I remember the first ones...
Posted on 10/19/2006 10:56:56 AM PDT by floridareader1
DEARBORN, Mich. - Sometime next week, the assembly line at a Ford plant near Atlanta will come to a halt, signaling the end of a family sedan so revolutionary that its 1985 debut changed forever the way cars look, feel and drive. ADVERTISEMENT
Say goodbye to the Taurus.
After 21 years and sales of nearly 7 million cars, Ford Motor Co. is giving up on what some call the most influential automobile since Henry Ford's Model T. The Taurus is credited with moving America away from boxy V-8 powered gas-guzzling bedrooms-on-wheels to aerodynamic, more efficient cars with crisper handling.
To many, the Taurus' death was slow and painful as Ford in recent years abandoned the car that saved the company, focusing instead on high-profit trucks and sport utility vehicles.
"When that thing came out, it was a big deal," said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. "It so much became kind of the template of what a modern car was going to look like."
The Taurus, so futuristic that critics called it a "jellybean" or a "flying potato," made its debut late in 1985, with 1979 gasoline shortages still fresh in consumers' minds. The U.S. economy was just pulling out of a downturn when the scalloped Taurus, initially equipped with V-6 and four-cylinder engines, hit showrooms. It was an immediate hit, with buyers snapping up more than 263,000 in 1986, its first full year on the market.
It became the best-selling car in America in 1992 with sales of nearly 410,000, unseating the Honda Accord just as Japanese imports were starting to take hold in the U.S., and it held the top spot for five straight years until it was supplanted by the Toyota Camry in 1997. Even near death in September, it remained Ford's top-selling car.
Ford also sold another 2 million Mercury Sables, the Taurus' nearly identical twin.
"It was really the last full-size American passenger sedan to dominate the segment," said Jim Sanfilippo, senior industry analyst for Bloomfield Hills-based Automotive Marketing Consultants Inc.
Ford was losing billions in the early 1980s when Taurus was just an idea. Philip Caldwell, chief executive at the time, challenged designers and engineers to come up with a radically different car that would return Ford to profitability.
"We were in terrible condition financially," recalled Jack Telnack, chief designer on the original Taurus who retired in 1998. "He said `Look, we need something really different, really new, that will kind of set the pace out there.'"
Nearly 1,000 people worked on the car, many coming from Ford's European operations. They had spotted a trend that U.S. buyers were moving away from big, cushy cars to better-handling European models, Telnack said.
Engineers met that trend with a stiffer suspension, and they also gave the car more interior room, firmer seats, better ergonomics and more trunk space, said Telnack.
The car also had a lot of new "surprise and delight" features including a cargo net to hold grocery bags in the trunk and rear-seat headrests and heat ducts, said Joel Pitcoff, the Taurus' marketing manager at the time.
It was a hit in market research tests, and sales beat expectations, said Sam Pack, owner of three Dallas-area Ford dealerships who took part in Taurus research.
The car's sales remained strong until it got a makeover in 1996. Although the second version sold well, it never matched the original's numbers.
Still, company officials said the Taurus restored Ford's reputation for quality.
Frank Ribezzo, a lawyer in North Smithfield, R.I., is selling a 1997 Taurus for $950 after running up 210,000 miles. It's his third Taurus, with the first two going over 220,000 miles.
Ribezzo said he buys them used because they don't cost much and, save for the transmissions, they're reliable.
"As far as used cars, their value just goes to hell in a handbasket in a couple of years. But they run," Ribezzo said.
In the late 1990s, the Taurus became symptomatic of Ford's current ills. The company focused on high-profit trucks and sport utility vehicles, leaving the car almost unchanged for 10 years with little advertising support. In the meantime, competitors had copied the Taurus and refined their models, and the Taurus eventually became solely a rental car and fleet vehicle.
"It didn't keep pace. That's the whole story in four words," said Pitcoff.
Ford, left with few desirable cars, was caught flat-footed this year when consumer tastes shifted away from trucks. Sales have dropped 8.6 percent through September, and the company lost $1.4 billion in the first half of the year.
"They put no money into that product for the last several years," Telnack said of the Taurus. "They just let it wither on the vine. It's criminal. The car had a great reputation, a good name. I don't understand what they were waiting for."
The lack of attention to the Taurus has angered workers at the assembly plant in Hapeville, Ga.
Earle Chafim, a 22-year electrician who repairs welding robots, said workers met company goals, yet Ford still decided to shutter the plant.
"The biggest part I hate is we got the No. 1-selling car in the company, we won so many awards for being No. 1, it's a shame. We're still outselling other cars, and we're not even taking orders anymore," he said.
Ray Daniels, a 33-year company veteran, blamed Ford for not updating the Taurus and keeping the name.
"If they'd kept the name, we'd still be here," he said.
