The Ford Taurus, a car manufactured by Ford from the mid-80s to 2019, holds a significant place in automotive history. Introduced in late 1985, six generations were produced over 34 years. From 1986 to 2009 model years, the Taurus was sold alongside its near-twin, the Mercury Sable. There were also four generations of the high-performance Ford Taurus SHO were produced and the Taurus also served as the basis for the first-ever front-wheel drive Lincoln Continental.
This article delves into the history, design evolution, and eventual discontinuation of this iconic vehicle.
It’s Taurus season! The Taurus is the symbol of power, strength, creativity, and is often compared to the bull.
This article is about the North American car. The Ford Taurus is an automobile that was manufactured and marketed by the Ford Motor Company in the United States from 1985 to 2019.
The Taurus also had a presence in NASCAR, replacing the Thunderbird for the 1998 season and became the first four-door sedan to be approved for competition. The first Taurus driver to win the Winston Cup (the NASCAR sponsor of the time) championship was Dale Jarrett, who drove the No. 88 Ford Quality Care/Ford Credit-sponsored cars owned by Robert Yates. The first Taurus driver to win the Busch Series championship was Greg Biffle, who drove the No.
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20 Shocking Secrets About The 1986 Ford Taurus – You’ll Never Look at It the Same Again!
The Original Taurus: A Milestone for Ford
The original Taurus was a milestone for Ford and the American automotive industry, as the first automobile at Ford designed and manufactured using the statistical process control ideas brought to Ford by W. Edwards Deming, a prominent statistician consulted by Ford to bring a "culture of quality" to the enterprise.
Between 1979 and 1982, Ford had incurred $3 billion in losses. In the spring of 1980, Ford Chairman Donald E. Peterson initiated a new "team" approach to the design and manufacture of automobiles at Ford, that eventually resulted in the creation of the Ford Taurus.
Ford also adopted a quality culture employing statistical process control across all aspects of automobile design and manufacture. The Ford Taurus was the first Ford model resulting from this statistical approach to manufacture.
This new emphasis on quality in the manufacture of the Ford Taurus was reflected in Ford's advertising and marketing. At the time of the Taurus's debut, Ford had been producing mainly rear-wheel drive cars, and Chrysler and General Motors were offering more front-wheel-drive vehicles up to mid-range including the Chrysler K platform and A-body Chevrolet Celebrity. With the introduction of the Escort and Tempo, Ford was making a transition to front-wheel drive.
At the time of the Taurus's debut, Ford had been producing mainly rear-wheel drive cars, while their competitors were offering more front-wheel drive vehicles up to midrange. The release of the Ford Taurus was one of the most anticipated ever, mostly because it was a first in car design and the start of new quality standards for Ford.
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Design and Innovation
The Taurus displayed a rounder shape than its contemporaries, often likened to the flying potato. The Taurus displayed a rounder shape than its contemporaries, often likened to a "jelly bean" or "flying potato", inspired by the design of the Audi 5000 and Ford's European sedan, the Ford Sierra, an updated appearance of a styling approach used in the late 1940s to early 1960s called "ponton" styling.
Instead of a grille, the Taurus mainstreamed the grille-less bottom nose. Instead of a grille, the Taurus mainstreamed the smooth grille-less "bottom breather" nose.
The aerodynamic design of the Taurus made the car more fuel efficient, allowing Ford to meet more stringent corporate average fuel economy standards applied by the government.
Like its exterior, the Taurus's interior was ahead of its time, and many features originating from it are still used in most cars today. Like its exterior, the Taurus's interior was ahead of its time, and many features originating from it are still used in most cars today.
Its interior was designed to be user-friendly; with all of its controls designed to be recognizable by touch, allowing drivers to operate them without taking their eyes off the road. Its interior was designed to be extremely user-friendly, with all of its controls designed to be recognizable by touch, allowing drivers to operate them without taking their eyes off the road.
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To further enhance the quality, the dashboard has all the controls in the central area within reach of the driver. To further enhance this quality, the car's dashboard has all of the controls in the central area within reach of the driver.
