Engine bay with custom fuel cell and yellow Optima battery

is Anthony Polito, owner of Lindsay. Ontarios Polito Ford Lincoln. and fan of all things swift He says his inspiration for the pricey pocket rocket can be traced back to the handful of SHOgun Fiestas that were built by Chuck Beck in California more than a decade ago. Anthony at one time owned two of those miniscule mis- siles that. like his SHOcus, utilized spiced up SHOTaurus six-bangers mounted amidships to drive their rear wheels, Some of the younger of our readership may be wondering what the big deal is about someV6 scrounged from a l5ryear-old Taurus. Primarily, the SHO's big deal was Yamaharengineered cylinder heads and valvetrain that let this bentrsix rev to motorcycle-like heights, producing plenty of power per cubic centimeter and wonr derful ear candy in the process. A: full song. these silky sixes generate equal parts horsepower and goose bumps. Anthony decided the world needed a modern interpretation of the SHOgun,so work began in 2002 with a new, blue 2X3 liberated from his dealership stockTo give proper recognition to the hundreds of hours of work that took place in the ensu ing months would require far more space It's hard to photograph the polished, 3.0L SHOV6 without getting a massive reection oits 3.- inchathick clear Plexiglas cover. It has altermarket cams and some other hot-rodding tricks,so it now humps out 300 hp. Aft of the eastlwest-muunted engine/transaxle combo is a still- respectable cargo area,while on either side sit speaker drivers that form part althe Loon-watt entertainment system that was yet to be fully installed at the time of our photo shoot Credit (or the interior trim and nish goes to Akers Auto Glass in Minden, Ontarioi Instead ofa four-banger squirreling away underhood,a NASCARspec ZZ-gallon fuel cell from ATL takes center stage.The welded aluminum tubes run along either side of the fuel-cell and duct coolant to and from a Flui- dyne highflow radiator, with stuck-style twin fans.And note that the yeIIOthop Optima battery is placed as close as possible to the cars center 0! gravity. than we have. so what follows is the abbreviated version. Not surprisingly. the key element in the whole scheme was guring out exactly how to mount an SHO V6 engine and transaxle sideways in a Focus.just ahead of its rear wheelsThis job went toTim Wickr mann at Car Crafter, in Omemee, Ontario, who, as we undersmnd it, gured the best way to do this was by adapting a Taurus front subframe to the task. A side benet of this approach was that it conve- niently allowed the use ofTaurus front strut towers as pickup points for a rear suspensionThe suspension itself was engie neered by Newmarkec Ontarios Multi- matic Motorsports. It used an adaptation of a Coiloverstrut package developed by it: Dynamic Suspensions subsidiary when Multimatic roadlaced Taurus sedans in rhe '905. So the rear suspension on the SHOcus started life as a front suspension on aTaurus. a bizarre sounding concept that. believe us,works out just ne. Up front. the job was perhaps a bit less complicatedvvirh Multimatic recalibracing the lates ofa pair of Dynamic Suspensions~ 4B FOCUS FANATIC - SPRING 2005