√Ford Taurus, the Blue Oval’s fabulous failure

The Ford Taurus was the US’s answer to all of Ford Australia’s Falcon-shaped problems. It didn’t quite work out that way.

Original story by then Drive editor Phil Scott published on 22 March, 1996.

Left to its own devices, Mercedes-Benz may not have seen the need for a gadget capable of holding a full-sized styrene cup of Slurpee.

Mercedes would not be Mercedes without unrestricted autobahns, Krupp steel and the German devotion to technik. The cupholder, by McBenz, was not an easy cultural fit.

The concept of sucking down a bucket of Mr Slurpee, en route to Regensburg at 240km/h, is totally foreign to the Mercedes engineer.

Gridlocked on the Harbour Freeway in Los Angeles, however, the cupholder is more important to American drivers than any amount of Mercedes negative scrub steering geometry, low roll centres or liquid-filled suspension bushes. The only liquid of interest during the 25km/h crawl on the I-110 comes in big cups from Starbuck’s coffee house.

Cars speak volumes about their state of origin.

Ford’s new Taurus, the successor to America’s best-seller, says plenty about the US driving experience. It is also Detroit’s most controversial, exuberant design in 30 years and the first mainstream American model imported here since the 1950s.

For $42,900 it is a pretty good if slightly odd car, very different to its unnatural enemies in the prestige car market. Unnatural, because in Australia the Taurus is being pitched as a premium product.

Back home in the US, it’s a fleet car. A best-seller, yes, but not among private US customers, who prefer the Honda Accord.

Here, the Honda features prominently on the list of Taurus rivals, along with the Nissan Maxima and, indicating a fair deal of whimsy in the Ford marketing department, the BMW 318i.

A measure of difference: in Bavaria, home of BMW, the Government wouldn’t dream of legislating every nearside rear-view lens be etched with the words: “Objects in this mirror may appear closer than they really are”.

To the German driver, it states the blindingly obvious about convex glass. American law requires the prominent warning, in the interests of consumer protection. This, while no US federal statute requires the compulsory use of seat belts.

Further social commentary: the Taurus comes standard with anti-carjack central locking. Hit the remote control and only the driver’s door unlocks. Hit the button twice to open the three others and you can trigger the boot release separately. As soon as the Taurus moves from rest, every door automatically locks tight, with an emphatic thunk, even if the movement is down your driveway in reverse gear.

Car styling is the most obvious insight into the company and the country behind the badge.

The Taurus is radical by any standard. Chief designer John Doughty compares it to Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles or Jørn Utzon’s Opera House, both scorned on arrival, now lauded as timeless and forward thinking.

Younger, early-adopters of style in the US love the Taurus but a lot of older, more conservative buyers scorn it. About half the Australians Ford researched before launching this car have the same shocked reaction to the styling: they hate it; others want to buy one, immediately.

Despite all the fuzzy, feel-good stuff about safety and the environment, car design is still the No. 1 motivation for buying, closely followed by price. Witness the fatal flaw at Lexus. Nowhere but Japan could the jewel-like Lexus LS400 have been made. So fanatically detailed, so fantastically refined, it is more like an expensive Swiss watch. For all its intricate technical merit, its so-conservative styling has failed to connect with Western emotions.

The Italians, of course, have the style thing wired. Red, melodramatic, excitable, noisy, full of brio and machismo – a Ferrari could hardly be mistaken for something out of, say, Finland.

National character, and recognition of time and place, were never better exemplified than with the Citroen 2CV. It could have been conceived nowhere else but late ’40s France, sketched in a Gauloise haze by M. Boulanger, with Edith Piaf on the valve wireless.

Initially, the Detroit suits thought Taurus would make a nifty replacement for the Australian Falcon. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed and we now have the Taurus as niche model, car industry code for “we know we own’t sell boatloads so we’ve loaded them up with every extra known to mankind”.

The original 1986 Taurus broke the US land-yacht school of car styling and, to American eyes, was a revolution. To the rest of the Western car world, it was an okay-looking contemporary design.

Given the task of creating a successor, Ford set out once again to shock its buyers. And succeeded.

The Taurus looks like one of those designer sketches, the ones car makers show at new model launches, which bear no resemblance to the finished product. With Taurus, it was almost sketch pad to showroom and, if 10 days of footpath double-takes are any guide, Taurus is just as startling in Sydney as in the San Fernando Valley.

After the initial surprise, the Taurus’s eggy styling grows more comfortable with familiarity. All those compound curves and perfectly formed ovals disguise its sheer size. You’d never guess it was longer than a Ford Falcon, almost as wide and only 50 kilos lighter. It looks a complete class smaller, a tribute to the design.

