Team Coco|YouTube
- Conan O’Brien’s green 1992 Ford Taurus SHO made constant appearances on his talk shows over the years, and he still has it.
- The car recently turned up, stored in a parking garage on the Warner Bros. lot.
- On his podcast, O’Brien said he plans to have his steadfast old Ford sedan restored.
In the early ’90s, a young aspiring writer named Conan O’Brien walked into a Ford dealership in Massachusetts and bought an emerald green Ford Taurus SHO. Thirty-four years later, everyone’s favorite gangly ginger talk show host has five Emmy awards, an award-winning podcast, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, a recent Oscar hosting gig that still has everyone buzzing—and a 1992 Ford Taurus SHO.That’s right, Conan’s still got the car that unexpectedly became one of his longest-running bits. On a recent episode of his Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast, he told guest comedian Nate Bargatze, “I want to get it rehabbed and bring it back. . . . It’s in the parking garage, at this moment, at Warner Bros.”View full post on YouTube“It always got a laugh. It would come up a lot of times with celebrities where they would say, ‘I just got a new Ferrari or something, what do you drive, Conan?’ and I say, ‘1992 Ford Taurus SHO—Super High Output!’ and it would get a laugh. And it would be like, ‘No, I’m being honest, that’s what I really have.”In car-obsessed L.A., driving a green Ford family sedan around and pretending to be overly proud of it was the kind of running gag O’Brien loved to lean into. Never one to shy away from self-mockery (check out his scorched-earth approach when he appeared on the YouTube interview show Hot Ones), O’Brien frequently brought his Taurus out for segments on his late-night shows. “You know what I call this?” he once asked a slightly bemused classic car expert, pointing to the engine of his 1992 Ford Taurus SHO. “I call this the ranch. ‘Cause it’s where my 220 horses live.” Then he closes the hood with a flourish and nearly falls on the curb.Team Coco|YouTubeAt the end of that segment, where he’s pretending to sell the Taurus off as a valuable classic, none other than Brad Pitt ends the bit, dumping the clutch and racing off down the street. On the podcast episode, O’Brien says, “Later on, I noticed, oh, the clutch is all—Brad Pitt [effed up] my Ford Taurus. And who can say that? ‘Brad Pitt [effed up] my Ford Taurus.’ So, I want to bring it back.” Part of the joke is that O’Brien doesn’t seem to be much of a car enthusiast. He didn’t know how to drive a manual transmission when he bought the car, confessing that arriving in L.A. traffic with the SHO led to a lot of grinding gears. He currently drives a Toyota Tacoma. Despite years of success, he’s not a flashy guy.View full post on YouTubeBut there’s something about an early Taurus SHO that just fits this pompadoured punster perfectly. Take a peek at “the ranch” and the SHO’s Yamaha-tuned motor is a surprisingly jewel-like piece, a well-crafted heart placed in an ordinary-looking sedan. This is a V-6 from the people who built the Toyota 2000GT and got the Lexus LFA’s V-10 to sing. It’s a jeans and T-shirt car, but more clever than you expect.Over the years, O’Brien’s Taurus SHO has suffered more than a few sticks and stones to go with the name-calling. It’s been scuffed and neglected, there’s Pitt’s clutch-smoking stunt, and the interior was swiss-cheesed with holes by a mock shootout segment. It’s a tired old beast, and doubtless a few horses have fled the ranch.But over the years, it has been a constant. Gearhead or not, here’s hoping O’Brien follows through with his plans to restore his faithful old green Taurus SHO. You know he won’t be able to resist taking a jab or two at it and at himself as part of the process. Deep down, though, we suspect that driving his old Taurus will wind the clock back to driving off that dealer lot in Massachusetts, still waiting to hear the good news that he’d been hired on as a writer at The Simpsons, a long and storied career in show and SHO business stretching far ahead. Related Stories
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Brendan McAleerContributing EditorBrendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels.
Source: caranddriver.com
