ff_

The Taurus was so far ahead of its time when it came out in 1986. It reshaped the family sedan market in terms of style, materials, and ride + build quality. It's too bad that Ford couldn't figure out how to keep it fresh and updated through the years, though.

mmarshall

The Five Hundered is also, in many ways, a better vehicle than the Fusion, and had an AWD option long before the Fusion did.

I've always liked the Five Hundred and the Freestyle, its wagon equivalent. Both are on my list of 10 Best Domestic-nameplate cars.

mmarshall

Well, check my earlier post......the 1995 restyling was extreme and radical, inside and out.

I agree with you that the 1986 Taurus set new standards in the style department, but not in the others you mention. Its ride, handling, fit-and-finish, and general build quality was, in general, no better than the rest of the junk Detroit was building at the time. ( that was my general impression of the car when I first test-drove it in 1986 ).

Without question, in 1986 the Accord and Camry were the standard-bearers in the mid-sized sedan and wagon class, ( and the Mazda 626 close behind ) although by today's standards the 1986 Camry was quite small for a mid-sized car, and the Accord still had some leftover minor rust problems from earlier days.

DASHOCKER

iTrader: (2)

The Tauras SHO had a Japanese V8 motor. It was built by Yamaha

ff_

The Yamaha was a V6.

DASHOCKER

iTrader: (2)

Are you sure about that? The SHO was a v8 motor. The Contour SVT was a V6

mmarshall

The first-generation Taurus SHO had a Yamaha-built V6, and a manual transmission but no automatic. Ford was forced to develop a later automatic for it because of customer demand.

The second-generation had a small Yamaha-built V8, an automatic, but no manual, so Ford then had to do the same thing in reverse...start developing a manual., but I don't remember if the second-generation manual SHO ever actually reached production or not.

One reason for the general lack of success of the second-generation SHO models was that the Yamaha V8 was small, comparatively low on power, and was somewhat outclassed by the cheaper Pontiac Grand Prix GTP's supercharged 3.8L V6.

LexFather

Yup, the orginal SHO was a V-6 from Yamaha.....
The later version had a V-8....
I think the V-6 had 220hp, the V-8 235hp

ff_

I had to do some checking, but you guys are right, in that Yamaha helped develop the V8 for the more recent SHO. It was based on Ford's "Duratec" V6.

Also says that the later V8 SHO was heavier and slower than the V6 SHO it replaced. Nice.

TwincH

We still have a 1994 SHO in our garage along with our 1998 GS400. We've got a little over 79K miles on it and is now our "beater" since the A/C went out on it for the second time after a complete A/C rebuild four years ago. Other than a new alternator and a new battery, the car is in great shape and kinda fun to drive. I do like the sound of the 3.2L Yamaha 6 in it!

Threxx

My first car, when I was 16, was a 1990 Ford Taurus hand me down from my parents. Actually it was a 'buy me down' because they still made me pay for it, but I only had to pay 1000 when it was actually worth a whopping ~2500.

I remember for prom that year my partents let me take their new (at the time) body style 97 Taurus (this was 1998)... I was so excited I washed and waxed it and got it looking all shiny for the prom. Lots of other kids had much cooler cars to go to prom with but I was still really excited to be driving such a (relatively) nice/new car at the time.

I had great memories in that 90 Taurus - from some exciting 'back seat' escapades with girlfriends, to just doing super crazy driving stunts in empty parking lots and back roads - that car handled like crap and accelerated 0-60 in ~10 seconds, but it was so much fun because I just didn't care about it, and the handling have very predictable limits. I say predictable because the tires would be howling LONG before the car broke loose. It was like an audible traction warning system - the old fashioned way.

The 90 Taurus after me breaking 3 transmission and motor mounts from crazy driving was eventually sold to a janitor at my dad's work, and I replaced it with a 94 Z28 - which while many many times faster, cooler looking, better handling, etc was just missing that "care free beater car" edge to it.

The 97 Taurus was sold to my uncle in Texas who needed a beater car to drive around for sales calls and such.

I've since moved on to bigger better cars, but I still miss that 90 Taurus and all the fun times I had in it.:

Mr. Jones

About 6-7yrs ago, I had a brand new Taurus rental for two weeks, it was w/o a doubt the worst car I have ever experienced.

Threxx

Tauruses were an excellent buy if you got the base model - like the 96-98 Taurus G. Granted you wouldn't have a CD player and such... but it at least came with automatic, V6, alloy wheels, power locks, and windows on the newer base models and could be purchased with negotiations for all of $12,500. That's hard to argue against for a midsized midclass family sedan, even if wasn't as nice or reliable as a camry of a similar year... a comparable Camry would cost 50% more!

BTW - the worst rental car I've ever driven was the old body style Chevy Malibu. Miserable miserable car... and such poor driving dynamics it nearly got me killed, to boot.

mmarshall

This is basically why the Pontiac Grand Prix GTP, with its cheaper supercharged 3.8L V6 with more HP / torque, blew the 2nd-gen SHO away in sales. Ford found that the SHO just couldn't compete, and finally killed it.

mmarshall

The huge number of Tauruses that rental-car compaines and government agencies bought up in bulk and fleet sales helped pump up the sales numbers so that those figures, for a number of years, were comparable to those of perennial top-sellers Accord and Camry.