'93 Taurus blown head gasket?

Yesterday I went to start my '93 Taurus wagon and it would not start. It did not even want to turn over? After 2 more tries turning the key it started up Very rough! I backed the car up 30 ft. and saw white smoke coming out of the tail pipe. I emmediately shut the engine off. The tail pipe smelled of engine coolant? I am guessing the head gasket is blown? Any other ideas? I had this happen before with the same car! I am on my 3rd transmission and I do not know whether it is worth having the engine repaired? Any ideas. The car has 163k miles but was running just fine before this? Any idea of the likely cost for the repairs. Would appreciate hearing from anyone with same problem or knowledge there of....

Thanks,

Cismontguy

if its a 3.8 then the head gaskets going bad is a very common thing white smoke + engine coolant smell from exhaust = bad headgaskets
now you could have this fixed but from what i have heard from many people that headgaskets on a 3.8 is a nightmare (if you do it yourself) and a mechanic will charge an arm and a leg because of the amout of time it takes to do them. what i would do is if you like taurus' then you can probably pick up another one with a 3.0 for the price of fixing the one you got
i had a friend with a 90 tbird with a 3.8 and the headgaskets went and he said that a mechanic said it would be like 800 bucks
personally i wouldnt dump any more money into it

Xekrubx:

Thanks for your input...I have been researching this and it seems that Ford knows all about its head gasket problem! Seems they extended the warranty to 1988-95 3.8L owners. See www.autosafety.org/autodefects/FORD-3.8L.htm for more details! What a bloody scam! My car is way past their cut off mileage. I am going to see what my mechanic says before I make a decision...but would like to hear from anyone else..?

Cismontguy