Ford’s WILD DOHC V8 Taurus That Blew Itself Apart

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:02]How do you turn the car that saved your company from bankruptcy into one that tends to blow itself up after 50,000 mi?

[00:00:10]Well, you'd have to ask the Ford Motor Company. Because while the Taurus saved them in the8s, and the early SHO versions of the Taurus were a hit up until 1995, their next stunt led to a 10-year hiatus of the SHO name. And for good reason. Without some important engine work, the third gen Taurus SHO's were a ticking time bomb, albeit one with a V8 up front. See, up until 1996, the SHO and its buyers have been perfectly happy with a high- revving, high output V6 engine made by Yamaha.

[00:00:44]The second gen SHO was pretty fast for a front-wheel drive sedan with that 3.2 L V6 making about 220 horsepower. It was actually a little gem of an engine. And for the third generation of the Taurus SHO's, Ford wanted a little bit more performance. They were tired of putting a fully built Yamaha engine into one of their own performance cars. At this time, Ford had their relatively new and still patented Cossworth process for aluminum casting, and this was ripe for application for a sporty new engine, and they decided to use it for the new SHO.

[00:01:21]The Yamaha V6 cars had a cast iron block. So, an all aluminum engine up front was a tempting solution to keep weight down up front while allowing Ford to increase the displacement of the motor. board thought that part of the reason the SHO wasn't a better seller was because it had a V6 and to appeal to real enthusiast Americanmarket buyers, they needed a V8. It was a reasonable idea to assume on the surface. So, a new Ford and Yamaha collaboration 3.4 L dual overhead cam V8 would be shoved into the Taurus. Now again, Yamaha still had some engineering input on this, so this wasn't a fully Ford effort, but it was a little bit more in-house than being an entire Yamaha project. This 32- valve motor kept with the initial 60° design that the prior V6 used, which helped save a little bit of space in the engine compartment, but required the use of a balance shaft to keep the motor running smoothly. Ford cast the blocks at its Windsor plant and then shipped them to Yamaha where they assembled them and then sent them back to Ford where they would cram them into the Taurus SHO chassis that was waiting for them. The only issues were that to ship the engines to Yamaha, this was a bit of a logistical expense, albeit not as crazy of one as the Cadillac Alante was around the same period. The other problem is that since the Taurus SHO was a front-wheel drive car and now there were eight cylinders to cram in here, you had a very cramped engine bay. On paper, a super high output V8 would push the Taurus way past its competitors. And the Camry and Honda Accord performance-wise, and in terms of just street prowess, could not even compete. Plus, it would be a great test bed for Ford's new aluminum casting process. The rest of the SHO would emphasize its unique combination of comfort and performance.

[00:03:16]The shows got four-wheel disc brakes with 16-inch alloy wheels, and being 16-in wheels, that made it so they could fit 11.6 in discs up front, which helped improve stopping power. The SHO got a special speed sensitive power steering system that was extremely precise and agile at all speeds. It had a multi-link suspension setup in the back. And it had decent sway bars both front and rear, which were made better by a semi-active ride control system that used input from multiple sensors to adjust ride stiffness depending on speed and dynamic conditions. This was no Ford magnetic ride like we see today, but this was a very early version of that that made its way into the Taurus. It's just a shame that the third gen Taurus SHO's didn't look that good because all this tech on the surface for a car from the late 90s was pretty awesome. But the third gen Tauruses unfortunately look quite a lot like a fish. This is around Ford's oval period where everything was kind of just a bland round blob. And the SHO wasn't necessarily much different. The SHO looked a lot better than a stock Taurus, but it still wasn't anything to write home about. The interior was comfortable and ovular. It followed the same overall shape design of the exterior and inside was nothing special, but it was a solid interior to be in. They had plenty of creature comforts you could get too, like heated mirrors, air conditioning, obviously, back lit buttons, and more.

[00:04:44]The cabin for the Taurus did have lots of extra padding in the doors, though, to minimize noise from the wind even at high speeds. So, there really was an effort made to refine the Taurus that extra mile. But now, let's go back to the intro where I mentioned this car's Achilles heel. Technically, there were two minor issues the Taurus SHO had, and one major one that kept it from reaching the heights that Ford intended for it.

