Crikey! Almost four years of Curbside Classics, and I’ve never done a proper write-up of the Taurus. Well, it’s not going to be tonight, since it’s already ten o’clock. For now, an Outtake will have to do. I shot this a couple of nights ago on our regular urban hike to Skinner Butte, where folks were climbing on the basalt columns in the last golden rays of a fabulous September day. But I can’t exactly keep my mouth totally shut about the Taurus.
So many old Taurii seem to end up like this; they just don’t seem to engender a lot of love and devotion. I really don’t know the exact year of this one, but since Gen. 1 was made from 1986 through 1991, I’m arbitrarily assigning it a model year. Actually, I think a 1987 was what my father had. It was the only car he ever bought based on my advice, and he loved it; such a step up from his stripper Zephyr four.
The Taurus really was a huge breakthrough car: It didn’t have any really overwhelming qualities that stood out, but it was the first truly competent, all-around-balanced American FWD car. A pleasure to drive (not too aggressively, though), and such an improvement over the GM A-Bodies in terms of overall refinement. No wonder it jumped to the top of the sales charts. Even in domestic-phobic California the Taurus was highly popular, the Camry of its time. It was another triumph in the 1980s Ford renaissance.
Well, that’s the condensed version of my future Taurus CC. Smile, it could be worse.
In July of 1985, my mother bought her first Crown Victoria – an 85 with the LoPo 5.0 and the AOD. At the time I was driving a 77 New Yorker 440, and considered the Vic inferior in almost every way. And after being spoiled by the 440/Torqueflite combo, the 5.0/AOD/tall geared rear end was excruciating to drive.
About 6 months later my car-mentor Howard bought a black 86 Mercury Sable. 3.0 Vulcan V6 (I believe) and a 4 speed OD transaxle. He let me drive it, and I vividly remember my first reaction: “I wish Mom had waited just a bit longer to buy a car.”
The torque and shift characteristics of the powertrain were smooth and seamless, something that had been in short supply since the 70s. The body felt tight and well put together, and it looked like nothing else on the road.
You are correct about the fate of all early Taurii – even worse here in salt country. The exception is a brown GL model driven by an elderly lady to 5 pm Mass every Saturday evening at my church. I must get some pictures, because it is simply beautiful. That car against your backdrops would win some kind of award. 🙂
What a coincidence! A neighbor of ours up the street drove also drove a brown GL right up until her passing about a year ago. It was in absolutely mint condition; she’d bought it new, garaged it from day one, and only drove it to church, the grocery store, and the post office. I don’t know what happened to it, unfortunately. Hopefully it’s in the hands of a Taurus collector (do they exist) somewhere.
My parents were twice on the brink of buying Taurii/Sables. In the early nineties, my father very nearly bought an immaculate, one-owner 1991 SHO. He put practicality over power and bought an Aerostar. When the Aerostar was being replaced some years later, he looked at a loaded — roof, leather, CD, the works — 1995 Sable in showroom condition. It was a nice car — silver, grey leather interior, owned by an older couple. The one got passed up for a similarly cherry New Yorker (with the 3.0 Mitsubishi engine…) The Sable would’ve likely been the better car.
Decommisioned OCP Detroit police car?
I remember watching Robocop with their cop Taurus(i?) thinking it must be very far in the future for those cars to look beat up and old.
Honestly, I see a lot here that reminds me of the MKZ.
The Taurus, when it arrived in October 1985, was a revelation. Imagine, an American family sedan that could go head to head with the best in it’s class. Heaven knows I loved mine, a 1994 Emerald Green sedan with a rare matching cloth interior. I drove that car for fifteen years and was never disappointed by it. Many people dismiss the Vulcan V-6 as a boat anchor, but I always found it peppy, and even better, tough. Oh, I do miss cast iron engines with pushrods – but I admit to being an automotive throwback.
@ “Oh, I do miss cast iron engines with pushrods”
May I apply for membership in your club? The Vulcan, the Mopar 3.3, the Vortec. They may be dull and stupid, but there is something to be said for dull and stupid that just keeps doing what it is supposed to do for eons. Chrysler ditching the 3.3/3.8 was the factor that steered me away from buying one of their new minivans last year. The new 3.6 may turn out to be one of the great engines – or it may become another 2.7. Place ‘yer bets, folks. At least with Kia, I am playing with house money for the first 100K.
