It's twisted and a bit pathetic, but I will be shedding a tear next week in honor of the Ford Taurus officially and finally going out of production. It had a 21-year run that in retrospect is the longest fall from grace in history. During that time Ford sold 7 million Tauruses and another 2 million Mercury Sables. Since January 1st of this year, however, Ford had halted sales of the Taurus to the public, accepting orders only from fleet and rental companies. Despite that, the Taurus remained Ford's best selling passenger car almost every month this year, selling more units than the Focus and even the red hot Mustang. The Taurus saved Ford when it was introduced in 1985 and immediately sold 263,000 units during that first year. That number would rise to 410,000 units in 1992 when the Taurus overtook the Honda Accord to become the best selling passenger car in the U.S., a title it held for five straight years. We've been talking a lot around here lately about what mistakes Ford has made in the past that are responsible for its current dire straits. Perhaps the single biggest one is abandoning the Taurus. Ford knew the controversial redesign of the third generation Taurus wasn't going to recapture the passenger car sales crown from the Toyota Camry, and SUV sales at the time were beginning to gain momentum. Rather than reinvest in the car, Ford spent the next ten years pissing away the good name of the Taurus by abandoning development on the car or a competitive replacement, as well as not bothering to market the car responsible for saving the company in the mid-Eighties.
Workers at Ford's plant in Hapeville, GA are particularly upset over the Taurus being discontinued, not just because the plant will be closed and they'll be unemployed, but also because the team had become a world class workforce, even raising quality levels at the plant after Ford announced it would be closed. Mark Fields, Ford's current President of the Americas, admits even he doesn't understand how the company strayed so far from the Taurus. He also claims he's attempting to lead Ford's current turnaround with appealing new products, just like the Taurus led the turnaround back in 1985. We're sorry Mr. Fields, but the impact of the original Taurus is unlikely to be matched by anything in the Blue Oval pipeline right now.
[Source: Yahoo News]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 17)
jb @ Oct 19th 2006 8:25PM
Seriously, is there anyone at Ford with any common sense? Seriously, I really mean it. Can anyone anywhere out there call out an executive at Ford with a clue? This is another example of absolute incompetence. Bye bye Ford...and good riddance, actually. You deserve your inevitable fate.
GhostDoggy @ Oct 19th 2006 8:28PM
Why should this be of a shock to you? You must know and see a lot more Taurus drivers and owners than I do. I see more people driving the Taurus competition than a Taurus. Sure, just my one-man observation, but still says something.
naugahyde @ Oct 19th 2006 8:37PM
As my brother likes to say, "Pride of the rental fleet."
Misaniovent @ Oct 19th 2006 8:54PM
What a smart move to throw out a high-quality work force and a high-selling car.
They keep the Crown Victoria, they might as well keep this and use it to prevent the Fusion from finding a tremendous presence in fleets.
karlInSanDiego @ Oct 19th 2006 9:12PM
You can't polish a turd. Largest selling car to never have a soul. Every other high selling car had owners who liked them. Taurus was always for Ford families that showed up at a dealership saying, "What do ya got that'll hold me, the Mrs. and 3 little kids?"
Barney @ Oct 19th 2006 9:29PM
Meanwhile they are setting up their factory in Canada to make what they call their future vehicles. A SUV cross-over. At this time, one would think they would refrain making anything SUV.
Howard Kerr @ Oct 19th 2006 9:38PM
If Ford knew that the 3rd gen. Taurus was not going to be the big seller that the 2nd gen. was, why did they bother building it? Obviously, that segment of the market was somewhat important. Did Toyota give up on it's minivans before they started selling in today's numbers? Did Honda stick with 4 passenger car doors and a 4 cylinder engine when it came out with the 2nd gen. Odyssey?
Ford gave up on the Taurus/Sable as soon as the 3rd gen. hit showrooms. They did an even worse job on the Windstar. When the going got tough......they moved on to SUVs, and they are the poorer, literally, for it.
Jason @ Oct 19th 2006 9:49PM
The best car chase (in high school) I was ever in was in a 1989 Taurus LX with digital dash. We had the whole dash lit up. *memories*
The Taurus died because Ford never knew how to keep a hot thing going. The design was passed up by the competition and like with so many Ford/GM stories of recent, no one running the company knew how to keep it fresh and modern. I feel sorry for the factory workers, but when you are working for a company that is run by old brass who aren't into the latest car trends, these things happen often.
Tool @ Oct 19th 2006 9:54PM
This is the biggest piece of shit on the road. Period.
I, unfortunately, got stuck with one in a recent rental and it was a marvel of 1997 technology. The transmission shifter was as slick as the one on my grandpa's tractor.
Ford should be ashamed for continuing to produce this . . . and we wonder why they are in so much trouble.
Bold Moves, my ass.
marc @ Oct 19th 2006 10:03PM
weird...i thought this car was long gone...lol
laserwizard @ Oct 19th 2006 10:07PM
Well, look at the Camry - when it first came out, it was an awful, ugly, cramped vehicle. The next generation added more ugliness with a wagon version that looked like a 1980's Rambler. The next version was a putrid, tupperware interior vehicle that was as inspiring as Phyllis Diller in a thong. Then Toyota got serious and made a version of the Camry that was almost tolerable to look at, was as beautiful on the inside as a Tacoma, and fooled everyone into thinking it was a good car.
Let's not have any twits here lecture Ford on the Taurus. At the time the Taurus was launched, it was the best family car in its class. That was something that Toyota's Camry never was until the fifth generation! Ford felt, and rightfully so, that if Americans were going to be idiots and snarf up 800,000 plus f-150's, 500,000 plus Explorers, and several hundred thousand full-sized SUV's and make multiple thousands of dollars a piece in profit, it could concede the 400,000 sales volume of the Taurus and the mininal profit it delivered.
