Foxbody and Friends: Rad-Era Fords Are a One-Stop Fun Collection
We live in an amazing fantasy world where horsepower is cheap and plentiful (in theory, even if cars are a little scarce on the ground right now due to a scourge of supply chain woes). But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, car enthusiasts were just emerging from a dark era in which emissions and safety concerns turned down the knob on fun significantly. The party was just starting to restart by the late ’80s, with a number of sub-supercar rides getting their mojo back. At the top of the domestic heap was Ford, which went a little wild: turbocharging the Mustang, giving the humble Escort a GT makeover that made import enthusiasts think twice, and even dropping a hot V-6 into its vanilla Taurus sedan to create the SHO.
You probably know all this, so why the refresher? If “rad-era” Fords have always been your jam, Mecum’s massive Indy 2022 auction is going to bowl you over, with no fewer than seven unique examples in the very cool Waterford Collection consignments. You could outfit your garage(s) with an entire fleet of ’80s and ’90s awesomeness, creating a real-life (and sort of esoteric) version of those “Justification for Higher Education” posters everyone seemed to have up in their bedroom back then. The whole lot of ’em will cross the block on May 20, and if you’re lucky and bid enough, maybe you could collect ’em all.
View Gallery
14 Photos
1979 Ford Mustang Pace Car Edition
Maybe the ’79 Mustang is more proto-Rad than properly Rad Era, but the first-year Fox Body Mustang gets a nod as it packs both awesome graphics and showed the path forward for how automakers were going to make the ’80s and ’90s great: right-sized vehicles that lent themselves to further development. The engines of the time may have wheezed more than zoomed, but hey, the Mustang looked cool.
1979 Ford Mustang Pace Car Edition
This particular ’79 Ford Mustang represents the transition from old to new. The graphics package is pure ’70s cheese, as is the focus on amenities rather than performance thanks to the gas-crunch era. But it’s a 42,000-mile, unrestored time machine packing the then-futuristic turbocharged 2.3-liter I-4, which made only 9 fewer rated ponies than the 302 smallblock V-8 that was an option. Cool? Definitely.
1984 Ford Mustang SVO
Turbocharged. Intercooled. The 1984 Ford Mustang SVO brought technical sophistication and a quasi-European vibe to the Fox Body pony car in the mid-1980s. More importantly, it brought 175 horsepower—big numbers for a car its size at the time—and unique styling that set it apart from its V-8 powered siblings. Price was its bugbear, but a few decades down the road whatever Monroney woes the SVO had are a distant memory. The SVO is just plain cool, a weird branch of the Mustang family tree that echoed years later with the modern EcoBoost Mustang.
1984 Ford Mustang SVO
This example isn’t pristine, but it’s very original and unrestored. Even the replacement parts are mainly NOS, period-correct stuff. It looks fetching in Medium Canyon Red paint over its gray interior and retains its cool Hurst shifter and leather-wrapped steering wheel. The biplane spoiler and offset hood scoop are just pure ’80s cool.
1987 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe
Sleek. Elegant. Turbocharged. Was the 1987 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe really a Ford? Between the Taurus SHO, the Mustang SVO, and the Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, enthusiasts were coming to grips with a new sort of FoMoCo. (And that’s not even getting into the Merkur experiment.) The Turbo Coupe inherited a bunch of SVO forced-induction gumption from the SVO Mustang, gaining an intercooler and making a stout 190 hp and 240 lb-ft of torque.
1987 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe
It also looked pretty cool, getting a modernizing facelift for 1987 that provided flush headlights, twin hood scoops, and a smooth, grille-less face—similar to the Mustangs of the era. It helped a lot, as the T-Bird was getting on in years, and the refresh was enough to snag our ’87 MotorTrend Car of the Year award. You can own a piece of our history by bidding on this unrestored, highly original, manual-equipped Turbo Coupe at Mecum.
1987 Ford Escort GT
For a humble economy car, Ford had big ambitions for the Escort. One of several times the company has attempted to create a true “World Car,” the Escort did end up varying quite a bit for individual markets. But Americans were treated to a few hotter versions, like the Escort GT. This ’87 rocks the iconic asymmetrical grille that became the hallmark of the first-gen GTs.
1987 Ford Escort GT
While the Escort GT looked cool then (and looks cool now), it provided modest performance that was typical of the time and its class. After all, the imposing Thunderbird Turbo Coupe of the time only made 190 hp, which to modern eyes hardly registers. The 108 hp produced by the Escort’s 1.9-liter I-4 made it, at least, a lot more fun than the 86-hp regular Escort. Estimated to bring in $10,000-$15,000 at Mecum Indy, it’ll bring a lot of smiles for not a lot of cash.
1989 Ford Taurus SHO
The sheer audacity of the original Ford Taurus gets lost in translation, as smooth and aerodynamic shapes are nothing new today. But at the time, the aero look was mostly the realm of expensive Yuppie luxury machines and exotica. A mass-market Ford? We think the company surprised even itself when the Taurus was a runaway hit. And then Ford got cocky …
1989 Ford Taurus SHO
Because the Taurus was such a runaway hit, why not do a headline-grabbing, range-topping performance edition? Hire Yamaha—famed for making some of Toyota’s hottest engines—to do a high-revving, high-horsepower V-6 with wild intake runners. Only offer it with a manual transmission! We, the enthusiasts at the time, were agog—not only at the legitimate appeal of the resulting vehicle, but also at its numbers. The SHO demolished its peers with its 24-valve, DOHC engine making 220 hp. That’s why any clean original SHO—like this low-mile, two-owner car at Mecum—should get your attention.
1989 Ford Mustang GT
The flush headlights. The skirts and air dam. “5.0L” badges. The louvered taillights. White over deep red. For a lot of folks, these ’87-’93 Ford Mustang GTs are the iconic Fox Body, finally bringing enough performance to back up the looks after years of emissions and fuel economy concerns reducing output.
1989 Ford Mustang GT
Like other cool Fords in the Waterford Collection, this GT is mostly original and completely unrestored, showing 23,000 miles. It features the original 5.0, a four-speed automatic, and a 2.73 limited-slip rear end. Clean and honest, it looks like the perfect way to recapture the mood of the early ’90s.
1993 Ford Taurus SHO
The SHO, apparently, must go on. At least that’s what Ford decided after the success of the first-generation SHO. For its second appearance, the SHO adopted revised bodywork and a sleeker, more modern look overall, but the old reliable Yamaha-designed V-6 and manual transmission were carry-over. Not that this was a bad thing; with 220 hp on tap, the SHO was quick, and torque was up a bit for the newly available automatic versions with their slightly larger engines (with an identical horsepower rating).
1993 Ford Taurus SHO
This one is black, a rare-ish color for second-gen SHOs, and features the manual transmission and an interior featuring rad fabric and leather bucket seats. Clean and with a small boatload of paperwork, including a Marti Report, it’s estimated to bring $10,000-$15,000 when it crosses the auction block at Indy, and that seems like a bargain for such an awesome bit of ’90s performance history.
Source: Read Full Article