Before I bought the Mercedes S600 I gave the Ford Taurus SHO a looksee and a test drive. Thought the price point and hoped for performance would make it a bit of a unicorn. Decent room inside, felt fast when I drove it, and oddly the center tunnel pushed my driving leg inward and decided I couldn’t live with that. And, of course, my vanity nudged me towards more exclusivity. That has cost me a bit over the years. Never blogged about the Ford Taurus SHO and these two caught my eye. By the way, when looking for YouTube videos hoping for something on how the SHO sounds, I stumbled on this guy’s YouTube channel. It’s “about fat persons and normal cars general public can afford with splash of exotics some times. In this video we will review a 2019 Ford Taurus SHO from a fat person‘s perspective.” Reminded me of my leg hitting the console and generally other cars that don’t work for me. At 6’4″ and 230 pounds I may have to subscribe!
In addition, while shopping this spring for my daughter’s car I ran into CarMax’s change to the two key policy, and so I wrote CarMax to ask about it. They answered, and I see it’s illustrated with these to Taurus’s (Tauri?) and will add some comments at the bottom.
Above is a 2012 Ford Taurus SHO with a low price tag and low miles, and below is a 2018 model with a higher price tag, modern infotainment, but more miles. Still not sure if I had to have one, which one I’d choose. The SHO variant of the Taurus The first (1989-1991) and second (1992-1995) generations had a cool Yamaha built V6 mated to a Mazda built five speed manual transmission. Cool sleeper and had a good friend who owned one. Loved the idea. Back then 0-60 mph in the mid six second range was good for a family sedan. Was looking at old comp’s on Autotrader and found this 1995 SHO with a crazy 8,700 miles on it – for $21k`!
Third generation SHO’s (1996-1999) sported a 3.4 liter V8 motor but with an automatic transmission. Like the idea, but Wiki tells me everything I need to know about the SHO, including a failure rate of at least 1,200 out of 20,000 of these engines at the 50,000 mile mark – a problem that can be fixed, though, by having “the camshafts welded”. Beyond my talent and patience level. But here’s a 1999 on CarGurus in Butler, Pennsylvania for a meager $7k, with 92,000 miles.
Enough plagiarized history. Ford skipped a decade of Ford Taurus production sans SHO and brought back the sport sedan in 2010 with a fresh body, and whole new array of performance and creature comfort upgrades. The latest (and final) generation SHO has a 3.5 liter V-6, with a pair of Garrett turbochargers, a six-speed transmission, AWD, and a brake-based torque-vectoring system and sprints to 60 in the low five second range. It’s significantly faster than the previous generations, despite weighing a thousand pounds more. Crazy.
The 2012 model has a nice two-toned interior, air conditioned and heated seats, Bluetooth and a rear view camera. The 2018 SHO is way nicer, with modern features such as Apple CarPlay, cross traffic alert, blind spot monitor, and a heated steering wheel. The center stack below left on the 2012 looks quaint – almost vintage, and the 2018 on the right, even at six years old, looks relatively “fresh” with touch screen controls. Both of them have the rear power sunscreen as standard equipment, kind of nice.
A must for family sedans is a big boot, and the Ford Taurus accommodates. This is the first time I’ve run into the CarMax photos with the trunk filled with luggage. Pretty sure it’s the same CGI (if that’s the right word) that would fill my house with fake, nicer furniture for the real estate listing if I sold my house, but it works.
The motors are identical and unchanged over the years. Car and Driver did a pretty good review here back in 2013, mostly liking the performance and value, although dinging the car for it’s bulk, torque steer, and throttle lag.
The 2012 Ford Taurus SHO sold new for maybe $40,000 and the 2012 is half that, and been driven about 4,000 miles a year. It’s a four owner, accident free car available here in Salt Lake, Utah after a dozen years in the mid-Atlantic.
Stock No: 24724095 VIN: 1FAHP2KT5CG119231
The 2018 Ford Taurus SHO is $7,000 more and 13,000 more miles, but with the added infotainment maybe it would be my pick if it were a little cheaper – low $20’s. It does have a history that includes a minor front end hit, probably rear ending someone during its six year life in Texas. Both cars are eligible for MaxCare for another five years and up to 150,000 miles, so plenty of road time left on either. This one is here currently in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Stock No: 25313761 VIN: 1FAHP2KT2JG137957
Want to hear about the two key scam? Keep reading.
TWO KEY OR NOT TWO KEYS?
Was surprised when my daughter and I test drove a car, that the CarMax sales rep pointed out that we would only get only key with the car. I said that’s not okay, and surely there’s a misunderstanding. Key replacements are expensive (over $400 for my Mercedes) and there’s no way CarMax would be selling cars with only one key. And they insist sellers provide two when CarMax buys cars….so no, we would need two keys. Mattered not at all. The sales rep said it’s a new policy. I saw nothing on the CarMax web page about it, and a Google search surfaced a whole lotta buyers complaining about the new “policy”. So I reached out to CarMax via their web page to ask what the facts were.
Wrote the CarMax Public Relations folks:
Hello. I write a blog about unusual cars available at CarMax and I’m a big advocate for pairing them with MaxCare. (I’ve bought eight cars myself from you and would have bought my ninth last summer if you had newer Mercedes GLE-63’s!). Just saw the release on the change in return policy and will be writing about that tomorrow. But I wanted to cover other changes and I’m not seeing anything on CarMax no longer providing two keys with vehicle purchases. Ran into this test driving a car for my daughter, and seeing complaints online but nothing official from CarMax. Kind of a problem – second keys can be expensive, and ran into a bad key situation with a Mercedes I bought from you where there was a maximum on how many new keys Mercedes would make, and the car I bought was already near that limit! Welcome anything you can provide on the key policy. Many thanks – Chuck Banks.
Took them a few weeks, and then I got the answer below:
Hi Chuck,
Thank you for your patience while we took on a few partnerships (?). Please see our statement below:
CarMax is always looking for ways to enhance our products and their value to our customers, while ensuring our pricing remains competitive. As a result, some of the vehicles we sell may not come with a second key. We have partnered with Car Keys Express to enable our customers to purchase additional keys at a discount through the CarMax app.
Thank you for being a CarMax customer!
Best,
Jillian | CarMax Public RelationsMy professional assessment of the response, based on decades of automotive enthusiast experience and having bought dozens of cars? CarMax is being ridiculously cheap and passing on the cost of missing keys to the buyer. My point was even discounted, the manufacturer may not even sell you a smart key if the maximum number of replacement keys has been reached, and (as I understand it) the electronic ignition switch would have to be replaced. Just Googled it and here’s a link to an exchange on MB World with some expertise by mbtech208.
My experience is mixed on insisting on fixes or repairs to cars before buying from CarMax. It’s usually a judgment call by the sales manager and I’ve had them agree to some work, and decline on others. I walked away from an S600 because it had a huge gouge in the tire and the manager wouldn’t replace it. But if this is a “policy” from corporate, my hunch is the manager won’t care or budge if the buyer threatens to walk without a second key.
CarMax made $2.7 billion in gross profit last year having sold 765,572 cars. Pay for the damned spare key! Give me a shout if you run into this, and have any success negotiating for a second key?