I have a small wager with my best friend who is a car nut. I remember driving a rental 1999 or 2000 Mercury Sable during the years in question, and was suprised the car had such power. I was shocked and the car would burn both back tires and leave rubber marks for 15 feet. It was the power of a V8 for sure. My friend says i’m crazy that it never happened, that only the ford taurus had a short lived V8. Online research has yeilded little information. Please HELP!!!
What would surprise me is knowing how a Sable can burn the back tires; they’re front drive cars.
I’m not sure on the V-8 question, but I don’t think the Sable came with a V-8 option.
Nope, no V-8. Are you sure it wasn’t a rear drive Merc Grand Marquis (the equivalent of the Ford Crown Vic)?
The correct answer is: NO. The Sable never had a V-8 although the Ford Taurus SHO did for two model years I think. The Sable had two engines during those years…a 3.0 liter Vulcan 16 valve V-6 and a 3.0 liter (no relation) 24 valve Duratech V-6. The 24 valve engine had about 200 hp if I recall correctly and the 12 valve engine had about 153 hp or so. Neither would burn the rear tires sine as someone correctly pointed out these were always front drivers.
As the other reponders have already stated or implied, your memory is at fault here. Most likely it was a Mercury Marquis, since the Sable had neither a V-8 nor rear wheel drive.
A Grand Marquis would not burn both back tires very muchm maybe one at a time. I don’t think that they had limited-slip differentials as an option like the police Crown Victorias.
This is actually incorrect… The Mercury Sable DID in fact have an available V8 for export models to the middle East. It was the SHO motor, however it was tuned to run exclusively on leaded gasoline. The only reason I know this is because a 98 Sable was donated to my high school in 1997 for the auto shop program- it was a middle East order that fell thru and couldn’t be sold here because of the leaded fuel requirement. Brand new, plastic still on the seats. I was a car nerd even back then and remember being astonished that the thing had the 32-valve SHO V8. We had an entire case of lead additive so the car could be used for auto shop purposes. These were front wheel drive just like the Taurus SHO, had no external indicators that there was a V8 under the hood except for the larger diameter exhaust from the SHO. It also sounded great- but just like the SHO’s of that era, any 3800 supercharged GM car could spank it. Oh but that sound… Oh yeah also, the FM RADIO couldn’t tune Us stations because over there The stations fall on even frequencies and the radio was middle East spec…
Good Grief , an 11 year old thread revived . Just how many of these are left on the road anyway.
Well I hope the guy is still good for the bet.
Lots, around here. And I still think it’s a cop Every. Freaking. Time. 
Actually the metro cities still have a few as cop cars, though most have converted to the Explorer-based cars.
That is an interesting factoid, but that does not explain the OP’s statement that his Sable would spin the rear tires on hard acceleration. Please explain for us how a front-wheel drive car could spin its REAR tires on hard acceleration.
My guess would be that the OP heard tires spinning and just assumed it was the rear wheels.
But the OP has not replied.
… and after 11 years, it isn’t very likely that he will, but I was actually asking Alan Sasek–who revived this thread yesterday–to explain that… inconsistency.
I’ve never heard of that, nor can I find any online source stating that there was a V8 export Sable.
No clue why the OP said the rear tires were spinning… No matter how hard I’ve tried, never been able to get a FWD car to light up it’s back tires… I’ve also never been able to find any mention of any Sables with the SHO V8 on the internet- I would imagine we could pin down somebody that was aware of this avaliability- possibly somebody who worked for Ford at this time who would’ve been in the know??? It’s conversion to run on leaded fuel seemed odd to me even then, but I personally poured the bottles of lead additive in myself. This was a real car built by Ford- it wasn’t a one-off either. There had to have been more that went to the middle east. I’ll stop at my old high school next week- pop in over at the auto shop and see if they still have it. Stay tuned, I’ll get to the bottom of this!
Update: my old high school no longer has that Sable… kinda expected that, the 90s were a minute ago.
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