I’m all about the “dumb & stupid” — sign me up. Those Ford 3.0 engines seemed to last forever… If a Taurus crosses the scale at the scrapyard it’s either:
1. Bad 3.8 engine
2. Running 3.0 engine & bad transmission
3. Burned, wrecked beyond recognition
I’ve had no experience with the Mopars but the 2.8 & 4.3 GM engines would run forever too..
I’m in as well. The 3.0 in my Windstar never missed a beat.
I had heard the GM 4.3 V6 was a great engine, good for 2-300K miles. So I bought a 2000 Silverado 1500, 4.3 automatic, with 45K miles for work. Serviced it religiously. Pulled about 3000 lb. of trailer all day, everyday, up to 126K miles ( 4 years at 20K yearly), then it slung a rod bearing. Granted, I drove it hard, but gee whiz, that’s all? Bummer.
methinks you overstressed it.
Course I blew up a 2.8 in my Pontiac 3 days after I bought it. Car had 90,000 miles on it. “little old lady car” was flat worn out. and my attempts to see how quick it was didn’t help it.
You could have gotten a lemon-flavored short block, and who knows what kind of maintenance and abuse it had before you bought it.
I just helped my neighbor buy a 1999 Astro van with a 4.3 that has 125K on it – based upon my Craigslist survey of used GM vehicles with this engine, they do tend to easily hit 200K miles. Watch out for that plastic distributor housing, however – they get pretty crispy by that mileage!
Yep. Mom had a gen2 Taurus with the 3.8. It was a money pit.
I can go for dumb-&-stupid, too…although, when the Taurus came out, I was deep into my Jeep phase and totally missed it. Just another passenger car…a FORD, yet, and I’d been burned on my Escort about that time. One cam rounded off the lobe…obvious factory boner, and an obvious warranty rejection because it was over the mileage. Obvious customer enragement – and to this day, I’ll not consider a new Ford or any but special-interest models.
Anyway…dumb and stupid. That was the last true Jeep engine, the 2.5 four…cam in block, hydraulic tappets, just a shortened AMC six. Bulletproof as anything on the road…the pre-Daimler Chrysler was so impressed with the engine they started using it in Dakota trucks for some years.
Are cars built better today? Absolutely. Including the engines? For the most part…but there’s a lot of untested technology coming out and a lot of stuff that doesn’t pass the common-sense survey test.
I’m seeing a bunch of electronics on cars, just for the sake of computerizing it. That to me screams catastrophic failure at some point in the future.
I work in IT and there is a time and a place for a computer, there are plenty of things that don’t need a computer.
First-gen ’89-92 Ford Probes had the Vulcan V6 as an option. Only V6 in the FWD sports coupe market. I nearly traded my ’87 Celica just to get the Vulcan I liked so much in the family Sable.
That’s actually the Mazda-derived KL-DE 2.5 engine from a Gen 2 Probe…but I won’t tell anyone 😉
Oops..
Anything sold in large numbers like this aimed at “everydriver” ends up with lots of rough examples 20+ years hence.
I remember my first ride in a 1st-gen Taurus. My family had always owned American cars so I understood the idiom. Sitting down in that Taurus was a revelation of what motoring could be and where it was going. I looked at “normal” American cars as stuck in time after that.
Strangely, by the time the clock ran out on the refreshed Taurus, it was the anachronism.
Based on the taillights and headlights, I’d say it’s an 89-91.
The 86-88 models had curved inner parking lights, and the 89-91 had a straight angle cut.
The 86-88 models (except L which had thinner reverse lenses) had amber turn signals.
As always with Ford, they’d have the amber signal on the rear then cheapen up to a typical turn/stop/tail bulb.
We had a few in the garage, company cars including an SHO, and a Sable wagon. The Sable was around for 9 years, finally succumbing to a second transaxle failure and blown headgaskets. If it had the Vulcan, it may have lasted a bit longer as it was in great condition otherwise.
I’m already in the cast iron with pushrods club. Elderly 283 and more modern 4.3.
Wife used to sell used cars. For the first few years she avoided the Taurus. I don’t know if her experience was just different but she said they represented “come backs”. She wouldn’t buy one.
They sure were popular. I have to think that one with the vulcan would have been a good car to have but I don’t tell that to my wife.
I briefly had a ’88 wagon version with the head gasket eating 3.8L V6. It wasn’t quite as awful as the one above but pretty close as the previous owner had a mishap with a fence. Sold it pretty soon as the wife refused to drive it or even be seen near it.
