dude -- just being honest --you can paint an elephant with racing stripes and shove a nice glasspack up its butt for when it farts but when it comes down to it---it's still just an elephant. In all seriousness -- only the SHOs were built with the intent to haul *** and handle -- no matter what you do to yours, I don't think you'd be happy enough with the results not to regret it afterwards. Not because you CAN'T do it---because you CAN and DID do it and it didn't live up to your expectations.

My advice would be to save up a good bit of coin and get something newer -- a five speed with some oomph under the hood that is something you can drive every day and be happy with the way it is on the day you buy it. Then you can mod at your own pace, knowing you have a reliable ride AND a backup (Ranger) should you need one.

Keep the Ranger for a backup and take it out for a spin now and again to keep the battery up, the seals wet, and the rust off the rotors....

 

I'm not going to argue your point, they call all the other models "SLO"for a reason. The only reason for the five speed swap in the Taurus is to make it more enjoyable, not to make it a SHO... The ranger is currently my baby, meaning I have big plans for it if I keep it. If I have to trade it, I would like to get a nice compromise between fast as hell and easy on fuel... A twin cam S series, or ION fit the bill, and I wouldn't complain for a moment about an L series...

 

I'm sure parts availability for fords must by definition be better than for saturns (read:92% Junkyard). However, the car is already 15 years old, and though a manual tranny swap in might make it more fun to drive, if you run into issues 7 years later and can't locate a part for your then 27 year old Ford non-SHO (read: no strong aftermarket support) Taurus, you've spent $$ on your swap and can't drive it any more (worst case). One could argue that the 7 years was worth it. I won't go there---that's 100% personal opinion and no one's opinion is wrong.

I'm getting to an age where getting in and out of my coupes is a little harder on my back than in my younger days. It would help if I lost 40 lbs but let me not digress for once.

My wife constantly nags at me to get rid of at least one of them (the coupes) --"they're so old!! The only way you can get spare parts is from Rube and Hoseppi and Rube's moving away from that PicknPull with the 400,000 saturns!"

I am doing my best to both maintain my 2 SC2s while simultaneously driving them into the ground. These two strategies are diametrically opposed, and the car will only stop being drivable if in a major accident, major internal engine failure or other mechanical failure, or it stops passing smog inspection due to oil burning which i can vouch for first hand can be addressed with a new cat and 2 new o2 sensors.

Damn, I'm channeling Unc again. Where the hell did he go?

What the hell is my point?

My point is that you can put the same money plus a little more into buying an already fun to drive newer safer car with theoretically longer parts availability and likely be just as happy or happier

As another example. For YEARS, I've toyed with turbo'ing my 95 SC2. It's ODBI -- much easier. Cost? A few grand and a bunch of time to custom fabricate and tweak parts to fit exactly. Goalie harasses me about it regularly.

Why haven't I done it?

1)The trade in value of my car should I ever need to do so is less than zero (negative)
2)The website containing all the knowledge of the "experts" (or at least those trying to turbo their saturns) crashed and the data base was lost. Gone. Bye Bye.
3) The longer I waited, the few choices I had in aftermarket support started to disappear because anyone that was going to turbo a 1st gen sat coupe would have done it by now.

The overall point is -- the mods to turbo INCLUDING TIME would be hard to find at this point (new) and worth more than the car itself

Money is not always the deciding factor; but if I can save up my cash to buy something newer that's pretty fun to drive, vs sinking money into an aging vehicle, I'd choose to start at a more "advanced" (newer) starting point. (this coming from the guy driving 18 and 20 yr old saturns.

Look at Rj and Sw2 (forgive me guys, I'm just guessing numbers here from memory

I think sw2 owned prob lke 16 s cars in his life. I think he did some modding on some of them.

I don't know how many saturns Rj owned -- but notice he modded the hell out of his last ION -- he waited for the "right" car to start with and took it from there.

In closing -- you don't always have to look at what you have and say 'I need to make this better".

Like a painter, you can always start with a fresh canvas.

Of course, it's your call.