Picture this: You’re the top decision maker responsible for continuing the saga of a beloved institution. Tasked with keeping the flame of interest lighted for years to come, you design a product that wows critics upon initial release but is soon scorned by the general public and experts alike. Your legacy is still secure, but nevertheless diminished. I’m not talking about George Lucas, or any one individual, actually. I’m talking about the team at Ford. The folks who sculpted the automotive equivalent of the Star Wars prequels upon an unsuspecting public.
Twenty years later, its easy to conjure up a visceral emotional response to this portion of the Taurus and Sable tale. Ford bungled their chance to maintain leadership in an important segment of the market by betting the farm on an idea instead of a proven concept. It’s also somewhat understandable why they did so; cracks were showing in the once infallible reputation of the design that electrified the industry upon its debut in 1986; the Camry and Accord were more competitive than ever; and Chrysler debuted the “Cab Forward” LH cars to much fanfare in 1992.
But to let the development team behind the new Taurus off the hook for the final design would be misguided. The group had a lot of external stressors underlying every move they made, but they were too envious for their own good. Dick Landgraff and company come off as jilted exes fresh out of a failed relationship; jealous at the Accord for the demographic it brought into dealer showrooms; stung that another American automaker was receiving all the attention for their products instead of their own. An air of haughty arrogance led the team down the path to the dark side.
Would Lew Veraldi, the man largely responsible for the success of the original Taurus, have made the same mistakes in regards to the design? Not likely. Veraldi’s design calculations were based on known entities: established European nameplates that were equally praised for their looks and their driving dynamics. Here’s what those automakers were doing in the early to mid 1990’s:
The E34 and E39 5-Series featured evolutionary styling and enough improvements to garner positive critical acclaim upon their introduction. Motor Trend enjoyed the 1997 5-Series so much they declared the car their Import Car Of The Year.
Audi largely continues to do the same.
The Japanese luxury upstarts also emulate their already established competition, with Lexus gaining immediate praise for its attention to quality.
There was no Audi, BMW, Lexus, or any other luxury make in the design studio with Landgraff and company. Just the Camry, Accord, and the 1992 Taurus. The new Team Taurus wanted to strike out on their own and pioneer a new design trend, wholly rejecting anything resembling a traditionally boxy design. Although market research showed consumer interest in more adventurous shapes, the desire to create a bold, fresh design trumped nearly everything else along the way.
Note the exotic locales and extremely nice houses featured in this ad
This immense tunnel vision created delusions of grandeur that led to even more blunders while the Taurus was being developed. Just who did Ford want to buy the Taurus? Varsity Captains! Yes, successful jocks with a beautiful wife and kids, living the American Dream. I wish I was kidding, but Ford really did create a profile of the Taurus buyer based on those guidelines, despite the fact that their own research concluded the average Taurus buyer was older, less educated, and earning less money than their model mid-size buyer. Those Shiny Happy People opted for the red-hot Explorer instead.
Research also pointed to customers liking the trunk space of the 1992 Taurus. Unfortunately, the 1996 model had a smaller one, four cubic inches of less space,to be exact. Now that number was still impressive – but reliance on the elliptical design meant the trunk opening needed to shrink too. Not a great way to keep repeat business.
What greeted the prospective Taurus and Sable buyer upon sitting in the driver seat was this, the Instrument Control Panel. Well intentioned as it may be, it was another jarring departure from what customers were used to. It was a lot to take in, and after the 1996 redesign, many buyers opted to go for the Camry and Accord instead.
In all fairness, Ford wasn’t alone in buying into the oval themed design trend. But no other automaker had as much at stake, and rival companies put their elliptical designs on vehicles aimed at much smaller, more niche markets. None of Ford’s contemporaries went as far with their designs either.
The Volkswagen New Beetle, king of the rounded design theme, makes a splash in 1998. Of course, the Beetle is low hanging fruit; its new looks kept the same shape as its iconic predecessor, and its always been a popular car in a relatively small segment.
Volkswagen’s nostalgia cash-in also featured a decidedly more buttoned down interior compared to the Taurus.
The Beetle’s close relative, the Audi TT, was more groundbreaking. But like the Beetle, its interior combines new elements with a traditional center stack.
In terms of four door sedans, Nissan’s Altima was the closest mainstream car a buyer could purchase that resembled the styling direction of the Taurus, but in terms of sizing, the Nissan didn’t compare favorably to any car in the mid-size segment.
