Conan O’Brien has loads of followers at Motor1, and some of us additionally fancy the Ford Taurus SHO. Conan has lengthy poked enjoyable at himself for driving an previous Taurus, however we all know the SHO is one thing particular. He spoke about it lately on his Team Coco podcast, revealing he truly purchased it with out understanding drive a guide after which promptly hit the streets of LA. Yikes.
Speaking as somebody whose first guide automobile was additionally a Ford Taurus SHO, enable me to say I’m impressed Conan survived these preliminary trials. The previous SHO used Ford’s MTX-IV transmission, a gearbox sourced from Mazda and beefed up a bit for SHO responsibility. It wasn’t a horrible design, but it surely was notchy and oftentimes fussy getting again into first—precisely what you need when the prolonged pink mild turns inexperienced and you’ll’t get it into gear. And whereas the high-revving V-6 had a good 220 horsepower, its 200 pound-feet of peak torque at 4,500 RPM made it a bit difficult to get shifting till you bought used to it.
At least I had a little bit of three-pedal expertise from BMWs earlier than buying my SHO, so I acclimated fairly rapidly. In the podcast, O’Brien says he “bought it on faith” in Massachusetts then went to a grocery store car parking zone along with his brother, who confirmed him the fundamentals. That’s fairly typical for many three-pedal newbies, however then he took it to Los Angeles the place he was “grinding gears like crazy” till he finally acquired the hold of it. And for these questioning, sure, he nonetheless owns it. He confirmed as a lot within the podcast.
The previous SHO made a number of appearances by means of O’Brien’s profession in tv. Brad Pitt famously dropped the clutch for a smoky burnout in New York, and on TBS he tried to convince an insurance agent it was price thousands and thousands. Arguably the very best SHO bit got here throughout his Late Night tenure the place, amongst different issues, he hilariously referred to the guide shifter because the “Cone Bone.”
Stay stylish, Conan, and do not promote the SHO simply but. These are going up in worth, and along with your celeb possession within the combine, it may fetch a minimum of $2,500 at public sale.