Story and Photos By Alan Caesar
Even the untrained eye knows something’s not right with that Festiva. Hyper-economical cars don’t come in bright yellow; they’re gray, maroon, gray, forest green, gray, beige or another shade of bland. More astute onlookers will wonder just who was crazy enough to spend on three-piece BBS wheels for this tiny runabout. Flared fenders, scoops …
GRM is stalking me... I was shopping SHO's last night for giggles, thinking I needed to attempt to build one of these.
If you ever get a chance to meet Chuck Beck--- take it! He's an incredibly interesting guy, and loves to tell stories. Just be sure you have some time to kill---- because you'll never tire of hearing his exploits!
Mr. Lee said:GRM is stalking me... I was shopping SHO's last night for giggles, thinking I needed to attempt to build one of these.
Make one for the Challenge. It's been done before. A little debugging, and I bet it can win. Ok, a lot of debugging.
In reply to Mr. Lee :
First-gen Taurus SHO's are still a pretty good deal depending on the market!
A friend and I had similar ideas of swapping the engine into something smaller but after taking a look at the original execution for this SHOgun realized it would be a pricier project than $2018 Challenge money might warrant.
Also, What @alfadriver said.
There's a 99 local to me that's sub 1k. Auto trans, but should be new enough to adapt to a paddle shifter setup. Part of me wants to rescue it for a daily for a bit.
These were/are cool, but there must be some good mods by now to make them even better. Even with the looks, they'd be a hell of a sleeper!
Saw that very car at a few Ford car shows back in the early 90's... fell in love with it immediately!
Too cool! 
Thanks, GRM, for posting up this story again, along with the sidebar on the late Bill Gotwalt's impressive Challenge "Fastiva".
Who owns the molds, now? Last I heard, years ago when I was considering building B6T swapped Festy with Aspire suspension, the current mold owner wouldn’t make panels or sell the molds.
p.s.
Does that prototype still have its OE wood screws?
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