Not surprisingly, the Japanese sedan had an relatively tasteful interior.
Infinti’s J30 bears more than several similarities to the Ford, but notably softens its ovalness in key areas.
Not the rear end though. That trunk is so down on itself it needs a Zoloft.
Chrysler fielded the strongest case for rounded exterior designs, but the LH platform vehicles were clearly full size, lacking the wide appeal of the mid size segment.
Their interiors also closely resembled both the first and second generation Taurus.
The cloud cars (Cirrus, Stratus, and Breeze) sold in decent amounts, but never reached numbers achieved by the big players in the mid size segment. Their size left them on the smaller end of the mid-size segment as well.
The Neon featured completely circular headlights like the Taurus, but garnered praise for features other than its design, like its class leading powertrain, large interior, and a low starting price.
Chrysler’s minivans embraced the ovoid theme just as much as the Ford, but never sacrificed interior room, and offered useful features like dual sliding rear doors. The built in height advantage, a feature shared with sport utility vehicles, was another plus.
Even in Ford’s own lineup, the ovoid was not embraced so wholeheartedly. The Contour and Mystique models also suffered from pricing issues over a year before the third generation Taurus went on sale. The canary in the coalmine went ignored.
Perhaps the biggest sins committed by Dick Landgraff and company were simply ignoring the big picture items carefully considered by the original Team Taurus; that a successful car is a comprehensive undertaking incorporating established design principles that allow form and functionality to coexist. That they also ignored the history of the Taurus as a value leader in terms of pricing was icing on a terrible tasting cake.
Ford chose designs trends that were being employed at other automakers for niche vehicles – Audi and Volkswagen – and those whose outsider status gave them the creative spark to try something untested – Chrysler and Nissan. One common thread among all these vehicles however, is their utility beside their design; all of them offered something of value without much compromise. The Taurus did not.
My 1997 Mercury Sable GS, pictured here in 2007
Despite all the bile of hatred heaped upon you in the preceding paragraphs, I do think the third generation Taurus and Sable are solid cars, and I still find myself admiring them. The team did truly develop a good handling car with a smooth ride, and portions of the interior like the Instrument Control Panel were constructed with quality materials, while being ergonomically sound. Aesthetically, I approve of its design, but my bias comes from owning one for eight years. Plus, a high school senior looking for a good value on the used car market in 2004 was worlds away from the buyer shopping for a new vehicle in 1996.
We have the benefit of hindsight in evaluating how the oval design theme was ultimately a brief fad. Twenty years later, some of the elements of the elliptical school of automotive thought have translated into successful, popular designs. But the Taurus did too much, too fast. It was the wrong car for the wrong time. That the Taurus flopped so spectacularly – never again matching the Accord and Camry in total sales, and relying on fleets to boost already disappointing numbers – is a clear indication of customers distaste for the design.
In creating the Star Wars prequel trilogy, George Lucas developed films with great special effects, but left out key features which made the original films such enduring cultural masterpieces. Although not quite as dramatic, the team redesigning the Taurus did the same.Their fundamental misunderstanding of the Taurus legacy permanently diminished the reputation of arguably the 20th Century’s greatest automotive success story.
A special thanks to Eric Forman for the Taurus ad scans.
Far from trend setting it was a styling black hole, did no-one not involved in the design ever get to see it and point out how ugly it was, Ive only driven one and I was quite unimpressed but I drove it back to back with a 405 Pug that followed a 320 BMW, I was looking for a cheap car that would fit on my credit card without maxing it so 2k and under was where I was looking and there was a Taurus sedan that fitted the bill so I test flew it as you would I didnt really want one a thought confirmed after three roundabouts at speed that the 405 just loved and the BMW didnt neither did the fish Ford.
We had one, a composite ’96 Ghia for the local (Australian) market – Taurus body with the Sable front clip.
I really liked it and liked the way it drove. Which is not to say I liked the ownership experience. Scarce parts, expensive service and disinterested or hostile dealer service departments. Oh, and steep depreciation.
But I’ll take the heroic over the blandly anonymous anyday.
