RIP Ford Taurus

I was a middle class teen in NJ when the Taurus came out, and my friends and I thought they looked ridiculous.
Yet in no time all U.S. cars had similar looks and I didn't think twice about it.

 

JR, the original design was freshened in 1992 and that's when sales were best. The 1996 redesign was more comprehensive and probably too ambitious; it was too much for middle America. It didn't help that it was hideous:



I agree with you that overall it was neglected. The American car industry has a long history of that; they have a successful model and try to milk it for all it's worth instead of investing in R&D. It's one of the reasons their success as a company is so cyclical.

 

Showing my age. We had just bought our first house and our first son was born in '85. The Taurus wagon was the perfect car for us.

 

I was being carted around in my parents' Volvo station wagon in '85.

 

And this was my second marriage.

BTW, I owned two Volvos: a '69 which I bought second hand in '71 or '72. One of the last Made In Sweden ones. Volvos were still considered cultish back then--Volvo owners used to flash their lights when they passed each other.

 

I had a '72 Volvo in 2000 and most of 2001. I bought it for $500 cash when I first moved bck to the mainland from Guam.
It had 250,000-plus miles on it. It was powder blue, and one of the cylinders only had about 47 percent compression, which made run incredibly rough.
Yet it never gave me a problem, and I sold it for $500.

 

Also, because as JR accurately pointed out at the outset of this thread, the Taurus suffered from Ford's penchant for building heavy-bodied cars and putting underpowered engines in them.

The Taurus was a glaring example of that. My wife and in-laws rented one for a trip and they virtually had to put their feet through the floorboard Fred Flintstone-style to get the car up even the most moderate incline.

I had a late 70s Mustang and it was the worst car I ever owned. Same thing, on top of a suspect electrical system. I dreaded going up hills, knowing I'd have to get the car up to nearly 90 mph just to hit the hill at 65.

I won't ever own another Ford car. Ever.

 

Those old Volvos were tough. My aunt and uncle had a '71 wagon they rolled when it was relatively new, and after it was fixed drove it for 10 more years. Ours was an '82 that my dad drove until '98 and it had 255,000 miles when he sold it. I've read that the older engines lasted practically forever because the blocks had nickel in them; high-mileage engines were barely worn.

Back to the Taurus -- I completely forgot to mention the SHO. A friend had a V6 one, and it was a lot of fun to drive. The second generation had a Yamaha-built V8; the V8 that Volvo now uses it based on it.

Can we get a car talk board?

 

I'm still trying to figure this out.

Was the Taurus revolutionary in terms of POS american cars? Or revolutionary for all cars?

This whole thread is news to me.

 

I cashed in my '69 with 300,000 miles on it. Loved that car. Compared to the later Volvos' with their emission controls and much heavier body, this went like a bat out of hell .

 

Overall it was revolutionary for American cars; its styling was revolutionary for all cars. It proved that a mainstream car could be somewhat sophisticated and people would buy it, and it proved that cars could be aerodynamically styled and still accepted in the marketplace. Keep in mind that at the time Audi and Ford were really the only companies making cars with this type of styling.

 

Let's not get all gooey about the Taurus. It was Ford Motor Credit that put most of those Tauruses on the road. Pay the consumer to take the car -- another genius move widely copied by other carmakers but one that helped put Ford squarely in the poorhouse.