for less than half the price. When this 1989 example hit the streets, we called it a "breakthrough car," one that could nip at the heels of Camaros and Corvettes, while retaining its family-friendly brief with four doors and a commodious trunk.

Pop the hood and take a good look at one of the best-looking engines ever made, a Yamaha V-6 with its basket-of-snakes cylinder head. Displacing the same 3.0 liters as the optional Vulcan V-6 of the regular Taurus, the SHO had 80 more horses under its belt, for a total of 220.

Yamaha had been tasked with developing the V-6 for a potential mid-engined sports car called the GN34 (think Ford's never-happened NSX). When that project fizzled out, Ford's Special Vehicle Operations team pleaded for the V-6 to find a new home in a stiffened-up Taurus. Since the Taurus was a mainstream hit already, why not? Lucky us, because it was a heck of a motor.

In a 1988 review of the car, Csaba Csere wrote: