About 15 years ago, my friend had a Taurus. He was a single parent, and also had a 11 or 12 or so year old son. He also had a girlfriend that was a nice enough girl, equipped with a sort of roundish, raised sort of a back side.
His son nicknamed her Taurus-Butt.
She’s long gone, but the nickname remains, to this day whenever she is remembered, it’s as “Taurus-Butt”.
The Taurus has been living on borrowed time ever since they took a decent looking car and turned it into that ultra-curved, overly-long, weird-looking abomination with their redesign in the 90s. You will never see a worse redesign. That all but killed the Taurus, it was simply a matter of time after that.
Funny, I just sent my '92 Taurus to the junkyard last month.
R.I.P. Taurus. We knew ye well.
In my opinion, FORD could have kept the taurus going-but chose not to. Perhaps they felt the line had reached the end of its popularity cycle. What i don’t understand: in its mid-years, they chose to equip the taurus with two of the worst powertrains that FORD ever came out with: the 3.8 liter 6 cylinder engine (known for eating head gaskets and throwing pistons); and the “Vulcan” automatic transmission-known for early failure. Had FORD used a better power train, Taurus might still be alive today. One thing I’ve noticed: FORD thinks ALL American want rubbery handling and marshmallow suspensions-but if you had the good fortune to drive the “SVT” edition, they were like night and day-the SVT was excellent!
The Taurus actually illustrates exactly why Ford (and GM got into trouble). At one time, the Taurus was the best-selling car in North America. But Ford basically took it for granted and refused to invest in proper upgrades to the vehicle. Then cars like the Accord and Camry came along, and improved year over year until they were kicking the Taurus’s butt. Ford basically tried to milk the Taurus for more profit rather than re-investing in keeping it current and competitive. So while every other vehicle had advanced V-6’s that were smooth and made lots of horsepower, Ford left the Taurus saddled with a poor one. The same goes for fit and finish, the transmission, suspension, etc. Ford just stagnated and let everyone else catch up and then pass them.
yes, in the effort to make the car “aerodynamic”, they swept the roofline so severely that I (5’11") cannot sit in the backseat (my head would bump the ceiling). There is NO excuse for this type of idiocy-all designers of new car models should be FORCED to drive their creations 9for at least 6 months). that would eliminate a LOT of mistakes!
This post pretty much nailed it in my opinion. Had they supported the brand a bit more and put some effort into incremental improvements year after year we’re probably be seeing ads for the new Ford Taurus, aka the Fusion. Instead they had to create a new model and reinvent the wheel to distance themselves from product that people learned to either ignore or loathe.
ralph124c’s post is also spot on. My parents were dedicated used-car buyers for years. At about the same time the new Taurus was premiered they finally got to a point financially where new cars became a better option and the Taurus was the one they went with. I learned to drive in this car. They subsequently bought a second Taurus of the second rounder design when the first started having issues. I hated driving both cars, just a awkward experience. The seats were uncomfortable and the design had poor visibility.
From a quality standpoint, the cars were average at best. For light use and initial quality I suppose they were decent by moderately priced mid-size car standards. Durability was a issue though. At about 60-70k things started falling apart. The transmissions were notoriously bad and my folks replaced the one in our '89 Taurus twice over about 120k miles. The '96 model’s tranny started getting dicey at about 72k miles when they decided to sell it (I bought it off my folks since the trade-in offer their dealer gave them was insultingly bad). On both models the brakes were a constant issue. Noisy on the first generation and horribly rust prone on the third. Each wore out and needed to be replaced, rotors and all, every 40k miles or so. The head gaskets were leaky on the '89 and the integrated stereo/climate control system needed to be replaced on the '96.
Those were unattractive and uninspiring cars with little to no resale value. They drove awkwardly and always came up short on the amenities. I have no idea why my folks were so loyal to them, well aside from the fact that they are creatures of habit and finding a new car dealer was a bigger burden than owning a shitty car apparently.
Of course they went and bought a Crown Victoria for a song when they sold the second Taurus, knowing full well that it was being discontinued. :rolleyes:
The Taurus really does live on, much as GM’s Grand Am does, despite the loss of the names. The latest generation of Ford and GM cars borrow very heavily from the same parts’ bins that they’ve been looting for years. The Jaguar X-Type was Ford’s experiment with a four-wheel drive Taurus, and now it lives on in the bloated Five Hundred. And the Taurus had the odious Vulcan V-6 (3.8L, 145 hp) into this millennium (the much, much better Duratec V-6 was available as an option). The Taurus also had laughable brakes and a transmission that should have been the shame of any engineer connected with it’s creation, outdone in mediocrity only by GM’s lousy efforts.
There’s no question that it was an influential car in automotive history, although obviously my personal opinion is that it wasn’t warranted. I firmly believe that U.S. consumers have to partially shoulder the blame for GM and Ford’s current woes, because they lulled the Big Three into believing that it was possible to be successful with out-dated technology and very low quality cars by making models such as the Taurus best-sellers.
I never owned a Taurus, though I did own its retarded cousin the Tempo.
My dad didn’t have the Taurus, he got the Mercury Sable which for all visual intents and purposes was exactly the same car, down to the strange maroon coloring. I always thought it strange that the same car was marketed under two different names both by Ford.
