The Ford Taurus SHO costs Dh180,000. It has a wheelbase just about matching a Mercedes E-Class, but it’s considerably longer, much wider and taller too. In fact, and I’d forgive you if you call me a liar here, the Taurus is, astoundingly, wider and taller than an S-Class. The term Detroit Iron was made for this car.
This is a lead-sled with a severe case of lead poisoning. A Yank Tank is merely a toy an infant Taurus plays with. The SHO weighs two tonnes, and moves like an NFL lineman. It rolls on 20in wheels that seem lost in their wells and you sit inside looking down on SUVs. If you want to slow for a corner you have to start braking yesterday. The steering is well weighted and does exactly what it’s supposed to, but the front end is in another time zone. Once you’ve filled the boot with luggage you have to hail a cab to get to the door. And keep a ladder handy to climb in when you get there.
What I’m trying to say is, this is a big car. It’s big on price, it’s big on power, it’s big on features — it’s just plain big. But you wouldn’t tell from the driver’s seat. In part, that’s because the all-wheel drive chassis behaves admirably for something this size and weight, heaving the Taurus through corners with tenacious grip from the 245/45 R20 Michelins.
The experience is alarmingly detached at the beginning, as you feel like a helmsman docking a tanker — this thing just might decide to go wherever it wants. But you soon learn to trust the Taurus SHO, and begin pitching it into turns at ludicrous speeds. The new torque vectoring system uses inside-wheel braking for increased yaw control and better stability exiting corners.
Entering them though, requires a bit more work, as the heavy and wide front end is difficult to place confidently. Still, with technology such as all-wheel smart braking and curve control — electronic intrusion to stop you understeering — the Taurus seems to become something significantly smaller and lighter on the go. The brakes themselves have a sturdy feel and the middle pedal has a short travel, but hard braking sends the nose diving in an Olympics-worthy effort.
The Taurus SHO gets a larger brake master cylinder, so hopefully that means you won’t hit the firewall with your right foot and cook the brakes if you decide to track this thing. Hey, stranger things have happened — I once drove a Ram 1500 at the Dubai Autodrome…The other reason why you can’t tell the Taurus is huge from the driver’s seat is because it’s relatively small inside. The accumulation of upmarket equipment is huge inside an SHO, and all this soft, quality padding Ford uses to adorn the cabin with a premium aura seems to be doubled-up everywhere.
Everything is soft leather, polished trim, textured dash, Alcantara, and you quickly start to shrug at the 180 grand price tag. But there’s just no room. Rear passengers should be lounging considering the 5,154mm length and 2,868mm wheelbase, but in my driving position (and because I like to match the tilt and angle of the passenger seat exactly with mine), they’re merely kneeing front seat dwellers in the back. The little spoiler on the tip of the boot lid just about reaches your chest, so cargo room is pretty commendable, with a huge 570-litre capacity even when all the seatbacks are up — that’s class-leading.
I guess maybe it’s a good thing the cabin is so cosy. With 365 horsepower from a twin-turbocharged 3.5-litre V6, the Taurus SHO strips paint off the tarmac in a straight line, and the tight fit inside means you aren’t hopelessly flailing around the cockpit trying to grab onto something. Zero to 100kph takes around five seconds, making it half a second quicker than a BMW 335i. The Ecoboost unit is fantastic, utilising variable timing, direct injection, forged connecting rods and crank, and it delivers its peak torque of 475Nm between 1,500rpm and 5,250rpm. That’s as broad a range as you get.
With a smooth-shifting six-speed automatic, acceleration is violent, and you will soon be on first-name terms with everyone at the traffic department’s fines desk. Next to its force-fed German counterparts, however, such as BMW’s straight-six 3.0-litre turbo and Audi’s supercharged V6, the Ecoboost motor lacks a little refinement in terms of engine vibrations, and strangely that plateau-like power curve. Although it climbs steadily, it’s a bit jagged. The torque and power are both massive, but it’s a frenzied stampede of horses rather than the disciplined formation march of the Germans.
The Taurus is available Stateside with a 2.0-litre engine — that’s like powering a Fiesta with an electric toothbrush. But smartly, Ford doesn’t offer that unit here, and I’d imagine that you’d be quite happy with the Ecoboost V6. The classy interior appointment and AWD chassis plus a twin-turbo powerplant, and that SHO-specific exterior with the bling wheels, mascara headlamps and gloss grille, somewhat begin to warrant paying Dh180,000 for a Ford.
But the Blue Oval’s Middle East operation also throws in a few other enticements, namely SYNC with MyFord Touch, which replaces all the traditional dash buttons and switches with a clear and detailed LCD screen — so detailed in fact, that everything on it had to be made tiny to fit. You try adjusting the AC when the back of your noggin is leaving an imprint of itself on the headrest — it’s not an easy task.
The multifunctional steering wheel makes things easier, as do the two supplementing LCDs in the instrument binnacle, which display information such as audio and trip computer. You can use voice commands for everything, but I didn’t have nearly enough time to memorise the thousands of commands this thing can respond to. MyFord Touch still needs plenty of refinement, although I noticed it moves along screen to screen much smoother and quicker than during my previous experience in the Explorer — which was infuriating.
It takes patience and effort to learn the system’s intricacies, but I’m simply not buying the touchscreen idea, since it’s mounted too far from the driver, it needs constant cleaning and it’s too small with too much information, making distraction highly likely — ironic, since the main point of SYNC is to avoid distraction in the first place.
The rest of the kit list isn’t shabby at all: subtle massaging seats, push-button and remote start, rear-view camera and parking aid, auto high-beams, rear sunshade, a banging Sony sound system, adaptive cruise, blind-spot monitoring and basically everything available in much costlier executive saloons. The 2013 Taurus SHO has some rather big ambitions, trying to entice buyers of traditional German fare. But that’s OK. Big is something it does quite well.