Merry Christmas CC-ers! *Runs and hides now*
http://www.amazon.com/Car-American-Workplace-Mary-Walton/dp/0393318613/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450954891&sr=1-4&keywords=mary+walton
a detailed and IMO really interesting account of the development of the 2nd gen Taurus, written by a reporter who was allowed to observe the process at close range within FMC.
well worth a read
Yup! One of the best books on the industry, and required reading for anyone interested in the Taurus
Don´t forget Eric Taub:
http://www.amazon.de/Taurus-Making-That-Saved-Ford/dp/0525933727
I think one of the big failings of these cars stylistically is that relentlessly repeating a particular motif doesn’t necessarily give you a coherent design. The Taurus is oval-oval-oval, but none of the shapes really seems to go with the next, which just makes it seem really fussy. The closeup of the way the taillight dips slightly to accommodate the trunk lid is a prime example — looking at that makes me really unreasonably annoyed.
The interior is particularly guilty of that. I remember at the time the weird oval radio/HVAC panel really raised people’s hackles because it made it very difficult to swap out the factory stereo for a better aftermarket unit, and for what? I imagine some of you will applaud the column shifter and the fact that the center stack doesn’t blend into a center console, but there’s still a hump on the floor and the dash dips down enough that it’s still not going to be realistic three-abreast seating except for the little kids who around this time were legally forbidden to ride that way. The dashboard’s high instrument panel lip also makes it seem sort of like a van, despite the fact that the rest of the design sacrifices a fair amount of practical utility for whatever aesthetic statement they were trying to make.
The drooping tail was a big mistake. Aesthetically, it’s really hard to pull that off successfully for a sedan if you’re not Jaguar (which I’ve always assumed the J30/Leopard J. Ferie was trying to imitate). You’d think Ford might have taken a hint from the U13 Altima, which as I recall never sold particularly well. (The JDM ‘hardtop’ version, the Bluebird ARX, had a more conventional decklid treatment and was vastly better-looking, if still smallish for Americans.) For family car buyers, the drooping tail immediately says, “It has a small trunk,” regardless of how many cubic feet it might have — not a good move from a showroom standpoint.
Another fundamental problem is that it seems like Ford didn’t give enough thought to the question, “Why would someone buy a Taurus rather than an Explorer?” In the days of a good economy and shockingly low gas prices, it’s not hard to see why buyers ended up with the Explorer instead. The Taurus drove better, but it wasn’t any kind of sports sedan, and the Explorer was a lot more practical. It also looked ‘tough’ and outdoorsy rather than like a catfish. Not a tough choice for a lot of people.
‘I think one of the big failings of these cars stylistically is that relentlessly repeating a particular motif doesn’t necessarily give you a coherent design.’
+1. Too doctrinaire.
Good piece Edward.
An excellent observation that still holds true today. Essentially, if you angle off almost every ovoid surface on these Tauruses, you get every car on the market today. All those snarling angled eyes, angled grilles, angled taillights and big round wheel openings on everything made in the last 10 years, just doesn’t make a good looking vehicle. Just look at anything from Lexus and it makes the point.
If you angle off some of the ovoid, you get Edge Design, Ford’s next vernacular. Worked nicely on the Ka and disastrously on the oz AU Falcon.
Well, the Mk1 Ka (a) had a theme, (b) was a small car, which can often pull off cute and quirky in ways that would just seem strange on something bigger, and (c) was intended as a fashion piece rather than a mainstream family sedan in perhaps the most conformist segment of the American market.
True, but I remember the launch of the AU with its adherence to the Edge principles explained. I think its failure on our large conservative-market sedan precluded similar use elsewhere. That’s a guess though.
I think Ford was fooling itself to think it had any shot at all with import buyers, especially when this was just a new body on the old chassis. A slightly stretched Mazda 626 with an optional duratech with production at Flat Rock for fleets and Mexico for the bulk of them would have been the way to go. The Mexican production and shared design staff with Mazda would have allowed Ford to bring it to market much cheaper. Ford eventually did this with the Fusion. Trucks in the nineties were all Ford should have been paying attention to. They could have closed the high cost Atlanta and Chicago plants. The debt level at Ford would have been lower which reduces debt service and cash flow break even,
The scenario above may not sound that exciting, though I thought the 1993 626 was a pleasant car. The domestics were just not going to get the high transaction prices, so the two choices are leave the old one in production forever or farm it out so the dealers have some volume. Borrowing lots of money to make a no chance hail Mary pass was tried over and over by all the big three, until 2008 when the piper had to be paid, or defaulted on.
