R.I.P. Ford Taurus, 1986-2006

I owned four Taurus/Sables over the years and they were all excellent cars. I had not troubles with any of them. I still have a 01 Taurus SEL and it’s still giving me great service on bad weather days when I don’t want to drive my Jaguar. I’m sad to see it go. Ford Motor Company, please don’t sell Jaguar!

Then why did you buy one????????

Ford had a good car and a good seller in the Taurus. Why not upgrade it every year instead of discontinuing?

Truer words were never written, and this is coming from an insider.

Ford has a habit of tripping over its own feet perodically, due ,probably, to myopic management. They created a highly successful brand with the Taurus, then ignored it to death, rather than upgrade the quality, and keep the design fresh. Strange management at Ford.

Marty- I just read your obit on the Taurus. I have to agree, that going down in flames didn’t have to happen to what once was the shining star on the horizon of the American sedan. I had an ‘89 LX, which up until that time was the nicest car we’d ever had. But the 3.8 head gaskets got it. By the time I found it, the motor was toast. Unfortunately, I replaced it with a ‘93 Sable, as my daughter’s car. I soon found out that all the 3.8 head gaskets will fail, but this time we saved the motor, to the tune of a $2200 rebuild. But thereafter, it ran great, finally getting traded last month, at over 160K. What replaced it? A Subaru. American built, but just not the same, not a Big Three product. This is our second Japanese car, our second Subie. And when my Cherokee thunders off into the sunset, I cannot in good conscience replace it with anything designed here, not with the horror stories you can read in many places, including this site. And besides, how many car brands have websites devoted to high mileage examples of a marque? I can think of only one, and it’s not an American manufacturer. Please, for all that is good and holy, WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!

Where has Ford been the last 10 years? All that company had to do was just look out their corporate windows and see what the people were driving and why. Some time back it seems that Ford gave up the idea of developing autos that the people wanted and needed, some fool got it into his mind to build and advertise nothing but pickups and that is what they went with. Its not to late yet, but somebody had best get their heads out and go back to building what the buyers want.

Another sad chapter in Ford annals of mistakes, such as messing up the Thunderbird, flopping out on the Fairlane and Shelbys, Mustang languished for years in the late 70’s and 1980’s, thumbed their noses at Iococca when he wanted to build the minivan back in the mid 1970’s, which he took with him when reviving Chrysler in the early 1980’s, took 30 years to change ancient 1960 suspension under the F-150, built Explorers with Ranger suspensions. Ford has squandered more opportunities than most companies would have have in several Edsel lifetimes. Henry has polished the inside of his coffin nicely by now I’m sure. And I haven’t even scratched the surface. Hopefully with their back against the wall, they may see the light, if not, better companies will rise from the ashes. R.I.P., indeed.

OOPs, I neglected the exploding Pintos, and the sagging Mavericks from rusting in two. I’ll stop now.

I don’t know why it is all the rage to criticize American cars, relenting only when you mentioned that the Tarus’ demise causes a Ford plant to be shuttered in your home town.

Have you ever considered, in more lucid moments, that the 20 year long media pile on on American cars has contributed to loss of jobs among other things?

Ford has gotten way out of touch with the changing market. They built solid products in the 1950-1972 period. Ford never had to advertise quality because every ford had plenty of it. I owned a 64, 66 69 Ford galaxie 500. All super cars.
Best car 1971 Ford Torino , good styling excellent reliability and good fuel economy. drove it 120,000 miles and gave it to a family member .
Then after 72 the products began to deteriorate in quality .
I bought a 1975 gran torino and it started rusting after two years, (RECLAIMED STEEL) fuel economy for the 351 winsor engine down to 8 mpg. Terrible!
Ford tried to go cheaper on materials and designs. Then the bubble look of the 1980’s. Jelly beans. YUK!
I couldnt buy another ford . There are millions like us. The products are unappealing( the fusion has black leather seats with whitethread for stitching) and the quality of mexican assembly at Hermacillo is disappointing.
Im amazed that Ford is #3 in the world market. I just ordered my sixth new Gm product , an 07 Impala , and am sure it wont disappoint.

