The Globe and Mail

Those with a sense of history - Ford Motor history - might be disappointed to learn that the 2010 Taurus SHO does not have the deliciously free-revving Yamaha V-6 of the original 1990 SHO. Don't be.

Twenty years on, Ford has discovered a new SHO formula and it's at least as hot-rod cool as the factory-built sleeper that baby boomer gearheads embraced in their 20s.

This time around, instead of a snarling Yammy under the hood, Ford has opted for twin turbochargers and direct fuel injection - what Ford calls EcoBoost - that has the 3.5-litre V-6 churning up 365 horsepower. All-wheel drive (AWD) is standard, so that thrust pretty much sticks to the pavement at launch, rather than slipping at the front wheels.

Moreover, the handling and equipment level here make the Taurus SHO ($48,199 base price) a reasonable rival for luxury sedans costing twice as much.

Yes, the SHO certainly lacks the cachet of, say an AWD Audi S6 ($99,500) or a rear-drive BMW M5 ($106,900), but compared to these top German road-eaters, this Ford is just as big and safe, equally well-loaded with gadgets, nearly as tight and well-balanced in the corners and half as much money.

Frankly, it's taken guts for Ford to spend scarce funds on juicing a mainstream four-door sedan that only a handful of nuts would even consider buying. Perhaps this shows something about Ford's commitment to returning to its roots.

After all, Ford once was a car company with serious engineering, rather than a pickup and SUV maker blindly chasing profits by exploiting what everyone could see would be a short-term SUV fad driven by cheap gas, gluttonous buyer tastes and easy consumer credit.

As in 1990, however, this edition of the SHO (for Super High Output) was not really in Ford's plan until fairly recently. A little history.

Twenty-odd years ago, Ford had lined up a bunch of racy Yamaha V-6 engines to put into a two-seat sports car that died in the planning stages. Unable to send the engines back to Japan, Ford chose to shoehorn the creamy V-6 into its best-selling Taurus, a mainstream family sedan that by 1990 had literally saved the company's finances and reputation.

Voila: the Taurus SHO, a high-performance car in civilian guise. It was small-volume, sure, but the Taurus SHO helped boost both Ford's and the Taurus's reputation. It was the perfect "halo" car.

For 1992, the Taurus was the No. 1 selling car in the world. A total of 409,000 were sold that year, and between 1992 and 1996 Ford moved more than two million Tauruses in all. The SHO's halo certainly helped here.

Yet by mid-decade, Ford had become consumed with SUV madness. The 1996 Taurus arrived as a monument to an odd combination of Ford's hubris and neglect.

The outrageous styling was a disaster. Who makes a family car with a smaller back seat and trunk, not to mention confusing controls and lousy headroom? Some within Ford were mildly embarrassed, but overall few cared much at all; billions of dollars in profits from SUVs and pickups were filling Ford's coffers. Meanwhile, the Taurus SHO simply faded away.

A decade later, the SUV boom busted and Ford had squandered tens of billions in cash and shareholder value on buying and rebuilding Volvo and Land Rover and Aston Martin and Jaguar. It was all a pathetically vain quest to become a multibrand global powerhouse.

By 2006, new CEO Alan Mulally had flown in from Boeing and one of the first things he did was to ask a poignant question: What happened to the Taurus?

This simple and obvious prodding was a metaphorical knee to the groin of Ford's management. How could Ford be so foolish? Why kill a strong nameplate like the Taurus? Were you all daft?