The interior of the Taurus was customizable to fit buyers' needs, with many options and different configurations.
The Taurus was well received by both the public and the press. It won many awards; most notably being named to the 1986 Car and Driver Ten Best List and becoming the 1986 Motor Trend Car of the Year.
Over 200,000 Taurus’s were sold during the 1986 model year and the millionth Taurus was sold during the 1989 model year.
Evolution and Redesign
The Taurus received its first redesign in late 1991 for the 1992 model year, using the same chassis and with revisions to every exterior body panel other than the doors - largely as major facelift to the first generation design, gaining several inches in length and over 200 pounds in curb weight, and marketed solely with V6 engines and automatic transmissions.
For the 1996 model year, Ford presented the third generation of the Ford Taurus. Although not completely new, the chassis was heavily upgraded, becoming the DN101 generation.
In a break from the familiar styling of the previous two generations (that chief designer Jack Telnack had likened to a "pair of slippers"), Ford had sought to again make the Taurus stand out for buyers of mid-size sedans, giving the vehicle a much more extensive restyling than its 1992 predecessor.
Moving away from straight lines, the 1996 Taurus sought to include rounded lines, moving past the cab-forward design of the Chrysler LH sedans. Alongside the Ford Blue Oval emblem itself, the Taurus repeated the shape several places in its exterior; in a controversial design element, the rear window of the Taurus was oval, as were the side windows of the Mercury Sable.
The interior saw a complete redesign. Reaction to the third-generation Ford Taurus was mixed; Ford found that customers disliked the oval-shaped exterior. For 1996, the Ford Taurus continued as the best-selling car in the United States. The No.
The Taurus received another redesign for 2000, which replaced many of the oval-derived design elements of the previous model with sharper creases and corners, an aspect of Ford's New Edge styling language. Ford designed the fourth generation with more conservative styling.
The interior was also redesigned with features from the previous Taurus generations carried over. The dashboard was given a squarer design. The "integrated control panel" concept was carried over but redesigned, with a bigger, squarer shape, and it was placed in the center of the dash instead of being angled toward the driver. The flip-fold center console was also carried over from the previous generation, although it was revised as well.
During its fourth generation, the Taurus saw a significant sales slump compared to its predecessors. Having already lost its status as the best-selling car in America when it was surpassed by the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry in 1997, by 2005, it had fallen to fourth-place behind the Nissan Altima, which made Ford decide to discontinue the entire Taurus line.
Production of the Taurus wagon was discontinued on December 8, 2004; sedan retail sales halted after a short 2006 model year, and the Taurus became sold exclusively to fleets in the United States, while still being sold to retail customers in Canada. Production ended on October 27, 2006, as Ford idled the Atlanta plant, as part of its "The Way Forward" restructuring plan. The last Ford Taurus rolled off the assembly line around 7:00am, destined for delivery to S. Truett Cathy, owner of Chick-fil-A.
Revival and the Fifth Generation
Newly hired Ford CEO Alan Mulally expressed similar opinions, telling the Associated Press the decision "perplexed" him when he learned about it; he recalled asking subordinates, "How can it go away? It's the best selling car in America!"
As the successor Five Hundred was struggling in the marketplace, Mulally viewed the decision to discontinue the Taurus as a "mistake that needed to be fixed", noting, "The customers want it back. They didn't want it to go away. They wanted us to keep improving it."
The fifth-generation Taurus entered production in 2007 as a 2008 model and was developed directly from the Ford Five Hundred, chiefly with a mild exterior facelift and revised engine and transmission.
Changes to the fifth-generation Taurus from the Five Hundred included a new front end and the 263 hp 3.5 L Duratec 35 V6, replacing the 203 hp (151 kW) Duratec 30 3.0 L V6. The Five Hundred/Freestyle's ZF-Batavia CVT, which had a maximum torque rating of 221 lb⋅ft (300 N⋅m), was also replaced with a Ford-GM joint venture six-speed automatic with additional torque of the Duratec 35. The Taurus sedan twin, the Mercury Sable nameplate, was revived and applied to the restyled Mercury Montego.
