No, you're just going to get an earful about Doug's new station wagon. Speaking of clock-cleaning.

Well, OK...

In appearance it is an absolutely stock Ford Taurus station wagon.

The catch is... it has powertrain, interior, brakes and suspension bits from the Taurus SHO.

There are probably fewer than a dozen of these cars in the whole world. Ford never made them -- they only happen when lunatics take a standard station wagon and transfer the parts from a (presumably) wrecked SHO. This is not a trivial undertaking, involving swapping out the wiring harness, the front sub-frame assembly, engine, transmission, struts, brakes, hydraulics, controls, dash, interior, instrumentation, seats, etc. I cannot imagine it taking fewer than 100 hours of fairly skilled labor.

It is a car capable of running with Corvettes and BMWs. I'm not saying it will outrun them, or even actually keep up with them if they are well driven; but I guaran-damn-tee you that I wouldn't be embarassed in the attempt and would surprise the hell out of anybody who thought he could outrun me. It'll see 110 MPH (175 Km/hr) in what seems like the blink of an eye on a freeway on-ramp. A brief anecdote might be telling, here...

The service manager at the local Ford Dealership made me promise to bring the car by when I got it into town (he had seen pictures of it earlier) so I showed up at the shop. He didn't know it was me, hit the button to open the big doors into the service-writing area. I idled in, then punched it and laid 30 feet of rubber (both wheels!) all the way to the service desk. Got his attention, it did. And then all the mechanics and service writers and salespeople gathered 'round and poked and prodded at it for the next 45 minutes.

Driving 6600 miles from New Hampshire to Alaska, I found I could get 27 miles per gallon at a steady 70-75 MPH. I expect to do better than that when the engine is running right -- at present it is running pretty rich (black exhaust pipes) because I think the O2 sensors are bad.

It is a car I have wanted for 10 years -- the ultimate sleeper. I even went so far as to obtain a SHO engine for my older Taurus wagon... and then found out just how big a job it was to do the conversion. (I still have that engine if anyone wants to buy it. ) But that was how I found about this car... a friend of the guy who sold me the engine forwarded to him a classified ad from a website run by a radio station in New Hampshire with a swap and sell program, and he forwarded the ad to me, and I was on the phone buying the car sight unseen literally within seconds of reading my email.

The person selling the car was not the person who built it, he had bought it used, and was really pretty clueless about what he had. Definitely not a "Car Guy", all he knew was that it wasn't the normal engine, and the Ford dealer wouldn't give him anything for it as a trade-in because with all the modifications, they couldn't sell it and stand behind it. So, here was the ad:
"For Sale: 1993 Taurus Station Wagon with SHO powertrain. Loaded. Excellent condition. $1495 or best offer."

$1495. I could have sold that car in 48 hours on ebay for $6000.

I have got my stereo system for the car pretty well designed now, it will be a very serious high-end competition quality stereo, with enormous tweakability (I will actually be able to send 100% of the sound from either head unit (empeg or CD player) to any one of the 9 speakers in the car just by adjusting amp gains and balance/fade settings), dual 30-band equalizers (one for each channel L/R) with time-shift capability on each band, and enough power (800 watts) to give fast, effortless transients. Speakers will be MB-Quart and Boston Acoustics. Main amplifier will be an A/D/S 8-channel unit, subwoofer amplifier will be a Class D, make/model undecided at this time. Sound quality is paramount! The entire installation will be totally stealth.

Oh, and actually... the clock IS pretty clean (a little Windex polished it right up.)

tanstaafl.