>>They sold a billion pet rocks, too. That doesn't mean that the product didn't suck.
Pet rocks were a fad that lasted basically one year. The Taurus lasted 20 years and forced every manufacturer in the world to follow the Taurus' lead for a number of years. If it really sucked it wouldn't have been the best-selling car on the market for all those years.
Part of the reason it was the "best selling car" was because it was stupendously cheap and lots of rental car companies and fleets bought them, even though they were horrible POS.
If you remove the fleet sales, Taurus was only a top seller for a couple of years after introduction - which is why Ford stopped breaking down sales into fleet and normal, to make their numbers look better.