I remember the first ones...
"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've owned two, both bought second hand. Paid $2000 for the first one(1992 model) and put close to 100,000 miles on it. At around 180,000 miles it started blowing smoke out the tail pipe and the end was soon there after. Got my money's worth out of that one.
2nd one was newer model repo that I got for peanuts. replaced the transmission at 130,000, 2 years later at 175,000 she's still running, albeit rough. Won't be buying anymore.
we just got rid of our '90 Taurus Wagon .. that thing was GREAT .. we even replaced the rotten transmission to keep it on the road. Wish American automakers would again come up with something new, efficient, cost-effective and worth buying.
RIP, dear Taurus
Went from 1979 Fairmont to 1986 Thunderbird to 1998 Taurus to 2001 Taurus to 2006 Five Hundred.
So far, so good.
" - - a family sedan so revolutionary that its 1985 debut changed forever the way cars look, feel and drive. - - the car that saved the company."
Ford did that four times:
In 1908 - Model T
c. 1930 - Model A
In 1949 -' 49 Ford
In 1985 - Taurus
It would be nice if they did it again, but I don't think they know what to do. Cars are so boring and look-alike today that I wish somebody like Ford would jolt us all with a model to write home about, or just write about.
Regular Tauruses were pretty much crap, but I had a Taurus SHO (Super High Output) with the aluminum Yamaha engine and a five-speed manual transmission that was a lot of fun to drive. That car would really haul...
Big mistake in my part to buy that dog.
It had like maybe like 90 horsepower.
Used to have a Sable with the 3.8 V6. As I've already read here, I know too that engine loved to blow head gaskets. I still stand amazed when I remember the day green antifreeze was dripping out the back tail-pipe!
Man that sucker was blown!
I have over 400,000 miles on my 1989 Taurus. The transmission is sticking a little but it loves to run on an open highway. Too bad or lucky for me the speedometer only goes to 90.
I love that car. It's really a shame the interior is slowly disintergrating.
It was a disaster for years.
Look for the Union Label.
I own a 2003 Tortoise.
It is, yes...an uninspiring piece of crap...for which I am grateful because it was dirt cheap as one of a million program vehicles of identical design.
So long, tortoise.
Still running my now 10-year old Taurus. $200 total in repairs over 10 years. I've NEVER had a car that was so low cost to maintain, and that includes several japanese makes.
The Taurus SHO was perfect for the married guy with three kids and a desire to blow the doors off some low-end four-banger Camaro used-to-be.
...good riddance.
Had one. At exactly 75K miles, the tranny departed this earth. Same thing happened with my Windstar.
I didn't mind the car itself, but that "balloon payment" at 75K miles was a b!***!
But, ah, how many of those Taurii did I drive courtesy of Hertz...
It was and is a good car. Ford is clueless.
To all the skeptics,
Yeah, the Taurus must really suck. Ford only sold about a zillion of them. There is no denying that within five years of its introduction, almost every car manufactured looked like a Ford Taurus. So much so that I remember one auto reviewer quipping that the redesigned Ford Taurus is the only car on the road that doesn't look like a Ford Taurus.
The Taurus was a homerun that every auto manufacturer dreams about.