I wouldn’t mind beating around in a 4-cylinder, 5-speed version. I saw one in Birmingham years ago: the front fender body side molding had a small ‘MT-5’ identification on it. Did any of these survive?
I worked with a guy who asked me for suggestions for the cheapest car he could get that would seat 5 and have a/c and an am radio. After a day or so I remembered the Taurus MT-5 (that I think stood for Manual Transmission 5 speed). He bought one (new) and drove it for a long time. It was a hugely boring car – white, gray interior and that miserably rough 2.3 liter Ford 4. I never really liked that car – it sounded and felt too much like the 2.3/stick Mustang IIs that two of my friends had owned. As I think about it, it was sort of a 1980s Ford Mainline.
It had a stroked version of that motor – 2.5L in the Taurus.
Thanks, I had forgotten that. Nothing like adding a little displacement to an already-too-rough big 4 cylinder.
I’ve had my eyes out for an MT-5 since starting CC. There used to one or two around; no longer. There all quite a few early V6s around still.
Though the 2.3 in the Mustang dates back to the 2.0 litre OHC from the Pinto, Capri and et al, the Taurus 2.5 is pushrod no?
Yes the demand for the all new OHC 2.3 which only used the basic design of the German “Pinto” OHC 2.0 was so high they needed a second production line. So instead of tooling up from scratch they fired up the old “Falcon 6” line but lopped 2 cyls off and made a few other tweaks like a cylinder head designed for a separate intake manifold. To distinguish it from the OHC 2.3 it was dubbed the 2.3 HSC and that is the engine they increased the deck height and stroke of to become the 2.5 that powered the MT5 Taurus.
I have a persistent recollection there was a stripper Taurus early on that didn’t have the little what-do-you-call-it, not really a grille, more of a nozzle, you know the weird little breathing holes around the blue oval. Anyway this early stripper model just had a blank panel with the blue oval. I thought it was the MT-5, but apparently not. Some fleet version?
No that was not a stripper nor the MT-5 that was the police version that had the 3.8 with dual exhaust for a few more ponies and the usual higher output alternator, stiffer springs, ect normally associated with police versions. They failed to sell in any significant numbers and were dropped very quickly. Those slots were to improve cooling on extended idling common with police cars.
OK, extra slots for the cop motor, sure. Here’s a photo. They should have used the Sable light bar on police cars, fitted out with blue and red strobes 😉
Actually I was thinking the other way, blank panel with no slots or openings at all. Maybe just a mental mirage.
I think the Sable light bar with the red and blue strobes in it would have been a great idea (from the cop’s standpoint) for the under cover freeway car. Real easy to sneak up on someone and then flash the red and blue lights w/o any way to detect them until they lit up and it was too late.
Ahhh, back in ’91 or ’92, my college roommate & I were riding around town with zero purpose in “The Boner”, a green ’73 Bonneville I used to have. We passed one of these light blue Tauruses with the slotted grille going the opposite way on a residential side street.
I was hogging the road since there was little traffic & well, it was quite easy to dominate a street in the Boner. We left the Taurus very little room to squeak by but we did have time to yell “SORRY!!” & wave at them as we drove by.
Two blocks later we turned onto a busier street & at the next intersection that Taurus tore out behind us, literally smoking the tire(s)..We both exclaimed “dayummm!” The male driver threw a Kojak-style magnetic light on the roof & pulled us over. He and his female partner both got out of their car, standing behind the open doors of the car.
“Driver, step out of the vehicle” he said through his portable megaphone-thing as we both were getting out of the car. He immediately screamed, “passenger GET BACK IN THE VEHICLE NOW!”
Long story short, the undercover cop thought we were flipping them off while under the influence, neither of which was true. After they ran our licenses they let us go. We were pretty freaked out about that…but the strangest sight was seeing that Taurus peel out like that.
There is an MT5 or L with a regular black grille.
An MT-5 would be a fun daily driver. I haven’t seen one in years. Someone once told me that the pushrod four in that car was a modified Falcon six with two cylinders lopped off. Does anyone know if that’s true?
Yes that is it basically. Seen more often in 2.3L form in the Tempo/Topaz.
Yup made on the same production line as the Falcon 6 sharing much of the same architecture but a new “High Swirl Chamber” head with a separate intake for the early carbed Tempaz versions. It was called the HSC, even though the high swirl chamber went away with the CFI, to distinguish it from the OHC 2.3.
Still looking for one!