[00:05:08]First off was that V8. Even though this new engine added two cylinders and 2/10 of a liter over the prior 3.2 L V6, the power gain just wasn't all that impressive. The 3.2 2 L V6 from 1995 made 220 horsepower and 25 foot-lbs of torque. The new 3.4 L V8 only hit 235 horsepower at 6,100 RPM and 230T-lb of torque at 4,800 RPM. All of that extra engineering expense was made for a gain of 15 horsepower and 15 foot-lbs of torque. Would it not have just made more sense to bore out the existing V6 more and punch it out to 3.4 L? Wouldn't that have just solved this problem altogether? Still though, it was good enough for an 8-second 0 to 60 and a/4 mile sprint a little over 16 seconds, which was a lot faster than comparable sedans. The 96 Accord, for example, took 10 seconds to get to 60, and it was not too far behind some of the less expensive sport coupes like the Pontiac Grand Prix. With this new V8, part of the problem was that Ford used extremely restrictive intake and exhaust manifolds because they wanted a more luxury feel with the third gen SHO. That round spaceship flying saucer styling, they wanted it to be comfortable and quiet inside. And those stock manifolds choked the heck out of that engine. If you were willing to replace them with bigger pipes, you could have got a lot more air flow through the motor and probably gotten a pretty decent bump in power.

[00:06:40]Now, this poses an odd conundrum because if Ford was trying to make the Taurus SHO more fun and more exciting, and they felt the V8 was how to reach more performance buyers, then if that's the case, those are the type of buyers that would want to hear that V8 a little bit and get the most out of it, not just 15 horsepower more over the prior model year. There'd be no reason to trade your V6 one in for a V8 for just 15 more horsepower. But it doesn't stop there.

[00:07:08]The second issue is that Ford decided to do away with manual transmissions for the third gen SHO. Now, the introduction of an automatic transmission in the second gen SHO made one year of really good sales. 30,000 cars in one year, but that was probably from non-enthusiasts jumping in to get a taste of the SHO's speed without needing to know how to drive stick. The manual transmission in the second gen SHO helped make the car quicker for those who wanted it, and it was extremely smooth. with that. They got rid of it for the third gen, which is fine. But if you're aiming for enthusiasts, you really need a good manual transmission option, especially if you're aiming for the enthusiast crowd that would want a V8 in the car.

[00:07:51]So, getting rid of that option was probably a bit of a mistake. Despite the fact that the third gen's automatic transmission was decent, it was happy to rev up close to the 7,000 RPM red line before upshifting at wide openen throttle and it was smooth when upshifting and downshifting. Reviewers at the time thought that the AX 4N four-speed automatic was excellent and tuned really well to work with that high output V8. But at the time, even with a really nice automatic, the total lack of a stick shift, even as an option, tells enthusiasts that maybe this isn't as enthusiastoriented as we once showed it to be. But those two little problems are chicken scratch compared to the big one.

[00:08:30]A major mechanical flaw in that new V8.

[00:08:34]The cam shaft sprockets had a tendency to just let go. Higher RPMs made it even more likely that they would let go. And when they did, more often than not, they completely cook the motor. Total engine destruction often happened before the 50,000mi mark if people were trying to drive their SHO like it was intended.

[00:08:54]And that's part of the reason these third gen SHOs are so rare today is that many of their engines just blew up and the repair costs were so high that cars just went to the junkyard. Ford put out a service bulletin suggesting the use of Loctite to hold the sprockets to the camshaft, but even that wasn't enough.

[00:09:11]Outside of Ford dealerships, people discovered that you could get decent results by pinning the sprockets to the cam shaft. But the best solution was really to weld them together. If you want to buy a third gen SHO today and you plan on actually revving it up and beating on it a little, you better know if that problem was fixed or not. This exploding engine problem led to a pretty negative image for the third gen Taurus SHO. That issue along with a rather high price tag of 33 grand back in the day kept sales relatively low. It was so bad that only 3,300 of them sold in 1999.

[00:09:46]And after that, the SHO name disappeared for over a decade. The first and second gen SHOs had consistently sold around 10,000 units per year, but the third gen SHO only sold 20,000 cars over four model years with only 20,000 sold and with many of them junked with bad engines or not really kept in good condition because let's be honest, it kind of looks like a fish. Third gen SHOs are pretty hard to find on the market today. However, if you're hellbent on getting one, you probably won't have to spend too much. The most recent expensive SHO sale that I could find was up around 20 grand for a really nice minty one. And average prices are around the $7,000 mark for a decent one.

[00:10:29]Just make sure you have a reliable record of what was done to those sprockets. And hopefully they were pinned or welded. But this ends the story of the third gen Taurus SHO. A car where Ford's mixed signals turned off enthusiasts and their engineering failures took what could have been a real barn burner and turned it into an unreliable mess and covered it in a body that looked like a poorly drawn UFO. Let me know in the comments down below if you even knew these V8 SHO's existed.

[00:10:58]And let me know if any of you in period either owned one or had a chance to test drive one. I'd really be curious to see what people thought about the V8 versus the V6 ones if you had a chance to drive both because on paper they don't sound that different and I don't see why Ford didn't just punch out the V6 more. But thank you all again for watching another Rare Cars video. Please make sure to like, share, and subscribe. It really helps me out and I will see you all in the next one.