everett is wrong. the taurus did not die because the press wrote bad stories about it. the taurus died because ford neglected it, it became a bad car, and then the press wrote honest stories about it. the demise of the taurus is so significant and so sad. it is a metaphor for all that ails ford today. the blame for this goes back to ford leadership in the late 90s and early 20s. it even goes to bill ford’s leadership since he has taken over. if he took over around 2001, and ford won’t see profitabliity until 2009, does that make his “turnaround” plan an 8 year deal? what turnaround plan has ever been 8 years long?! where are the exciting products nick scheele and jim padilla promised 3 years ago (which is about the time it takes to build a new product)? poor management going back years, including neglecting the taurus, has been and is the problem with ford.

If Ford had bothered to build a better and more reliable Taurus in ALL THOSE YEARS, Mr. Rupert, then they would still in competition with the Accords and Camrys instead of retiring the nameplate and replace it with the Fusion. My family has had, during its run, 2 Tauruses and a Sable station wagon and all had annoying problems that reliable cars like my RAV4, my wife’s Corolla, my mom’s Matrix, etc. doesn’t sustain. Get the picture? We, too, went for American (we also had Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs, Chryslers, Plymouths, etc.) but we had enough with their lack of reliabilty and inconvenience. I know these marques and other American ones have been improving and only NOW offers a good warranty, but Toyota and Honda had years of solid reputation as well as the buying decisions of most of my neighbors changed our minds about buying cars like Ford ever again. So please, stop blaming the media, for Ford’s lame excuse of family car. Just ask your local mechanic or our wallets, for that matter, about where our dollars should go. (Oh, by the way, some of the ‘foreign cars’ are being built in America, by Americans, and for Americans. There are jobs right there, my friend).

I for one am sorry to see it go. I’ve owned 3 of them over the last 20 years and they’ve served me very well. I put 119,000 on the first one, 147,000 on the second and currently have 62,000 miles on the third.

Sure, they needed maintanence. but I would venture a lot less than what is typical for cars they are used for a long time. I never had transmission problems with any of them.

This has just been my own experience, so I’m sorry to see them go.

The present state of the Big Three is sad indeed. I place a lot of the blame for it with the UAW, which has demanded concessions and benefits that guaranteed that the car companies could not be competitive in the global automotive market, no matter how efficient they were with other aspects of the business, like raw material costs, administration, research and development, etc. All the while, these same well-paid, well-supported workers seemed to be indifferently assembling these indifferently designed products.

This problem is not new — noone can explain why the 1977 Dodge Aspen wagon I once owned managed to leave the factory and make it to the saleroom floor with not only blue paint and clashing green body-side molding, but one front fender that proclaimed it an “Aspen” and the other front fender declaring the vehicle a “Volare.” The Big Three have made strides in quality since then, but still can’t measure up to their competitors, who manage to produce better vehicles with non-union labor — which the UAW claims, to justify their existence, can not be done.

Yet I love my Honda Odyssey, produced in what Detroit northerners like to think of as the “backwater” of Alabama.

Detroit has created some amazing vehicles over the years — at Ford alone, the original Taurus was a breakthrough design, the late Thunderbird was a great (but overly expensive) car, as was the Lincoln Mark VIII that no one bought, or the Lincoln LS. But once created, these models seem to languish largely unchanged for years before dying with a whimper. The only thing worse is updates, like the suceeding Taurus models, that failed until the only customers left were rental car companies.

The Japanese car companies were the first great threat to the domestic auto industry. The Koreans came along, and from the (very) humble roots of the Hyundai Excel have created their place in the market. When the Chinese arrive in the next few years, how do you think that will affect the domestic industry?

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