Paint those bumpers flat-black, tint the windows darker and the owner will have a real murdered-out ride.
I learned that term just yesterday from some Flickr group. Makes me feel hip just saying it. (Is it even hip to say “hip” any more? I’m not hip enough to know.)
I’d say it’s a ’91, from the description given by a poster above, and the color looks very 90’s.
Owned two in my life. First was its Sable twin, which I should do a CC on once you’ve done the Taurus, Paul. (If I can ever find a nice one, they’ve become rare even here.) Bought it new in ’87. Blessed relief from the ’78 Peugeot 504 – this was the first American car with good enough ride and seats to match the French trail of tears my bad-backed ex insisted we drive. I adored that Sable, and it stood us well for the eight years it was in the household.
Then in ’98 I picked up a lightly used ’96 Taurus from my manager at work, who had bought it from HP as it left their fleet. Wonderful car, drove it until the first Prius arrived in the fall of 2000.
VW Bug, Taurus/Sable, Prius, the only cars I’ve owned two of. Three of the greatest cars ever.
Interesting that you mentioned an ex-HP Taurus. I was taking a HP-UX class at their office in Bellevue, and the first day there I saw a fleet of brand new Taurus wagons – they hadn’t been introduced in showrooms yet.
I’ve got several nice Sables in the can. If you want, I’ll be happy to share 🙂
Neat, let me know when the Taurus CC is coming and I’ll see if I can get a Sable ready too.
Another vote for a Sable, we had an ’88 that was a revelation at the time. Parents traded it for an Explorer that was a huge step backwards in my opinion.
Our ’87 Sable was practically the same as a Taurus in every way except appearance. We checked out a Taurus at the time, chose the Sable just because it was better looking, maybe just slightly comfier.
Unless you wanted a total stripper the Sable was also a better value due to the higher content of a base model and since they wanted to keep a bigger price differential between the loaded Sable and it’s part of the time platform and showroom mate the Continental. In most years for many models you could option a Ford beyond the price of the Mercury and still not get the extra ~20lbs of sound deadening insulation that was on a lesser Mercury.
I had an 86 for a rental for a week in November 86. My folks had been in a major car accident and I was needed as chauffer/moral support. My mother was barely mobile, with a cracked spine and the Taurus handled the suburban Chicago roads nicely. I never wanted a Taurus, but my folks got a wagon a few years later and kept it a long time.
HP used Taurii as fleet/manager-perk cars. They’d buy a large batch every year and unload the used ones through the credit union. Didn’t hurt the popularity of the brand one bit.
Lots of fleets loved the Taurus and used them exclusively when they first came out.
I heard from HP friends they hated the ovoid third-gen Taurus. It actually had less rear headroom and the engineers stuck in the back kept bumping their heads.
Wikipedia says 51% of all Taurus sales for 1996 went to fleets.
I worked with a salesman who loathed having to rent Taurus rental cars. This was the company’s policy as per the size of the rental so the salesguy ended up with Taurus/Sables unless he wanted to kick in some of his own cash (or frequent flyer perks, etc) to bump up to Crown Vic level. Consequently those Taurus/Sables rented by him suffered much abuse.
My sister currently has a ’92 or ’93 with low miles (70k) that had the bad transmission. She got a later year junk yard used transmission put in by some of her “contacts” on the other side of the tracks…
when the taurus first showed up, i thought that it was just a blatant audi 5000 rip-off. then my girlfriend’s mother got the wagon version. it was a revelation. americans could design a modern vehicle with excellent space utilization and ergonomics that didn’t float all over the road and they could price it well below the europeans. the taurus heralded the beginning of the end of the malaise era.
Hey, if anyone wants a copy of Eric Taub’s book about the making of the Taurus then please let me know. It’s a great read even now. Called Taurus: The Making of the Car that Saved Ford. Email me: maffuccio at gmail dot com
Right car at the right time for Ford. The ’84 5000 was a hit for Audi and sold like crazy before the UI issue hit. The Taurus launched with a similar but at the same time very unique design at half the price. The look was really fresh back then.
Not just a new design but an all-new state of the art platform with tons of room and good handing. The powertrains were new. The car felt solid and European with its firm suspension. Even the bench seat version was pretty cool. All of the controls worked like no other Ford before, solid rotary knobs for HVAC, big release bars under the seats to slide them.
I can’t think of an American car since that’s been as big a hit for their company or had as many innovations.