Mark Fields, Ford's president of the Americas, said he, too, can't understand how the company strayed so far from the Taurus. He wasn't with Ford when those decisions were made, but said he knows well that Ford's 1980s turnaround was led by appealing products, something he's trying to duplicate now.
"We are very, very focused on what customers want," he said.
When the lights go out on the last Taurus in Hapeville next week, there won't be any ceremony.
"It's not a reason for celebration," said plant manager Dale Wishnousky, proudly adding that workers raised quality levels since Ford announced the plant closure. "There will certainly be tears shed. There's already been tears shed."
See post #88, right before yours. Also, the Japanese still put the car first.
If GM had the Camry platform for the past twenty years, Oldsmobile would be dominating the mid-sized market instead of being extinct, and the other GM brands would have their own versions. Instead, they had the crap GM-10 platform (Lumina).
The reason I don't blame the UAW for GM's woes is that a perfectly-built Lumina still would not be worthy to share the road with a Camry or Accord. Also, the UAW couldn't organize Honda or Toyota or Nissan because those company's managers actually know how to manage a workforce properly. Toyota proved it could profitably manage an old plant with the UAW entrenched when they made a success of the woeful Fremont, California GM plant.
In other words, the Japanese managements have kicked the butts of the American managements in the USA with American workers. Better cars, better workers, higher profits.
While the X-Type may look like a Taurus, it's not. It's a Contour/Mondeo.
Even Ford wasn't stupid enough to try to pass off a Taurus as a Jaguar. Unfortunately, they also weren't smart enough to have different stylists design the cars...
1. UAW.
2. Beancounters paring everything to the lowest price, and damn the customer's perception of the car.
3. Every time they bring over a hot small car from their European divisions, they "Americanize" it and completely ruin it. People do not want a small car that tries to ride and handle like a land barge, yet GM and Ford keep trying to do that. So, complete misunderstanding of what the customer wants.
They've already been replaced with the Fusion stickers.
That said, the NASCRASH Car Of Tomorrow is going to replace it, and it'll bear even less resemblance to a car you can buy than now.
What a load of bollocks. Toyota, Datsun/Nissan and VW led the way in this department. The Taurus was hardly influential.
The Taurus was like all Ford rattletraps in its propensity to fall apart piece-by-piece with no apparent provocation.
Traveling salesmen, however, will be having a wake later this month.
Back in the day, the fishbowlish Pacer X was allegedly the badass version of that horrible car!
~ Blue Jays ~
Chrysler used Mitsu transmissions (and had problems of their own). They make good to excellent RWD transmissions, but if you get a FWD one, look out!
It was always Nissan everywhere else in the world - they sold here as Datsun so as to not annoy all the WW2 vets.
Have two teenagers. Neither will drive my Taurus which is fine with me. My husband fussed at me this summer for spilling something in the back seat. I looked at him and asked "Do you really think it's going to hurt the trade in value?"! The trunk is full of wheat straw and fertilizer and assorted junk. Absolutely love the radio controls on the dash! The memory button sticks and has to pulled back out, but it did the same on the other one I owned. Shrug.
Try the Chrysler 300. It's a Mercedes E-class, essentially.
It just costs a lot less because it doesn't have the tristar on the front.
You're going to wish you hadn't done that when the time comes for her to select your nursing home. ;)
"Really great house, except for that gaping crack in the foundation and the mudslides."
"Grandpa's doing just fine! Don't mind the Alzheimer's!"
"Your surgery was an unqualified success! Now that talk about all that metastasis I found inside you."
I owned a Taurus and a Sable. Both had electrical systems problems so severe that I got rid of both. Never again will I buy a car from the Big Three.
This picture is a perfect example of what my husband calls "bumper sticker mentality" - ha ha ha ha ha
WHile GM/Ford had their share of truly hideous and embarassing designs, it really didn't matter. They could have been handed the Camry design and still bollixed it up.
Case in point: The Ford Contour. It was originally sold in Europe as the Ford Mondeo. It did very well there, was well regarded, and was a very reliable and well built car. Ford brought the design over to the US, and had UAW workers build it. It turned out to be a total disaster - one of the worst cars Ford has ever sold in the US because the QC and build quality was so bad.
Having that many Kerry stickers on a Taurus would make it a piece of crap! :)
Ironically, my nearly twenty year old Jaguar has less problems than my neighbors' domestic cars do. It's especially fun to taunt the local Taurus owner (he was one of the fools that bought an 06 Taurus), whose car has been in the shop more in the last six months than both of my Jaguars have been in over a year.
It's pretty bad when a 1987 XJ6 kicks your *new* car's butt in reliability. And has a more reliable electrical system.
"bumper sticker mentality" I saw a brand new Ford yesterday with the temp. plate still on it. The girl driving had already put a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on it. As I blasted past her in my 91 LS 400, I pointed at her, mouthed "Loser!", and then laughed at her. It was fun!
I'm reckless that way.
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