“I think Ford was fooling itself to think it had any shot at all with import buyers…”
Perhaps, but if you take a good, hard look you can hardly blame them.
The original Taurus scored a significant number of conquest sales from those who usually shopped for import sedans. But by the time the 1996 redesign appeared, a few things had changed, and it’s almost as though Ford ignored these factors.
As Ed pointed out, buyers were flocking to SUVs, and even to this day I’m hard pressed to think of any sedan has scored a sales success like the original Taurus.
It also seems that the designers felt that Ford had made a “bold move” in 1985 (actually derivative of Audi and other European sedans), and it was time to define the Taurus’ styling on its own, original terms. Unfortunately, there are many buyers in this segment who were attracted to the fact that the original Taurus looked like “a poor man’s Audi” (shades of the old Granada versus Mercedes ads), and less who are interested in driving a car that was unmistakably a Ford Taurus.
Finally, unlike 1985, when competing import sedans were noticeably smaller, the Camry and Accord were getting closer to the usable interior room found in a Taurus.
It’s one of those instances where the marksman was squarely aimed at the target, only to have the target move.
EDIT: I see below that bufguy basically posted the same thing, exactly one minute before me… 🙂
Not sure the original Taurus was capturing many import buyers in 1986. Remember Japan Inc really lacked offerings in the size class in 1986. The A body style, (which I like), was controversially styled and been around four years. This was where many sales came from. Already then, the average age of the mid size buyer must have been going up.
The now mid size Accord and Camry pouring out of USA assembly plants by the mid nineties was going to have to come out of domestics, the market for mid size was not growing. It was not a time when Ford was going to pull off a price increase.
It did, for the first few years. In very import-loving and fashion-conscious West LA areas, the original Taurus was “cool”, and seen as a smart alternative. But that didn’t last very long.
In import-loving and fashion-conscious Silicon Valley, these cars (Taurii of the first few generations, even this one) were also seen everywhere. It turned out that most of these were Hewlett Packard company cars, either still on HP leases or resold to individuals, some even HP employees, for very low prices as they glutted the market. Some dealers even advertised them as HP lease returns, as if that gave them some cachet. Then along came Fiorina and those kinds of perks disappeared. Or maybe they just switched to a car allowance and untold numbers of sales reps breathed a huge sigh of relief and got Lexus or Audi.
I actually really love the design of this generation of Taurus. I loved it as a kid, I loved it as a teenager and I still love it now. Kudos to Ford for trying something different, and it’s ridiculous how well-received it was by critics but as soon as sales slowed they were quick to mock it. Ford wanted lightning to strike twice. It didn’t, but they tried.
The design was pretty polarizing the minute it came out, and IIRC there were plenty of skeptics of the new look right out of the gate. The buff book critiques may have been “neutered” in order to protect ad dollars, but the Taurus was cursed with faint praise at best, under the guide of Ford being “bold.” Contrast that with the reception for the design of the Chrysler LH cars, where the vast majority of critics were tripping over each other to praise the new cab-forward styling direction.
Same here – and that’s the point I was trying to make in the article. I just think it was the wrong car for the wrong time.I still miss my Sable a bit.
I still own one of these catfish cars. It is my spare car.
I love the way they look. I love the low trunk lid. I do not understand why people think this car looks bad. I love the way it rides and handles. The motor is fantastic. It goes incredibly well in the snow. If I had to criticize something, I would have to say the oval shaped pod in the center of the dashboard is silly. Also, the C-pillar on the Mercury Sable was done right. The Taurus has an extra little window in the C-pillar that should not be there in my opinion…it is pointless and silly.
Spot on. This is one of the few instances I can think of where the Mercury version of a product outshone the Ford version; rather than simply being different for the sake of badge engineering.
William, that’s so true. The “journalists” are full of lofty praise…. until the returns come in from people actually in the market for a new car and actual buyers.
How many customers got burned by MT’s Deadly Sin …errr… Car Of The Year [and others] awarded offerings following the ravings of these industry tools ?
Guess when the ad budget for a particular new offering decreases the scribblers finally be objective. Nuts to them.
In fairness, a lot of the early buzz is due primarily to fairly brief road test impressions in early press cars that have been tweaked and massaged beyond what the average buyer can expect off the showroom floor. Beyond that, when something really is brand new, it’s hard to know what its problem areas are going to be.
