Taurus, LaCrosse mark return of Detroit sedan

Expressive exterior styling is critical to drawing customers back into their showrooms, but both Ford and Buick say they see lavish interior appointments as crucial to sealing the deal once those shoppers open the door.

So the new Buick LaCrosse boasts French-stitched leather upholstery and cool blue ambient lighting to create an atmosphere of sophistication that has been notably absent from domestic sedans in recent years.

Ford turned to a new supplier for the leather used in the new Taurus, and it makes a noticeable difference, according to Lindland. In recent years, the treatments applied to make leather surfaces more durable have also made them feel more synthetic, and have snuffed out the opulent leather smell that is much of that material’s appeal. The leather in the Taurus returns much of the ambiance expected of leather, Lindland said. 

Taurus also features multi-contour seats that are not only vastly adjustable, but they can automatically shift some of the support positions to provide a mild massage that helps prevent back pain on long drives. Worry not, the effect is not distracting.

“The key is their subtlety,” said Steve Mitchell, product design engineer for Ford. The so-called “Active Motion” technology, which individually inflates and deflates an array of four air bladders within the seat pan, is enough to help relieve fatigue but not enough to be distracting to the driver, he added.

The LaCrosse’s available head-up display projects the car’s speed onto the windshield, helping drivers stay under the speed limit, while high-intensity discharge headlights put more light on the road ahead at night and the optional adaptive lighting system can bend those beams toward corners to follow steering input.

These upgrades are important, because while four-door sedans have traditionally been primarily family cars and business transportation, auto manufacturers see these contemporarily styled and lavishly outfitted sedans also targeting the customer who used to buy personal luxury coupes such as the Ford Thunderbird and Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Twenty-five years ago one such car, the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, was the best-selling car in the country.

Today’s buyers still want style and comfort, but they also want a useable back seat in their personal luxury sedan. Back-seaters in the Buick LaCrosse can enjoy not only a power rear window sun shade, but also a DVD entertainment system with dual displays integrated into the backs of the front seats.

Naturally, both the Lacrosse and the Taurus offer a raft of safety features such as electronic stability control, air bags and high-strength steel impact protection. They also reflect concern about the instability of gas prices, with efficient powertrains, with both cars employing fuel-saving six-speed automatic transmissions.

The LaCrosse has two available V-6 engines, with the more efficient 255-horsepower unit rated at 27 MPG highway and even the brawnier 280-horsepower version scoring 26 MPG on the highway. Fuel economy ratings for the Taurus’s 263-horsepower V-6 were not yet available, but the company announced that it has plans to add to the car its EcoBoost line of efficient turbocharged engines.

This combination of style, comfort and efficiency could surprise customers who had forgotten about domestic brands until the recent congressional hearings. An appropriate old commercial, repurposed for the Taurus and LaCrosse could be the coffee commercial where diners’ preferred coffee was replaced with another brand, to their surprise.

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