Ford aims for former glory with Taurus duo

Dan Carney • E-mail

The Ford Taurus was introduced in the 1980s as a family sedan offering the proposition that an affordable American car could provide sleek, Europe-inspired styling. It quickly became a hit, and between 1987 and 1992, it was the best-selling car in America.

But the Taurus’ star dimmed over time. Its image became hazy as Ford pushed more of the cars into rental fleets to inflate its sales numbers, and soon Hertz & Co. were just about the only customers for the car. Ford pulled the plug on the Taurus in 2005, and by the mid-’00s, the company found itself longing for the Taurus’ glory years.

So when Ford’s new president Alan Mulally landed at Ford’s Dearborn headquarters in September 2006, one of his first moves was to revive the Taurus name. Research showed that it was one of the names customers recognize, unlike that of its successor, the Ford Five Hundred.

For the 2008 model year, Ford has reintroduced the Taurus, apparently rebadging the Five Hundred with the more familiar moniker. At the same time the company renamed the Freestyle crossover SUV as the “Taurus X” (X for “cross” — get it?). The Freestyle was really little more than a station wagon version of the Five Hundred, and the Taurus wagon was popular in its day, so reviving a two-model Taurus lineup makes sense, particularly with the current boom in crossover SUV sales.

It wasn’t simply that the Five Hundred and Freestyle had unfamiliar names; each suffered from having too little oomph to propel their hefty masses. Still worse, that insufficient grunt was channeled through an ineffective continuously variable transmission that seemed to let the engine rev a lot but did little to launch the car down an on-ramp. Shoppers were understandably unimpressed by the drivetrain, although the cars were fundamentally sound.

The two cars were also fundamentally dull-looking, boasting all the visual daring of the Miss Saudi Arabia pageant. The designers were seemingly in a time warp, effectively copying the European car styles of the late ’90s that had since advanced with edgier looks.

In developing the new Taurus and Taurus X, Ford replaced the powertrain and some of the sheetmetal to update the appearance and the performance to 2008 specifications. At the same time the cars received myriad detail improvements aimed at boosting ride and handling while hushing the already-quiet cabin further.

Ford On the luxury front, full credit goes to Ford for the real soft-touch surfaces found throughout the Taurus and Taurus X crossover.

The verdict on these changes is mostly positive. The only shortcoming in the new Taurus is its transmission programming. Ford has replaced the unsatisfactory CVT with an all-new six-speed automatic transmission that the company developed in conjunction with General Motors. Both companies struggled with programming a gearbox with so many speeds available, but to its credit GM did a make-up test after flunking its first try and now its six-speeds work well.

In the Taurus, however, the transmission is prone to downshift too soon, shifting through too many gears and staying in lower gears for too long. The Taurus X is a bigger vehicle and has different programming that seems to work better.

The new 263-horsepower, 3.5-liter V-6 engine accelerates the Taurus with authority, making downshifts less necessary, and Ford has tuned the engine to run as quietly and smoothly as those found in Toyota’s Camry or Avalon.

On the luxury front, full credit to Ford for the real soft-touch surfaces found throughout the Taurus and the Taurus X. They are in stark contrast to the hard surfaces found in the new Camry and Honda’s Accord, and it contributes to the posh atmosphere in the cabin. However, there is one miss: The rear windows do not fully lower to be flush with the window opening.

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