So, even if the impressions are objective, they aren’t necessarily going to be representative of real-world experience. I’m thinking for example of Car and Driver‘s early tests of the Vega; they were pretty upfront about its obvious flaws as well as its dynamic virtues, but the conditions of their tests weren’t such that issues like the deficiencies of the engine and the lack of corrosion resistance were likely to surface. (Fenders don’t typically rust through over the course of a week-long road test.)
That said, it’s certainly true that the enthusiast magazines have different priorities than do mass-market sedan buyers. The magazine reviewers loved the Contour/Mystique, for example, because they liked the handling and the 2.5/five-speed drivetrain (although some did acknowledge that the interior was smallish for the price), which was a completely different point of view than the average new car buyer looking at a four-cylinder/auto car for sedan duty.
Very interesting write-up, and I particularly like the Star Wars prequel analogy. Much of the magic of the original movie series was the charm of its characters. The storyline was clear and captivating, and the special effects were simply the icing on a great cake. In the prequel, the special effects became the cake and the magic was gone, even though the movie “cost more” and likely “did well in focus groups where people said they wanted more!”
For the Taurus Gen1 and Gen2, you had a highly functional car with attractive, contemporary styling. The Accord and Camry offered versions of the same thing, and as a whole these 3 cars came to define the American sedan market in the early 1990s. The Japanese market leaders knew that thoughtful evolution was the way to keep their cars fresh and relevant without scaring off buyers. Honda and Toyota also made sure to focus on maintaining the high quality of components that buyers could easily see and feel, while cost saving elsewhere. I think the Gen2 Taurus interior, for example, fell down relative to Accord and Camry in the early 1990s, leading to lower average transaction prices and a bit of damage to Ford’s image. That certainly would have been a key area for improvement with Gen3.
Instead, Ford went nuts, perhaps due to the LH cars, which stole the crown for good looking futuristic design right when the Taurus had a conservative refresh. The shame is that Ford was boxed into a corner (or perhaps an oval) with their thinking, feeling that they somehow had to trump everybody with something new. Huge mistake, as even the original Taurus, though radical for an American family sedan, was carefully following aerodynamic design trends that were becoming prevalent. Ovoid excess and drooped butts were nowhere on the radar for mainstream design in the mid-1990s (nor anytime before or after, for that matter, and for good reason).
When this Taurus hit the market, I remember being floored at how truly ugly I thought it was. Not just, “meh, I don’t like it” but rather, “wow, that thing is hideous, inside and out.” I always wondered what they were thinking (or smoking) in the Glass House that could have lead to such an awful looking car. Like movie makers gone awry, I guess they were trying to top themselves and focusing on all the wrong things in an attempt to make a big impact. Too bad they didn’t just concentrate on making a great car even better like Honda and Toyota did. If they had, the best seller charts might look different today…
I have a long memory for ugly cars. This was certainly one of them, but that’s just my opinion. It certainly was not as jarring as the 1958 Edsel, with its vertical front motif and horizontal rear motif. The use of ovals everywhere brought to mind two other wretched-excess styling themes – the last-gasp Hudsons with their Triangle styling, and the late ’50s Nash full-size cars with their Vee styling.
In particular, the dashboard football of the Taurus was a time bomb. As components wore out or broke (the nylon gear for the manual blend-door control cable was notorious for breaking) one couldn’t buy just the replacement part – one had to track down a new football. Parts yards around the country were cleaned out of them, and Ford wanted obscene money for them as NOS. Too bad, as once one got past the styling the car actually was a decent driver. Underhood access was terrible with the Vulcan, and atrocious with the DuraTec.
The Gen4 Taurus is what the Gen3 should have been from the start.8
There was a time, twenty years ago, when my wife said we should buy one of these when we wore out out 1990 Taurus wagon. Well, after all these years I’m STILL driving that Gen1 beauty and probably will do so until I kick the bucket. The kids hate me, and that car – every time they call me with a problem with one of their flashy, ugly newer cars, I show up in the car they rode in as kids and learned to drive on. My grandkids laugh when I tell them where their moms and dads spilled salsa on the back seat, or hurled against the front seat after pigging out too much at the county fair.
