UPDATED:Gettin a new car!
 

I went out today and test drove my next car. 93 Taurus SHO. Its pretty nice, I'm real excited. Anyone got any advice on what to watch out for? Problem areas, common problems?

Thanks

NOOOOOO! Stay away from the SHO. It's a bad idea. A friend of a friend has one, and it's been nothing but problems. It's a several hour job just to change the damn sparkplugs. His motor mounts are almost shot, and the cheapest one was 75 bucks, and the most expensive one was 150 bucks. V8 shoehorned into a FWD sedan makes for unhappy mechanics. If you're dead set on getting one, here's a pretty goood site for them.

http://www.shotimes.com/

SHOs are nice cars, but they will nickel and dime you to death. That's the only reason I don't own one. Is that an auto or manual? The manual needs a new clutch about every 60k miles, and that's about a $900 job because it's so hard to get to the thing. The automatic craps out around 100k miles. It requires major maintenance at 60k mile intervals. Throw all the random things that break on a 10 year old Ford into the mix, and you've got quite an expensive car on your hands.

Unless you like to work on cars, I'd recommend a Maxima from around that same time over a SHO. Almost as good performance, and much more reliable.

Yes irseg, I believe that a Maxima would be a much better choice. A friend of mine has a SHO and well, all i can say is that they are a hassle. But, what ever floats your boat, if you're happy with it, who cares. Drive on i say.

Its a 93, so that was before the time of the V8. It is an automatic, but I really do like it. Plus, the price is killer.

a killer price isnt going to be so killer when you end up spending a crap load just to keep it running...and a killer price means that it probably shitted out on the previous owner and thats all its worth.

if you factor in all the repair work you'll probably end up doing you could probably just find something better for the same price.

before you get into this you should see if the owner had any maintenance records on that. if the same things were replaced every so often, you will also be replacing them.

from this cars reliability history and the fact that its a "killer price", to me it just sounds like your asking to be screwed over.

Actually, he's got a couple things going for him here. First off, it's the V6. The motor is strong, although maintainence won't be cheap/easy. It's an automatic. That means that the clutch problems won't plague him. Personally, I'd go for it, esecially if it's been maintained well.

That said, I would be wary, and DO look for ANY signs of abuse. Good luck, and let us know what's up with it.

I did look the whole car over, pretty clean, there was one problem with it, but that will be fixed before I buy it. I also know the previous owner was a 17 year old girl, so it probably wasn't beaten on too badly.

Yeah, but a 17 year old girl did not drive it from 1993 to 2002. Who drove it then?
Get an inspection from an independent mechanic, they might point out some future issues for you. it's worth the 70 bucks.

Update:

I found out there is an repair shop in my town that is strictly SHO. They have 5 SHOs that were in accidents that they use for parts, and have loads of spare, engines, trannies, and parts. Anything I could possibly need for an SHO, they have. And they know the cars inside and out.

This makes me much more at ease buying one. This weekend I am gonna bring the car to them, and their V6 guy is gonna check it out, if he says everything is hunkydorey I'm definately going to buy it

You sound like you're set all right.

As with any car, the best idea is to leave $1000 or so in savings, earmarked for car repair only.

Something craps out.. you can fix it the next day.

Well, I bought it today, and am totally happy with my decision. It is so nice, had it thoroughly checked out, a few little things need to be replaced, but nothing expensive. I'm lovin it!

If you have a shop that you can trust, then that's great. It's good to get it checked out first.

I made sure to check out everything this time....with my first car, I was an idiot. Just test drove it for 5 minutes and said yeah....i was young and restless, forgive me

But with this car, i inspected it in and out, and SHO expert expected it in and out for an hour, and told me to buy it.