I remember the '80s. After a decade of uninspiring cars, Ford introduced their ‘jelly bean’. When (as I recall) most cars had a lot of flat panels, the Taurus was round and aerodynamic-looking. In the 1970s Triumph announced the TR-7 as ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’. In reality, it was the Taurus a decade later that defined The Shape. I never wanted one, since my cars were already round. But I saw the Taurus as a breath of fresh air in automotive styling. Well, it was at the time.
We had a Taurus for several years. It worked flawlessly, it was comfortable and smooth to drive, albeit a little bit boring. Didn’t cost us a nickel in unscheduled maintenance. We sold it for the Saab 9-2x . The ‘jellybean’ Taurus is a pretty good car, IMO.
I’ve got a 2002 with almost 100,000 miles. My friends four years ago couldn’t believe I bought a Taurus, but I gotta say it’s a great ride, it’s comfortable, roomy, and I’ve had only one minor mechanical problem. I’m disappointed it’s being discontinued, because I’d buy another one.
Crap. I don’t own a car and hope never to own one, but if I did, it would be a Taurus–for years, they tested as the safest car on the road!
We’ve got a '99 Taurus with just over 50,000 miles; when we bought it, it had less than a mile. Other than the speed sensor (I don’t think a flat tire and a battery count as real "problems), it’s served us very well. We’d buy another in a heartbeat, and yes, it’s terribly sad to see the model go.
Oh yes, I did get in an accident - my fault, but at an intersection with a very high accident rate - where this car struck another in its left front bumper. (Low speed accident, the airbags didn’t even go off.) On our car, you could barely tell anything had happened except a very shallow ring where the front met with the wheel well; the other car had the bumper caved in. There was a support that was bent enough to barely touch the car’s radiator, so we had it bent out for $300 and didn’t even file a claim on our insurance.
It’s a good time to share a story from a teacher I had in high school. He had stopped in a mall for one of those survey people, who asked him to fill out some surveys on car models. Among other things, he rated car model names on how much he liked them. He wasn’t a superstitious person, but was amused to see his astrological sign as one of the options, and so he rated it highly. Yes, it was Taurus. He wondered how many other people born around that time of the year gave that name a good rating and influenced the name of a very popular car.
The end of an era. Auto mechanics nationwide are now wondering how they’ll manage to put their kids through college.
I drove one of these occasionally - the boss at the auto repair shop where I worked had one for a while. Dark gray with sunroof and leather interior, it was quite the looker, quiet and comfortable to drive.
Nice cars, when new, but very problematic. When they reach 60,000 miles, it’s time to sell.
Ugh. I always thought the Taurus was a hideous car.
My best friend’s mom had one when we were in high school. She let us take it on a road trip to Tennessee because my friend’s old Jetta wasn’t reliable enough.
My friend took to calling the car:
The Clit
Speaking of Jettas, why do they appear (in my own observation) to deteriorate so quickly?
My friend bought hers used off some guy with over 100K miles on it. If she would of had money to work on it, it would have been fine. It drove around at home fine, but we didn’t trust it for a six hour trip both ways.
My family is big on Tauruses. A Taurus was the first new car my dad bought, in 1988 (after having worked at Ford for 20 years!)
That became my car when I was 16. Then my cousin’s car for a few years until it died. That one had large rust holes in it - I called it Bullet. One time I got locked out but the hole in the driver’s side door was large enough for my friend to stick a pen through and get it unlocked 
My dad also bought 2 Tauruses from companies who used them as “fleet cars.” They went off to my aunt and cousin when my dad bought new cars - a 500 and a 2003 Taurus.
Now my aunt and cousin drive one of dad’s old fleet cars, and ANOTHER used Taurus.
I really love those cars. Sturdy, practical and when they came out - stylish. I would have bought one when I bought my first car in 2004, but I still consider them to be on the edge of “old people cars” - unless you’re driving it used, of course 
No bull?
Johnny L.A., I love your posts and you’re a fellow motorcycle guy so I hate to say something that might piss you off, but as soon as I saw this thread I couldn’t resist popping in to say that the Ford Taurus is one of the most evil cars in the history of automotive design.
Generic, bland, boring - all of these three words mean the same thing. They all describe the Ford Taurus. I remember when my dad bought our second family car, a Taurus station wagon, in 1994. I thought it was cool back then, as a kid, but looking back on it the Taurus was the first step the long and steady descent of Ford and the American auto industry on a whole into design mediocrity.
