[Shotimes] Plastic Hood Poll

[Ron Porter]

I'm looking at it from a slightly different angle.......from someone looking
to buy a Plus.

Yes, I'm sure that every Plus car had the plastic hood, but even from the
responses here, there were a fair number (hell, I believe a LOT) of non-Plus
'91s that also got it. I've reviewed a few within the last couple of weeks
in that category.

The presence/absence of the hood, to me, is a rather weak indication of
whether a car was a Plus. I am looking at it from a buyers perspective, and
am going on the assumption that the original window sticker is not
available. I personally know of a few Plus cars that had accidents and now
have steel hoods, and I know of MANY non-Plus Gen 1s with plastic hoods (and
I believe you have one in the garage!!).

The window trim, blackout pillar/mirrors and body-color trim are better
indicators to me if I look at a '91 and the owner  is not SHO-literate. As
you said, the rear spoiler was a hit-or-miss affair, and I believe that
there have been imitations produced somewhere along the line. I would also
have to go with a car with a moonroof and the other options that were
supposed to be a part of the package, but the keyless entry looks like a
questionable option also, per the brochure info versus the picture.

As you know, if I found a car that fully appeared to be a Plus, but had a
steel hood, no spoiler, etc, adding those parts back on gets it to where it
should be. It's just too bad that Ford didn't have a VIN code to indicate
the package.

Ron Porter

-----Original Message-----
From: shotimes-admin@autox.team.net
[mailto:shotimes-admin@autox.team.net]On Behalf Of Donald Mallinson
Sent: Monday, December 16, 2002 10:07 AM
To: shotimes@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Shotimes] Plastic Hood Poll


Ron,

My point is that the evidence we have, and we have a lot,
including everything posted in the latest poll, is that the
plastic hood was on every true plus SHO, and it got on a FEW
non-plus SHO's.  As you pointed out Ron, several of the
other known SHO Plus unique features are not mentioned in
that infamous salesman's flyer or the showroom brochure, so
the fact that it is not mentioned is of no importance.  The
picture doesn't show the hood so we don't know if it was on
the car in the picture or not.

Those of us that have been to every convention, and have
paid attention to the 91's (since I was looking for a Mocha
Plus since about 1992) have noticed that by far, MOST
non-plus production in 1991 got the steel hood.

The number of 90's that got the hood is miniscule and I
attribute that to a pre-production "test" of some sort?  or
maybe they had the plastic hoods ready and some got used as
inventory of the SHO specific steel hoods dropped to zero
one time...all speculation, but the hard evidence is that
the plastic hood was used for the Plus cars.  The new car
lots of the time had the plastic hood on ONLY the plus cars
in the dealerships I went to.  The plastic hoods on non-plus
cars from the factory are rare.

As to why the hood was made, we just don't know.  And I am
not sure if we will ever find the person responsible, but I
will continue to look.  Speculation is all we have since my
best guess (for racing hologation) did not pan out, we can
guess that maybe they planned a change for the entire run,
but the extra cost and low production quantity, maybe,
forced Ford to put the hood on as a plus feature only.  We
know that the plastic companion spoiler had production
problems, and that is why quite a few true Plus SHO's got
the hood, but not the spoiler.

About the brochure print date; Even though it says March,
chances are the photo's and copy were finalized long before
that.  This is a common problem with brochures.  They are
usually put together when the very first pre-production
prototypes are built.  Final option packages, colors etc are
almost never in their final stages at this point, even
today, but it was really bad back in the 60's when cars
changed a lot every year.  These brochures have to be on the
dealers shelves before the cars hit the showrooms, that
means they are written, photographed and sent to the
printers several months before Job 1 on the production line.

I am just trying to prevent yet another rumor from starting
about these cars (the Plus models).  WE know pretty much
what happened with them and when.

BTW, the PLUS designation is official on the order forms,
and it was NOT unique to the SHO.  only the 212A package
number at the time was unique to the SHO.  There were Plus
packges for the regular Taurus the same year.

Don Mallinson
SHO Club

Ron Porter wrote:
> I see the point that Scott was making, which I believe is basically that
the
> hood was not made purely as something that was to go on the Plus cars, but
> it ended up being used on the Plus cars (in addition to many others, many
> well before the Plus models were produced). When some '90s came with the
> hood, those were cars that were built almost a year before the Plus cars
> rolled off the line (well, 9-10 months, anyway).
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