When Ford gambled on the Ford Taurus, there was a very strong concern about whether or not the flying potato shape would find success in the marketplace. Ford hadn’t been on the greatest streak in the early 1980s…actually, scratch that. Ford had been handed their backside on a silver platter between 1979 and 1982, losing three billion dollars over that time period. With a push for quality headed up by Chairman Donald E. Peterson that started in 1980, Ford had gone through every corner they could find to upgrade quality wherever they could, be it from assembly line issues, parts quality, or the lion’s share of the blame, within management and their actions. The Taurus was the first car to come out of this new way of thinking, and Ford just about bet the farm on it: had the Taurus failed, Ford would be forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Chrysler was hoping so, believing that the Chrysler New Yorker and the Dodge Dynasty were going to be the answer.
As hindsight shows us, the first two generations of Taurus were a sales knockout. Nice for the OEM, but why would BangShift care about a Taurus? Three letters: SHO. Any Taurus wearing those letters was a sleeper hit, the proper family car that could get fairly hairy when the urge hit. It might not be the first car you’d want, but at the time, it was an easy sell to pick up a sporty Taurus with a five-speed. For daily driver duty, that’s a solid way to go. 
Now, being fair, we don’t know what happened here. But the end result speaks for itself: a Ford Taurus SHO up front, the bed of a Ford Ranger out back, still sporting a five-speed and looking, for all intents and purposes, like a factory concept. And to a degree, it works. We’d revise the roll pan out back, but everything else looks like it’d work just fine in our book.
AutaBuy.com link: 1994 Ford Taurus SHO pickup conversion
Rework the cab corners, do the rollpan, and lose the scoops on the bed cover and it rocks! Price looks decent too!
Pretty bad ass I had an 1989 and that car was very fast I love the 5 speed sho has a kick in 2nd gear just like the crotch rockets I drove that car until the thro out bearing went all the way out then I rebuilt the clutch I couldn\’t afford a new one so I went to a junk yard and found one that some one rolled over it was flat as a pan cake got all the parts I needed for under 100 dolors
Pretty slick. What HRPop said.
I’m almost positive this used to run around Clinton Iowa!