…also cheapened the brand. one of the reasons that FORD was able to sell so many tauri: they sold a TON of stripped-down. low end models to AVIS, HERTZ, and the other rental companies. This was good in the short run, but disastrous in the long run, as people got used to them from business trips. plus, the rental fleets sold millions of them after a few years, for very cheap prices-which killed the resale value. Those rental taurus/Sable cars were pretty awful-some were equipped with a 4 cylinder engine-a real lead sled. Once gain, shortsighted thinking by FORD executives, leading to short term success, long-term failure. The last years were pretty good 9except for that rear seat problem).
This just in: FORD LOSR $5.3 BILLION this quater:its looking like FORD might not be around much longer!
The Sable was the up-market version of the Taurus. It came with softer, deeper seats and better tin trim. It was never offered with the hotter engine (which was in the 245 hp Taurus SHO).
This was a strategy offered by all of the Big Three, starting in the 70’s. GM used claim to make something like 70 different models of cars, but in reality it was more like 30, with lots of re-badged efforts. Nowadays, there’s often actually some real differences, such as the Corvette and the Cadillac XLR, but it doesn’t take very long to realize that the Pontiac Wave and the Chevrolet Aveo are the same car with different brands stamped on them.
Import brands aren’t immune to that, either. The Acura EL (a Canada-only model) was a tarted up Civic, and the Infiniti G20 used to be a Nissan Sentra with up-market trim.
Ugh, we’ve had three of them as the wife’s company car. I curse the few times during the year when I’m actually forced to have to drive the damn thing. Thank goodness the next one will be an Impala. Question: are all Taruses speed limited to 100 mph? Or maybe it’s a company car thing.
And if I remember right a couple of the security fleets at my jobs have been made up of Tauri.
The '93 wasn’t too bad, but in '95, they really plumped the thing up beyond reason. I remember seeing a late 90’s Ford F150, and thought “ICK! It’s a Taurus pickup!”
Yeah, I had one of those wretched engines, and was just barely on the wrong side of a repair campaign. :mad: It’s amazing how a $75 part mushrooms into a $2500 repair by the time you put in labor and all the this-n-that stuff that has to be removed to get at the heads - why tear it down and re-assemble with the same old hoses? Might as well change the spark plugs and ignition wires while they’re out, etc.
The '93 Taurus I had was certainly a solid, dependable car, but also entirely BO-RING! Maintenance costs were pretty much just oil changes and somewhere around 65,000 miles, the starter crapped out, but that was an easy curbside fix. Of course, the major headache was the head gasket.
I can see that you have not driven a 500. 
The 500 is not a prts bin car, what Ford did was they took the Vovo S80 and dropped in their engine and transmission, interior, and sheetmetal. They should paint these things white with a blue stripe and put “Swedish Car” on the door.
I have driven 500s. They are so far better than an Taurus it isn’t even funny.
A good friend of mine is a Ford Technical guy. He got a 500 for a company car. He told me it was the best company car he had driven in 28 years with Ford.
I bought a Taurus wagon the first model year. Big mistake, buying the first year, but I loved that car. We had our share of recalls and glitches, but all in all it was a great car. Drove it without a functioning speedometer for quite a while…it was digital, and if the light was hitting the dash right you could just about see how fast you were going. Then one day I hit a deep bump, and back came the digital read-outs! They only hung aroung for a few more months, though, and then it was back to driving blind. Can’t remember if I ever got that fixed. I had that car for ten long years.
Now I drive a Sable sedan, which is too big for me, but I love it, and it was affordable when I bought it used.
Jesus christ, those ‘97 - 2003 F-150s are fuckin’ ugly.
Everyone take a look at this truck. Look at that dividing line between the cab and the bed. It’s completely out of whack with the rest of the lines on the goddamn truck. Why did they do it like this? Did nobody see how that slanted, diagonal line completely clashes with the rest of the lines of the truck’s body? I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t make it a straight vertical line. It’s things like this that make me honest-to-god depressed - the idea that in a billion dollar industry, there was nobody in the design room that objected to this horrible aesthetic choice on the truck.
I just don’t get how anyone could prefer that ugly, bulky, curvy “Taurus pickup” to the pre-1997 body style. Those straight, clean lines, the the rugged look, the powerful stance - it’s one of the best truck body styles I’ve ever seen, especially on the lifted ones. What the fuck happened?
I mean, will collectors ever be paying big bucks for a pristine 1995 Taurus in 2065 or so? I tend to doubt that ANY cars from about 1975-onward will evr be collectable-here’s why:
-plastic interiors components; plastics age and deteriorate-I’ve noticed a common issue with FORD interiors-the dashboards split and crack-it doesn’t matter how much armorall you apply-these plastics seem to break down within 20-25 years; so an antique in 2065 would probably have an interior that has totally rotted away.
-electronic engine controls; the Taurus was one of the cars that used electronics for everything -ignition control, fule system, transmission control, interior climate control. You cannot get many replacement parts for these modules even now! many of the elctronic modules are sealed and non-repairable. Whereas you can still buy points, plugs, distributors, etc. for cars from the 1930’s!
So i think it unlikely that Taurus will ever be a collectable car…but check back with me in 2065-i have one stored away in a barn! 
I’ve read in a classic car mag on a couple occasions that the early Mazda Miatas are ‘future classics’. Any number of exotics and quasi-exotics will be.