How can I sell memories? 🙂
Design is like songwriting. Sometimes the best songs don’t become hits. Predicting the future is hard. If at the time Ford released the car, the design was praised, maybe design was not the causal factor of its problems. We can second guess Poison for their power ballads, but who could have predicted Nirvana would change musical taste? My only critique of this well researched site is that the narratives are too deterministic. Causality is a high bar to prove. The big three did a lot of innovative things. Sometimes these bombed, but there is this conventional narrative that I think somewhat unfairly expects a level of precognition regarding what the market will want. People wanted suv’s and japanese imports. Why? The same reason wverybody switched to flannel shirts and combat boots. The marked changed chaotically.
Apt analogy; when they first came out some wag pointed out how much the back end of the wagon in white resembled an Imperial stormtrooper helmet!
That being said, I think the wagon was the best looking of the three body styles (Taurus 6-window and Sable 4-window sedans being the others); it offered third-row seating and a longer front seat to tailgate dimension than the ’90s Explorer, and was the last three-row American wagon that didn’t pretend to be something else.
My district had one of the ovoid models for many years (and likely still has it stashed away somewhere) – I would praise it’s longevity but IIRC it was assigned to a higher level central office person and when they resigned it was simply parked and forgotten not to be driven for almost 10 years. Last I heard it is still kicking around the fleet with less than 50,000 miles on it.
I actually liked the design as well, although I thought the Sable version was superior looking to the Taurus. Although I will say loosing that much trunk room is a big no-no.
One thing that has always bothered me about the design is the “lip” below the rocker panel. I wish they wouldn’t have made it the same color as the body as it looks like a piece of flash one would find on the edge of a plastic moulding. It’s even more apparent in light colors.
Another design issue is the C-pillar on the wagon. I wish they had used the Taurus rear doors to incorporate in the design as opposed to the Sable’s. The way the 3rd window meets the rear door has always looked awkward to me. Not only do I think it looks strange, but getting in and out of the rear seat was always a challenge for me as I am tall.
There were two issues with the wagon using the Ford doors that the Merc ones solved; most important was the Ford ones sloped for an oval six-lignt profile and would’ve needed different (straight-topped) door frames. The other is that for at least a decade Ford (and others) had, intentionally or not, created a design hierarchy where senior wagons had prominent C-pillars splitting the daylight opening in two while a single full-length DLO with slender blacked-out C pillars was reserved for small wagons.
As an architect I loved the 96 Taurus when it came out….There was a rigidness to the design concept that they stuck to with every detail…The oval backlight, the dashboard, the headlights….They did sweat the details.
Hindsight is 20/ 20…..Most car enthusiasts praised this car when it came out…Daring styling, class leading dynamics, quality materials and a nice list of standard equipment.
Ford was daring in 1986 with the original Taurus……the refresh was really nice and Ford was even able to gain customers.Ford was looking for another game changer in 1996. Did they over reach? Perhaps. But as the article states now the competition is even better…..Camry, Accord are bigger more established and the Americans are more comfortable than in buying a foreign marque car and now Chyrysler is a player with the LH…a daring design in its own right.
Fords biggest problem was its reaction to the market. They “refreshed” the Taurus with more conservative detatils while at the same time cheapening it..Then worse it languished for years.
Perhaps GM .is taking a lesson from Ford with Malibu…The last generation was ill conceived…smaller and IMHO uglier..Within 3 years a new one will be out…not refreshed, but new….It looks like much nicer, is bigger and lighter…We’ll see
I don’t begrudge their sweating the details on the ovalness, but I do resent that in the process, they made it so laborious to look at. There are designs where echoing the main theme in small details ends up being delightful, but my reaction to this one is, “Okay, okay, we get it — everything is a @*%(&% oval.”
(I have this reaction to contemporary artists fairly often; I’ll see someone do something that’s mildly clever once, but then see a gallery of their work doing the same trick and get sick of it before I’ve even finished looking at a complete photo set.)
Many people in the U.S. have never seen one, but an interesting possible “prototype” for these “ovoid” Taurus/Sables is found in the last generation of European Ford Scorpio. The car we knew as the Merkur Scorpio had been “restyled” into a bug-eyed version of the Infiniti J30 complete with a notchback trunk instead of the old hatchback.
Ford was stretching the limits on styling for a large sedan, after DECADES of conservative styling (the original Taurus being an exception) and the stylists on both sides of the Atlantic were suddenly emboldened. Remember, the Focus was just starting to be drawn when this generation first hit the showrooms. It’s to Ford Motor Company’s credit that the Focus wasn’t stopped in it’s tracks.