For the 2009 model year, Ford revived the "SE" trimline for the Taurus. It was determined that Ford's strategy to redesignate new cars in the lineup with new names beginning with the letter F, as in Ford Focus, Ford Fusion, and Ford Freestyle, was not a good marketing move, as some of the renamed cars had highly recognizable iconic names.
The 2008 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable were awarded the Top Safety Pick ratings by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and five-star ratings by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The five-star rating given to the Taurus and the Sable is the highest safety rating being given by the government agency.
The Sixth Generation (2010-2019)
The sixth generation Ford Taurus is a full-size sedan manufactured and marketed by Ford for model years 2010-2019 with a mild facelift for model year 2013. While sharing the chassis underpinnings of the previous generation Taurus and the Five Hundred, the exterior and interior of the sixth generation received a complete redesign, replacing New Edge design language with Ford's Kinetic Design design language. The high-performance Ford Taurus SHO made its return, becoming the first turbocharged Taurus.
The sixth generation became the first version of the Taurus developed without a Mercury Sable counterpart, as Mercury began to pare down its model line. Though never branded as an official successor to the Mercury Grand Marquis, the sixth-generation Taurus superseded it as Ford matched it against the full-size competitors of its predecessors.
The Taurus scored well in test drives and the media was pleased with some of its new optional features. Some of these features included all-wheel drive, cross traffic alert, collision warning, blind spot monitoring, and adaptive cruise control.
The SHO (Super High Output), released in August 2009, was powered by a twin-turbocharged, gasoline direct-injection EcoBoost 3.5L V6 engine. It produced up to 365 horsepower (272 kW) and 350 lb⋅ft (470 N⋅m) of torque.
First revealed at the 2011 New York Auto Show, the Taurus received a mid-cycle refresh for the 2013 model year. The body featured a new front fascia and slightly updated rear fascia with LED taillamps, as well as all-new wheel options. The SHO model featured revised styling elements.
Refinements were made to the 3.5 EcoBoost V6. Power in the 3.5L naturally aspirated V6, standard in non-SHO models, was up to 288 hp.
There was a new engine option for non-SHO models, a 2.0L EcoBoost inline-4 developing up to 240 hp and 270 lb-ft of torque while delivering a best-in-class 22 mpg city and 32 mpg highway.
All models received upgrades to the steering and braking systems to improve driveability, including standard torque vectoring and curve control, improving tracking at higher speeds.
Ford Police Interceptor Sedan (FPIS)
When the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor (CVPI) ended production in late 2011, Ford developed two new models to replace it, as part of their Ford Police Interceptor range. For the 2013 model year, Ford introduced the Taurus-based Ford Police Interceptor Sedan (FPIS) and Explorer-based Ford Police Interceptor Utility (FPIU).
Unlike the outgoing CVPI, the sedan was unavailable with a V8 engine or rear-wheel drive. Initially, the FPIS was offered with a standard 3.5 L naturally aspirated V6 with front- or all-wheel drive that made 288 hp (215 kW) and 254 lb⋅ft (344 N⋅m) of torque, as well an optional 3.5 L EcoBoost V6 with all-wheel drive borrowed from the SHO, producing 365 hp (272 kW). However, the naturally aspirated 3.5 L remained available as a cost-saving option.
Discontinuation
As Ford moved its model line away from car-based vehicles to utility-type vehicles and other light trucks at the end of the 2010s, Ford discontinued the Taurus in North America after the 2019 model year, as well its Fiesta, Focus, and Fusion models.
On April 25, 2018, Ford announced plans to discontinue the Taurus (along with the Fiesta, Focus, and Fusion), in order to focus more on its line of trucks and SUVs. The announcement was part of a plan by Ford Motor Company to cut costs and increase profits.
Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant and Chicago Stamping plant, where the Ford Taurus has been built since 1985, will be retooled in a $1 billion dollar investment that will add 500 new jobs, with the plant turning to production of the next-generation 2020 Ford Explorer, 2020 Police Interceptor Utility, and the 2020 Lincoln Aviator.