Two features dominate: the excessively long nose, which overhangs the front wheels and upsets the proportions, and a droopy, saggy tail, as seen on cars like the Nissan Infiniti J30 and, to a lesser extent, the Bluebird.

Ford isn’t the first to go ovoid. Toyota did it with the previous model Celica. The Taurus is better executed but, to me, slightly overdone and let down by alloy wheels from a time warp. The big question is whether the stylised egg will stand the test of time.

Designed as a full five-seater family car, its rear-seat accommodation is seriously compromised by style. The roof’s broad downward sweep means headroom is tight and the huge, perfectly formed oval back [window] puts plenty of sunlight on passenger’s heads.

The 3.0-litre V6 is a fresh, refined design that makes the local Fairmont Ghia six seem gruff and unrefined, even if the larger local motor propels the broader local Ford down the road more quickly. A second separates the two in any rush from 0-100km/h but the American is by far the smoother torquer, using about a litre less fuel per 100km.

The Taurus cockpit environment is cosy and comfortable, dominated by still more ovals for the instruments and centrally-mounted command centre, which controls audio and air flow in an innovative and intuitive package. You don’t need the manual to work it out, a fair test of ergonomic quality.

There is a pleasing stiffness to the body shell. The decibel meter may suggest the Taurus isn’t as muted as a Commodore, but the American car emits higher-quality noise. It’s tuneful mechanical stuff, not harsh, guttural exhaust notes, plastic sizzles or discordant suspension jangles. The tyres are too noisy on our coarse chip roads and not all that convincing in the wet. The seats could bother some drivers on long hauls.

We tend not to think of American cars as athletic. The bias has always been towards comfort, to the point where urging them on only results is so much tyre squeal the steering wheel serves as a kind of volume control. Not Taurus.

The suspension is fine for anything legal on public roads and rides without any unpleasant wallow, although you’re conscious on the dart and dive stuff that this is 1.5 tonnes of Detroit iron. Despite the new-wave appearance, swift changes of direction need to be clearly notified to the chassis.

Ford expects to sell the Taurus to what previously would have been called yuppies. The equipment list reflects this, with most every novelty included in the price, and those which aren’t, readily available in a $2500 luxury pack.

Will yuppies find more than $40,000 for a Ford when a BMW or Honda beckons nearby? Probably not. My guess is that the more adventurous corporate types, tired of an unrelenting diet of Fairmont and Calais, may take the Taurus by the horns.

This American import is not as quiet or well built as a Toyota Vienta, as refined as a Nissan Maxima, as much fun to drive as a BMW or as big and bluff as a Commodore or Falcon.

A giant leap forward for Ford in the US, Taurus – when ranged against the international competition – is competent but no world beater. Were the styling any less arresting it, would pass largely unnoticed among similarly competent machinery.

America, after all, is the home of showbiz …

Expatriate Australian chief designer, John Doughty, on the Taurus:

“Designers understand where trends are going and we wanted a single, unified shape.”
“I’m sure some people own’t [warm to the design]. It will be absolutely beyond them.”
“You can’t sit in a designer’s ivory tower and say, ‘I’m right, the rest of the world is wrong’. There are things that people don’t like and probably never will like.”

So, what happened next?

It seems almost comical looking back now, but it didn’t take long for Ford’ great American hope to tank in Australia. Just six months after launching locally, dealers were heavily discounting Ford’s egg on wheels with Drive reporting in September, 1996 savings of over $6000 on the range-topping Taurus Ghia.

And it was all downhill from there. Just twelve months after launch discounts had blown out to over $8000 as Taurus sales continued to tank in Australia, Ford having sold less than half the number of the targeted 5000 cars annually.

Further discounts followed. In August 1997, savvy buyers could save over $10,000 on list price, some dealers offering the top-of-the-line Taurus Ghia with the optional $2500 ‘luxury pack’ for $34,990 plus on-road costs, a discount of $10,460.

The sales slide continued in 1997, just 1407 Tauruses sold against Ford’s 5000 prediction leading to further discounts in 1998 with some dealers advertising MY97 Taurus Ghia for just $31,990 plus on-road costs, a discount of over $13,000 against the manufacturer’s list price. It was the beginning of the end, Ford Australia opting out of importing 1998-plated Taurus, an inglorious end to a polarising car.

The Australian public’s indifference to Ford’s American upstart, a car that at one point was set to replace our home-grown Falcon, is summed up best by looking at sales figures of the latter.

In 1996, the first year of Taurus on sale in Australia, Ford dealers sold 77,835 Falcons against the US import’s sales of around 2300. In 1997, the only full year on sale for the Taurus, just 1407 Aussies bought into the American dream while our venerable and much-loved enjoyed sales of 71,850.

How’s that for hammering home a point, Detroit?

Have you ever owned or driven a Ford Taurus? We’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below?

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