I’m not speaking about the mechanical integrity of the Taurus, which I’m sure is fine, reliable, practical, and everything, as has already been said. I just think it’s a hideously designed vehicle, and I think it ushered in what you describe as “the shape of things to come” - in other words, the shape of shitty things to come.
I lament the switch from straight lines to curved lines. I think that the automakers, in a misguided drive to capture the sleek smoothness of 50s and 60s sports models, went too far and made everything a fuckin’ jellybean-shaped design disaster. It started off small, with the Taurus, but got more and more curvy and rounded, until finally we have the disgusting, nauseating, horrible, gross, foul, and evil auto designs of 2006. There is not a new single car or truck that isn’t overly bulky and overly rounded.
The venerable F-150 now has a sloping front and womanly curves. The Suburban, vehicle of choice for black-suited FBI agents for decades, now looks like a goddamn hot dog with rounded windows and a huge, gaudy grille. Ford’s new midsize and compact cars look like childrens’ toys. The new Audi and Infiniti vehicles look like hoagy rolls. Even BMW and, sorry Former Marine Guy, Mercedes, are getting too chubby-looking.
I want to retch every time I see a 2006-model vehicle. I’m honest-to-God depressed over the way that new cars look. And, in my opinion, the Ford Taurus was the beginning of this awful trend, replacing the boxy LTD. Yeah, those boxy sedans were boring, but if they had stayed on the angular-lines design track and refined it by adding a FEW sleek curves, instead of switching wholesale to the round jellybean style, they could have made much classier vehicles.
To each his own, and all that. My car preference is highly personal, and, of course, YMMV. 
Hey, I’m a Taurus!*
So they finally got around to breaking the mold. 'bout time.
*May 13th
I hear that! Audi’s looked too jelly-bean to me until they started adding in some straight lines and took the blob out of the design some more, same with the Ford Mondeo.
Years ago I was a passenger in a Taurus - we got broadsided while turning left. Both the driver and I walked away pretty much unharmed*, though the car was completely totalled. Any car that keeps me safe through something like that is OK in my book.
Also, I might inherit a later-model Taurus this winter. It’s either dad’s Taurus or mom’s Lumina that’s getting replaced. Can’t complain about a free car, but…both cars sort of epitomize Soccer-Mom-Sedan styling.
*Totally off-topic, I know, but I can’t pass up on an opportunity to say wear your seatbelt!!!. Safe cars are only safe if you’re belted in.
Argent Towers: No, you didn’t piss me off. As I said, it’s not a car that I wanted. It didn’t inspire me. But it did influence the shape of cars that followed – like it or not.
The important thing, as I see it, is that it was one of the first modern cars to really take aerodynamics seriously. (Yes, aerodynamics had frequenntly factored in styling before the Taurus; but I’m talking about mass-market cars across the spectrum of manufacturers.)
I agree that aero styling results in boring cars. At a glance I sometimes have trouble telling a Mercedes from a Lexus. One Audi looks like a squashed New Beetle (not too surprising, since the use the same platform). But in 1984 the Taurus looked different.
I rather like the Lotus Exige.
Citroen’s from the DS to the CX? Aerodynamically sound and pretty to look at too.
They had a funny line on SNL last night about the Taurus being discontinued. It went something like this:
“Today Ford announced that the Taurus is being discontinued. Now thirty-somethings will have to find an entirely new way to tell the world that they have completely given up on their hopes and dreams.”
My husbands best friend owns a Ford dealership so of course we had Tauruses. I’m not a big car person but I liked them. Never had a bit of trouble with them. I might even have gotten another one if they weren’t so damn boring looking. They never changed, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
One reason I didn’t get another one was due to visiability. No one else has mentioned it so maybe I’m the only one that had trouble but I had trouble seeing and parking and I’m not short. It was impossible because of the shape to judge where your front bumper or rear bumper was. Mechanically it was great but navagating was difficult because of the shape.
Another reason I didn’t get another one is because I got the Cadillac CTS I always wanted.
A family member got it for me for less than cost and I don’t care if it’s an old persons car (is it?) I love it.
A CTS is not an old person’s car. It’s a mid-sized sports sedan, and a pretty nice one. The CTS-V is a killer machine.
The STS and DeVille are the old people cars.