The Story behind the "Outlaw" and how the car got the name.

I have been asked why I call my car "The Outlaw" and how it came about. It's a pretty interesting story, one I don't think I'll ever forget. I'm a gearhead, have been since before I got a license to drive, many of my friends can atest to this. This story starts about 6 years ago and goes like this.

At the time I was relatively new to the Taurus SHO; I bought my first one 6 years ago. It was an 89 ? The only real SHO I hear some people say.

Not knowing much about these cars I set off to modify it. Unfortunately my financial situation wasn?t in the best of states then. I did all the cheap mods ? inner air box removal, couple of cheap mufflers to replace the rotted out stockers and I managed to scrape enough together for a set of 16? Enkie wheels with some decent tires. I loved the 89?, however it was very rough looking and required a ton of back maintenance. I decided that if and when I could afford a newer one, I would get one.

Shortly after purchasing the SHO, I started a new job as a drafter with a manufacturing company. Since I had been a bum (unemployed) for previous 6 months, I was ready to get back to work. I quickly (within 6 months) went from being just drafter to the General Manager. The real benefit to this was that my income doubled. Well, it was time for the newer car, and I thought back to what I told myself earlier, another SHO. I spent a month looking for just the right car. I looked at a stripped down 93?, a clean 96?, a very sharp 92? and finally found my loaded 95? (everything except full leather)

I quickly starting to modify the car. My main focus has been on the suspension, brakes and general maintenance. If I had know that most of the later V6 SHO?s came with the puny sway bars as mine did (20.5mm front/19mm rear) I would have swapped them out with my 89? before I sold it, Oh well.

Instead of going into a long drawn out explanation of every modification that I have done, I?ll just say that I would consider my SHO to be in the BOS category.

It had taken me roughly 4 years and a lot of money to get the car just about where I wanted it when it happened.

I was helping a friend of mine out on Friday January 10, 2004 and we were heading back to drop off his co-working late in the evening, I was following them in my Jeep Cherokee, my freind overshot the exit he wanted, and swerved to make it as I did, unfortunatly the highway had a fresh coating of mag-chloride on it and the Jeep had very little weight over the rear tires. The end result was I went spinning down the off ramp, sliding off the road and almost rolling it. In the process of sliding off the road, the front driver side tire blew out. Now I had only had this Jeep for 3 months and never realized that it didn't have a lug wrench. My friend made his way back, he did not have the proper sized lug wrench, so we decided to leave the Jeep on the side of the highway and run to my house (10mins away) to get the tools to change the tire.

Returning to the Jeep 20 minutes later, it had already been broken into and anything of value was taken out of it. I didn't realize at the time while waiting a hour and half for the Police to show up that my spare set of keys for the SHO were in the center storage. Needless to say I relaized it when I finally got home at 12:30am and the car was gone. So I waited another hour and half for the Police to show up to take the report.

Flash forward exactly one week at 11:30pm, I get a call from Wheatridge Police, same Officer that had taken the report on the Jeep break in. Saying that the car had been recovered and 2 suspects were arrested. When I got to scene, I was told that I could not take the car yet because it had been involved in a hit-and-run in Denver. I talked with the Officers at the scene for awhile as I checked the damage to the car, which was very minimal and of course a