I've been meaning to do this for awhile, but I wanted to create a new thread and show you guys a new car I purchased last summer. It's a 1992 Ford Taurus SHO.
Now, to start things off, I've always wanted one of these cars, especially a 5 speed. I have a soft spot for under-appreciated Ford performance cars, especially the SHOs. Instead of following the crowd and buying a Fox, SN-95, or New Edge Mustang, my favorite Fords have always been the Thunderbird Turbo Coupes, Supercoupes, and Taurus SHOs.
I found it in Kansas City, about 5 hours from home. It was my favorite color combination, Red with black interior and the first year of the second generation body style. The 1992 is actually my favorite year because it's a little bit of a hybrid between the two generations, and the last year that SHOs were produced exclusively with the manual transmission. It has the older steering wheel which I'm not the biggest fan of, but I love the first gen center console! I believe that was updated in 1993, and although some will disagree, I think the newer console is a lot less sporty and far too mundane. Black interior was also discontinued in 1994 and 1995, so you could only have a black interior second gen in 1992 or 1993.
I bought the car from the original owner with only 70K miles on it. Of course, being from Kansas City, the car has a little bit of rust, namely the inside door sills, which I've seen is a common problem area for SHOs. There is also a little surface rust on the subframe, but nothing a nice sandblasting and undercoating can't fix. The body panels look great, as do the bottom of the doors, trunk ect.
The car is going to be my project, and I bought it because I wanted something to restore. The engine and drivetrain are perfect, and the car runs really strong. It's been sitting for a long time, because the brake lines were bad and needed replaced and the owner couldn't afford to get it done. We had to trailer the car home because it had no brakes other than the emergency brake. We bought a nice 93 donor SHO with a blown automatic transmission, and we've been stealing parts off of it to get my 92 on the road again. We replaced the brake lines, calipers, and rotors with nice used ones off of the other car, and the car stops as good as new.
The car will get repainted soon, as the paint is pretty faded and the clearcoat has started to peel. However, the interior is in beautiful shape, with a perfect console, door panels, dash, and carpet. However, as with most 21 year old cars, the leather seats were old and cracked and in need of replacement.
So I decided to get the seats re-done before my upholsterer could go out of business. From the looks of things, business has been pretty slow, and I didn't want to miss my chance. He quoted me a good deal to re-do all of the seats, and this was my chance to start putting my personal touches on the car. My car came from the factory with 50/50 seats, black leather with cloth center inserts. I'm not a fan of cloth, so I decided to go with full leather. The early 1990s Supercoupes came with dual stitching in the center inserts, so I decided to go with that theme for my SHO, which similar seats with the Supercoupe.
I'm a sucker for red and black leather, so I decided to go with black leather with red leather inserts, with red stitching throughout. The final result is incredible, and I'm extremely happy with the result. I even had him make me a new leather boot. The car was licensed and insured on Friday, and is finally back on the road for the first time in more than seven years.
The car should begin preparation for painting and sandblasting the subframe soon, but I'm going to drive it around a bit and enjoy it for a little while first. The painting process will soon follow. I plan to do quite a few upgrades to the car, and make it my own.
I'd love to keep you guys updated on my progress, and here are a few pictures of the car and what I've done so far. Sadly, I forgot to take good pictures of my seats before reuphostery, but they were pretty rough. The driver's seat had more duct-tape visible than leather. The pictures make the red look a little brighter than they are in person, largely due to a shiny leather protectant my upholsterer puts on new leather.
Also, although I like the look of the stock slicers, I really wanted some SVT Thunderbird wheels. I've been on the hunt for the past 4 months, and I finally found a set of 17x7.5 Superior Scoundrel wheels on SCCOA not that long ago. These wheels were discontinued about 10 years ago, and every bit as rare as the SVTs. Although I was originally looking for a set of authentic SVTs, the condition of the Scoundrels and the extra 1/2" of width prompted me to buy these instead, not to mention they look identical. Even though the car still needs paint, these wheels are extremely rare and I didn't want to let the opportunity pass.
A few of the tabs were broken on the center caps so they're out for now, and I'm going to glue them in to be safe. But I wanted to include a pic of how the car looks with 225/50/17 Cooper Zeon RS3-A all-season performance tires. It's shaping up pretty well so far!
Before cleaning and upholstery:
After cleaning and reuphostery
Ignore my friend please lol
[/
As you can see, I also replaced the ugly turndown style tips the 92 came with from the factory with a nicer set of mufflers and tips off my 93 parts car.