The problem with Ford was not abandoning the Taurus - it was totally abandoning the car market - but, Ford has always made the best trucks hands down so they went to their strength. Now Ford is having to pay for its strength.
But let's not go overboard - Honda and Toyota didn't start building good cars in this class until the last generation of their camcords. The rest of their product run were underpowered, overpriced, bland vehicles better suited for filling junkyards than America's highways. And that is a fact!
iQuack @ Oct 19th 2006 10:13PM
What's surprising to me is that Ford doesn't seem to understand the importance of long-term branding except for the FORD name.
The Honda Civic dates back to 1973 and the Accord to 1976. The Toyota Corolla dates back to 1967 and the Camry to 1983.
These cars are vastly different from their originals and all have grown, too. But their names have been retained as these cars have been upgraded. They've gained market share over cars whose model names are created and thoughtlessly thrown away--like the Escort, Contour, Taurus, and others.
So, now we have the "Fusion." Well, WHOOPIE! The car that replaced the Taurus should have been an all-new Taurus, not some newly-named "Fusion" that Ford must now spend millions of dollars to promote.
Of course, auto companies probably should drop the names of cars that have negative reputations. Few people will miss the Vega, Cavalier, Grand AM, etc. from GM.
The Taurus was originally a worthy American car. If Ford had kept the Taurus competitive, there would be no need to drop that name and start over with an uninspired name like Fusion.
Creating and killing models too often seems like a bad idea to me and is certainly one of the reasons Ford is in trouble now.
Greg A. @ Oct 19th 2006 10:22PM
#11 "...And that is a fact!"
No, it's not. Not only is just an opinion, it's an opinion that few buyers in this market segment share.
Rastus @ Oct 19th 2006 10:25PM
I agree Quack. Ford does not know how to "nourish" anything. They don't know the meaning of "investment" (both R&D and Name recognition) and flip names like flapjacks.
It's a shame how most people on this website can grasp the meaning of all this, yet the insular a-holes in their ivory towers fail to grasp the meaning of name recognition.
Ford- Bold Movements....Bold Bowel Movements which stink to high hell. Only to be replaced by a Mazda knockoff.
Truthfully, Ford does not even know How to build a car in North America anymore. They gave up...many, many years ago.
It's a shame to see a former industrial giant cow-tow to anyone and Everyone.
The Japanese never have even encountered any real resistance in this marketplace, not for the past 20 years.
Mazda engineers Fords, Ford of Europe engineers Fords, yet Ford NA engineers pickups and ONLY pickups.
Pathetic, and an absolute disgrace.
Rastus @ Oct 19th 2006 10:32PM
laserwizard,
Your "facts" speak nothing. History is oftentimes modified to fullfill certain fantasies, for whatever reason.
Your fantasy which believes that Americans just AMAZINGLY *AWOKE* one day and proclaimed BOTH Camrys and Accords to be "superior" one day, even though every LAST PREVIOUS ONE was a POS...
...well, keep smoking your Canadian Ganja, my friend...
Why such an ABRUPT CHANGE OF HEART?
You make absolutely NO sense my friend. None whatsoever.
And are you expecing the very SAME abrupt about-face with regards to American automobiles (not trucks)?
If so, ...then by all means take another toke, because it's not gonna happen anytime soon.
...about-face my ass...completey absurd and unfounded crap.
Elias @ Oct 19th 2006 10:33PM
I've had the misfortune of driving some Tauruses on a few occasions when my car has been in for service. The loaners the dealership (The Collection) gives out come from Enterprise, so it's usually a random car. I don't understand how it could be so popular, if only because it's inexpensive. It's just so ugly and craptastic in so many ways.
PJ @ Oct 19th 2006 10:37PM
"Creating and killing models too often seems like a bad idea to me and is certainly one of the reasons Ford is in trouble now."
Yep. The sad thing is that many of those now-reviled model names once carried a lot of weight. In the late '80s, people were happy to say they drove a Taurus. In the late '90s, people liked the sound of driving a Cavalier. Monte Carlo, Impala, Stratus, Focus, Ranger, Town Car, Monterey, Grand Prix... there's a lot of name recognition and brand equity going down the toilet there.
That's what happens when you let obsolete designs hang around for years, or revive storied nameplates to sell on an uncompetitive product.
Cervus @ Oct 19th 2006 10:44PM
The last American car that my family owned was a 1989 Taurus Wagon LX we got in 1990 after our Chevy Celebrity wagon finally gave up the ghost. The car had problems. I remember one incident when we had family visiting and we had planned to go the San Diego Zoo, and we found the starter had died. Instead of the Zoo, my visiting family members spent the day fixing the car.
The next new car we got in '93 was a Honda Civic. My mother drove that for ten years.
Eric Simonson @ Oct 19th 2006 10:45PM
The last generation Taurus was a pretty good car--if it was optioned right. An SE with a 24 valve v-6 could get out of its own way and it handled decently without sacreficing its ride quality. It is too bad that Ford couldn't market its way out of a wet paper bag if it was in the ocean. The Taurus' depriciation curve looked like a cliff--after 5 years they are in the 'scrap-metal' range. But at least fleet sales are strong. :-(
Hamud @ Oct 19th 2006 10:49PM
You know what is the funniest thing here? Everybody seems to be an expertise in cars, at least they think they are. Everybody seems to know what each brand should have done to avoid what they are facing now... From your point of view things are always easy, just do that, make this like this and that like that and so on...
But some things never change, one of this is the fact that every time something about Ford comes up the surface everybody seems to be very proud unloading all the hard words they know to criticize the brand.