For me Gen 2 was just a facelift of the original but with so much decontenting and nothing new it lost its charms. Ford jumped the shark with the weird Gen 3, then in typical Big 3 knee-jerk fashion made Gen 4 super vanilla. It bombed. Gen 1 hit a sweet spot for design.
The new Volvo S80 based Taurus is a nice looking car but really expensive. The Fusion has taken Taurus’ place in the line-up.
My then new 86 Taurus MT-5
That looks so much nicer than my friend’s white 86 MT-5. His was white and base equipment in every way but air.
You’re one of the few who know what an MT-5 is! I had an ASC moonroof installed shortly thereafter.
With the optional wheel package it handled very well too. Gas mileage was outstanding.
I was in Real Estate at the time. Sold it in 1991 to get a new Mustang 5.0/5 spd convertible.
Nice version; it looks almost like a SHO!
Wow, I don’t remember seeing many (if any) black 1g Taurii… that looks great, especially with those wheels. Very cool, and the fact that it’s an MT5 model is the cherry on top.
In the office where one guy had the white 86 MT-5, another guy leased a black 86 or 87 Taurus absolutely loaded to the gills with power everything, fancy wheels and leather. Those two cars had personalities as different as, well, black and white.
I remember hearing somewhere that there was a debate about what to call the car. IIRC some within Ford wanted to call it the LTD. Others argued that a car so breakthrough needed a new name.
They used a new, cross-functional development approach on the car. It was more holistic and the team (I think it was simply called Team Taurus) even got involved in the naming issue, which typically didn’t happen back then.
We traded my wife’s 87 Honda CRX on a brand new 91 Taurus. We were new parents ,and the Taurus had something the Honda didn’t . Namely a back seat. That Taurus was the first Ford I had ever owned ,and was such a great car it lead to us owning our current 2001 Taurus. Both Tauruses have the plain 3.0 engines which as stated are bullet proof.
When I was a kid these things were everywhere. It seemed, at least at my grammar school, that parents either drove Chrysler minivans or Taurus/Sable wagons. I haven’t seen a 1st generation Taurus/Sable in quite some time, probably because they all were eaten by the salt monster in Chicago. The 2nd generation cars must have gotten better rust proofing as I still see them on the road earning their keep.
Our family had an ’87 Wagon. That was the car that introduced me to torquesteer and FWD plow. Our VW Dasher and Fox didn’t make enough horses to cause any front wheel shenanigans under power (and they were lingitudinally mounted with equal length half-shafts which minimized what torquesteer there might have been anyway) and even with the motors hanging over the nose they were light enough to be fairly nimble. They still understeered but not with the determination the Taurus could.
I see one of these Tauruses around on a regular basis, probably a early ’90s, but with good paint and trim in decent shape, it doesn’t really stand out as a 20 year old car. Slap some 18″ rims and some overwrought headlight and taillights on it and the only thing that would give it away would be the too low beltline.
I do remember the Sable being more beautiful, with its light-bar grille and elegant and more expansive backlight.
I did like the light-bar grille on the Sable, but… The rear fender wells were flat across the top, sort of like pseudo-skirts, as opposed to the Taurus’ rounded fender well. I’ve never liked fender skirts…
I agree about the Sable rear wheel openings not looking as good as the Taurus. I also didn’t like the hidden D-pillar on the Sable. As someone mentioned the Taurus wagon was a fine looking car, so not American looking.
My second car was an ’86 Taurus MT-5 EURO. I traded in my ’73 Thunderbird for it. I think the “Euro” designation meant they took the already stripped MT-5 and added hubcaps instead of alloys. Also had a luggage rack on the deck lid for some reason. I bought it in 1991 with about 90k on it. Put a new transmission in it at 130k which was near impossible to find. Two things I remember about it was the gas gauge always read full until it was empty, then the needle was instantly drop. There was also a mysterious rust spot on the left rear door about the size of a quarter. I noticed the same rust spots on many Taurii of that era. I finally got rid of it when the exhaust manifold got so hot that it melted most of the wires under the hood and black smoke came out thru the vents. As I remember, It was a pretty peppy car for a 19 year old driver.
Dan,
interesting. I wonder how many were sold. I wonder how many MT5s had the lack of brightwork like yours (and how SHOs were sold) around the windows. Makes it look much more expensive.
You’re lucky it did not catch on fire and you did not suffer injury. I think about 2 percent of all Taurii in that generation were 4 cyl; of that 2 percent, even less were MT5s.