Now, to start things off, I've always wanted one of these cars, especially a 5 speed. I have a soft spot for under-appreciated Ford performance cars, especially the SHOs. Instead of following the crowd and buying a Fox, SN-95, or New Edge Mustang, my favorite Fords have always been the Thunderbird Turbo Coupes, Supercoupes, and Taurus SHOs.
I found it in Kansas City, about 5 hours from home. It was my favorite color combination, Red with black interior and the first year of the second generation body style. The 1992 is actually my favorite year because it's a little bit of a hybrid between the two generations, and the last year that SHOs were produced exclusively with the manual transmission. It has the older steering wheel which I'm not the biggest fan of, but I love the first gen center console! I believe that was updated in 1993, and although some will disagree, I think the newer console is a lot less sporty and far too mundane. Black interior was also discontinued in 1994 and 1995, so you could only have a black interior second gen in 1992 or 1993.
I bought the car from the original owner with only 70K miles on it. Of course, being from Kansas City, the car has a little bit of rust, namely the inside door sills, which I've seen is a common problem area for SHOs. There is also a little surface rust on the subframe, but nothing a nice sandblasting and undercoating can't fix. The body panels look great, as do the bottom of the doors, trunk ect.
The car is going to be my project, and I bought it because I wanted something to restore. The engine and drivetrain are perfect, and the car runs really strong. It's been sitting for a long time, because the brake lines were bad and needed replaced and the owner couldn't afford to get it done. We had to trailer the car home because it had no brakes other than the emergency brake. We bought a nice 93 donor SHO with a blown automatic transmission, and we've been stealing parts off of it to get my 92 on the road again. We replaced the brake lines, calipers, and rotors with nice used ones off of the other car, and the car stops as good as new.
The car will get repainted soon, as the paint is pretty faded and the clearcoat has started to peel. However, the interior is in beautiful shape, with a perfect console, door panels, dash, and carpet. However, as with most 21 year old cars, the leather seats were old and cracked and in need of replacement.
So I decided to get the seats re-done before my upholsterer could go out of business. From the looks of things, business has been pretty slow, and I didn't want to miss my chance. He quoted me a good deal to re-do all of the seats, and this was my chance to start putting my personal touches on the car. My car came from the factory with 50/50 seats, black leather with cloth center inserts. I'm not a fan of cloth, so I decided to go with full leather. The early 1990s Supercoupes came with dual stitching in the center inserts, so I decided to go with that theme for my SHO, which similar seats with the Supercoupe.
I'm a sucker for red and black leather, so I decided to go with black leather with red leather inserts, with red stitching throughout. The final result is incredible, and I'm extremely happy with the result. I even had him make me a new leather boot. The car was licensed and insured on Friday, and is finally back on the road for the first time in more than seven years.
The car should begin preparation for painting and sandblasting the subframe soon, but I'm going to drive it around a bit and enjoy it for a little while first. The painting process will soon follow. I plan to do quite a few upgrades to the car, and make it my own.
I'd love to keep you guys updated on my progress, and here are a few pictures of the car and what I've done so far. Sadly, I forgot to take good pictures of my seats before reuphostery, but they were pretty rough. The driver's seat had more duct-tape visible than leather. The pictures make the red look a little brighter than they are in person, largely due to a shiny leather protectant my upholsterer puts on new leather.
Also, although I like the look of the stock slicers, I really wanted some SVT Thunderbird wheels. I've been on the hunt for the past 4 months, and I finally found a set of 17x7.5 Superior Scoundrel wheels on SCCOA not that long ago. These wheels were discontinued about 10 years ago, and every bit as rare as the SVTs. Although I was originally looking for a set of authentic SVTs, the condition of the Scoundrels and the extra 1/2" of width prompted me to buy these instead, not to mention they look identical. Even though the car still needs paint, these wheels are extremely rare and I didn't want to let the opportunity pass.
A few of the tabs were broken on the center caps so they're out for now, and I'm going to glue them in to be safe. But I wanted to include a pic of how the car looks with 225/50/17 Cooper Zeon RS3-A all-season performance tires. It's shaping up pretty well so far!
Before cleaning and upholstery:
After cleaning and reuphostery
Ignore my friend please lol
[/As you can see, I also replaced the ugly turndown style tips the 92 came with from the factory with a nicer set of mufflers and tips off my 93 parts car.
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I just bought a '92 wagon with a full SHO conversion here and it's super solid and clean.
The seats look to be really well done. I like the red stitching, and though you said the panels match the car well, I think it's still a little loud for me. It does look really well done though.
