I've never had a lot of luck with Fords either. Oddly enough, my wife drive a Mazda Tribute which, other than a PTO for the 4WD, has the same engine and tranny as a Taurus, and it's been flawless.
Now that is really weird.
A friend of mine has had FORD trucks and loves them, hasn't ever had a problem with them.
Their passenger cars he's had extremely poor experiences with, spits whenever he sees one.
The missus was looking into buying a 96 Mercury Couger V6, but was warned off of it.
Was told that the transmission likes to overheat in some of them.
(It was a nice looking car too, no rust anywhere, very clean, and a nice medium grey color with thin black pinstriping.)
I've had better luck with VW's than I've had with FORDs.
Did have a Subaru stationwagon for a bit, but it burned a valve and started stalling at speed.
(Doing 55 and having the engine stop was quite an experience.)
Same transmission and no problems.
That is truly weird.
My brother had a Taurus and wanted to shoot the darn thing with a howitzer.