BTW, don’t several commentors here “normally” consider Japanese sedans of this period TOO conservative to the point of boring?
I’m not a fan of these cars, my father had 1 or 2 and of this generation Taurus and another of the following generation, and all had transmissions fail at lowish mileages. After the earlier generations of Sable, the Mercury stylists responsible for this generation should be ashamed….they ” just phoned it in”.
Ford was trying too daring for the bigger coupes too, particularly Lincoln Mark VIII. I like it but most likely many others don’t.
I most like the Mark VIII, although certain elements of the design don’t quite work for me. (It looks better from some angles than others.) It’s certainly a more successful look than the Taurus, I think.
I thought it looked extremely sleek and futuristic pre-facelift, and then kind of bloated and sad post-facelift.
The Ford Synthesis concept of 1993 comes much closer in regards to the Gen 3 Taurus’ roots.
http://oldconceptcars.com/1930-2004/ford-synthesis-2010-concept-1993/
Those are the tail lights they should have used. Actually the entire design. Thanks for the link
Hey Dweezil. Looking at the Ford Synthesis, I found it more attractive than what became this generation Ford Taurus.
Howard, this styling was foisted on Ford Oz with the Falcon AU and neither that was a success, and the same can be said for the Lancia Thesis which bizarrely revived the theme in 2002.
AU was ‘Edge’, not ovoid. Still a frigging disastrous shape.
New Edge? Hmmm… To me it speaks the same design language as the Taurus and the Scorpio/Granada: it was as if Ford decided all its bigger 4 doors should look like proto-fish.
… and for those who do not know what the Lancia looks like:
‘New Edge’ is correct. Thanks.
The bread and butter AU looked more like this…
And the Cougar looked like this, which makes me think it was a euro language.
The Lancia is kind of cool. A later BMC Farina body(after fin removal) goes to Korea and then back to Italy to have it’s details cleaned up.
One piece of advice I often give to those I mentor is if one desires to get ahead, they need to stick their neck out by taking a degree of risk. I also add the reminder that when taking a risk the odds of (figuratively) having your head lopped off are about equal to that of having success.
So Ford had their head lopped off. They took a risk. It’s that simple.
I have driven dozens of these generation Taurus (more coming about that Saturday). The overall design may be polarizing, but it is original and refreshing. With the SUV craze at the time – where buyers were wanting to have something unique, showing their independent streak – might these same mindsets have been incorporated into the Taurus?
However, I do remember car shopping for my Thunderbird in early 1996. At one Ford dealer (in a town of less than 20,000 for context) I was talking to one of the salesmen. A good old boy, I asked him about how they were doing with the new Taurus. His response was pretty much his wishing I hadn’t asked about that. He did tell me (this was about March of 1996) to expect to see some changes pretty soon that drove sticker prices down. He said the average sticker price had increased a lot, which was as big a turnoff to buyers as was the design of the car itself.
I don’t know how it works at other car companies but Ford in the 90s introduced 2 “radical” designs almost back to back (Contour and this Taurus) and while they were superior designs….they did themselves no favors by raising prices with these new designs. Or maybe it just seemed that way because the old models were so “long in the tooth” that Ford had to just about give them away?
You bring back some memories about how Ford jacked prices up substantially on these new cars. This, plus Explorer-Fever plus styling plus ten years of experience that these Fords were not going to hold up the way Toyotas and Hondas did all came together to hurt these cars.
Well said….Totally agree…. Ford took a chance in 1986 and saw the market changing in 96 with even more competitive cars from Honda and Toyota….As I said before they may have over reached and their biggest problem was how they responded….A dull updated Taurus that languished for years
In the article the first gen Altima is pictured, but a photo of the second gen interior follows it, which many consider a downgrade from the first.
When the ’96 Taurus arrived I disliked three things about its styling immediately:
The way the hood met the front fascia was wrong and required sealing with rubber. It should’ve been a more traditional looking clamshell look. That and the Ford emblem wasn’t centered in the ‘grill opening’ for no reason.
The two passenger vents are just inches from each other, I don’t understand why the inboard vent wasn’t placed closer to the centre stack. It still looks wrong to me twenty years later.
That rear bumper cover was cut too high into the quarter panel and actually drops to meet the rear wheel well, again it just didn’t look right.
