Ford Taurus is one for the history books
Risky bet in 1985 paid off handsomely for carmaker
At at time when companies loathed taking risks, Ford couldn’t have made a bolder move than to create the Taurus, a sleek, European-style sedan that stood apart from the boxy, clunky American cars of its day.
Ford’s bet-the-company move in 1985 was emulated again two decades later when another risktaking and revered executive, CEO Alan Mulally, revived the Taurus nameplate the company had abandoned.
Now Taurus is going away again, most likely for all time. Ford announced that as part of its move to beef up its truck and SUV lineup, it’s going to kill the Taurus along with the Fiesta, Fusion and its small van, the C-Max. Focus will be recreated as a more robust hatchback, the Focus Active. The only car in the existing lineup that will remain is the iconic Mustang.
These days, Taurus is a vestige of the past. While full-size cars ruled U.S. highways through the 1970s, the gasprice shocks that followed made midsize models such as the Fusion the most popular. Now even they are overshadowed by small crossovers. Taurus is seen mostly on highways in its police version, but even that market has turned to SUVs.
Yet Taurus’ place in automotive history is secure.
In the mid-1980s, Ford wanted a game changer. Sedan design had grown stale. Taurus would be completely different — a car that people would proudly want to
park in their driveways to show off to neighbors.
“Taurus will live on in history as one of Ford’s brightest ideas,” said Leslie Kendall, curator of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. “A lot of other manufacturers looked at the Taurus and said, ‘We had better catch up.’ ”
John Clinard, a semiretired public relations executive for Ford, recalled the nervous moments when Taurus was introduced.
“It was a big gamble,” he said.
With its lack of a conventional grille and rounded, instead of squared off, shape, consumers brought together to critique future designs in focus groups hated it. Ford, showing a courage that few companies nowadays would
“Taurus will live on in history as one of Ford’s brightest ideas.”
Leslie Kendall Curator of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles
muster, moved ahead with a conviction that it had a potential hit on its hands.
“It was a car that did not research well, but people knew in their gut this would work,” Clinard said.
They were right. Sales roared for the Taurus and its Mercury sibling model, the Sable. The station wagon version was as shapely as the sedan. Enthusiasts embraced a performance version, the SHO, for Super High Output.
Ford says just because Taurus and the other car models are going away, drivers should look to the future. It hopes people will come to see its reinvigorated lineup of SUVs and crossovers as the cars of tomorrow — sleek, practical and fuel-efficient.
“I think the Taurus was a fantastic vehicle for Ford, and I think our new lineup is even cooler,” said Jim Farley, president of Ford’s global division and himself a fan of the SHO version of Taurus.
Still, that’s not much comfort to enthusiasts such as Ron Porter in Lake Orion, Mich., owner of a 1989 Taurus SHO in “currant red.”
He bought it in 2008, and it’s worth more today, he said. “People still like it.”
The SHO version was a car that people could drive to work during the week and race on weekends.
Porter, member of the national SHO Club, which brings Taurus fans together in droves to kick tires, said it will hurt to see it go. When Taurus SHO came out, the idea of a modern Ford-built, high-performance sedan “was pretty radical,” he said. Now, “Ford people are left without that kind of option.”