Thank you — I agree with all of this.
Automotive designs tend to fall into one of four categories: 1) stuff that just looks good all around; 2) nice shapes that need better detailing; 3) decent detailing that deserved a better overall shape; and 4) nothing pleasing to look at anywhere. This falls firmly into #4 for me.
Great article, thank you. I always look to the first gen Olds Aurora as what the third gen Taurus (or Sable) could have been. Many similar design elements, only executed with grace and balance on the Olds. The emphasis on oval shapes was puzzling, and a significant misstep in direction, dating the design almost immediately. While the Aurora’s exterior design remains timeless, I concur with your assessment of this generation Taurus as the greatest domestic styling blunder of the last 20 years. Perhaps not another ‘New Coke’, but a black eye for Ford.
When my father decided it was time to replace his 200,000 miles Peugeot 405 we went to a number of car dealers in Tel Aviv to see what was available. He was toying with the idea of going back to American cars for a while, so I mentioned the Taurus. As we were walking back to his car from one of the dealers’ yards, we stumbled on one parked on the street, so I eagerly pointed it out. It took me a while to convince him it was NOT the new English/German Ford Granada but after I did he took another long, hard look at the Taurus and said “this is the ugliest car I’ve ever seen. What happened to the Americans? They used to make such good looking cars…” There was no question of him being caught dead in that thing. He promptly went to the Toyota dealer at my home town and bought the demo Avensis he was trying to sell him for a while, and that was that. I’m sure a lot of people in the US, Canada and wherever Ford tried to sell these things had the same reaction.
The ’96-’99 Taurus/Sable may have been well built and all, but they were so ugly no amount of quality could get me past that first look. Fortunately, the styling was vastly improved for 2000 and I do like the later models.
This goes some way towards explaining why the 500 looks like an Audi, hiring J Mays who designed Audis explains the rest.
I remember seeing a new Taurus wagon in 96 at work and thinking it was an interesting looking car, but I had neither the need nor the desire to replace my Jetta. I also drove a later “oval” Taurus as a loaner but don’t have any strong memory of it.
I applaud Ford for trying something different–I don’t know how many of you remember the previews of the 1994 Dodge Ram, even its head stylist knew there would be haters out there but they had to try something different. The dash realler doesn’t look out of place-I’d imagine Fords target audience didn’t really care about stereo upgrades.
Hard to believe that 1994 Ram is over 20 years old. The design still looks fresh today. Dodge had a winner with the 94 Ram.
I think the Ram worked because they took aggressive styling cues from big rig trucks, which would absolutely push the right buttons for the target audience (tough, macho, unapologetically big). The design was well proportioned and refreshingly different from competitors, while still looking like a truck. Also, the Ram’s styling didn’t produce any compromises in its functionality. There is nothing more effective than a design that pushes the envelope by strategically exploiting desires of the target audience, rather than just being different for the sake of being different.
Definitely. Again, the Ram had a look; it wasn’t just weirdly avant-garde. Also, as I recall, Dodge went to some lengths to improve functionality, particularly in the cabin; it garnered a lot of praise for bringing a new level of utility to truck cabins that traditionally were just plain and sparse.
I always thought of the 94 Ram as Retro modified to reflect modern aero trends.
I think that Ford felt compelled to push the aerodynamic envelope further with the 96-99 Taurus/Sable but wound up failing as the public was not really ready for the design. I remember seeing the new ones come out in 1996 and did not like the looks of them at all. However in the last 5 years or so I have come to appreciate the looks of the 96-99 Taurus(I still think the 96-99 Sable is ugly) and when I see one around in good condition, I will stop and have a good look at it.
Having said all that, I also think the 96-99 Taurus/ Sable was sort of a half assed affair by Ford. After all Ford executives saw the “next big thing” in 1991 with the Explorer and after that took off, nobody in Ford really cared about the Taurus anymore.
So I propose that one of the things that killed the Taurus was the Explorer and its success.
They didn’t half ass the 96 Taurus because of the Explorer because they were well along with that design before they knew just how big of a success that the Explorer would be.
However people love to mention that this Taurus lost the title of best selling car but always leave out that Ford retained the title of best selling passenger vehicle that the Explorer had earned.
Yet despite the success of the Explorer they didn’t give up on the Taurus just yet. They moved up the refresh of the Taurus a year. They probably made more changes than they had intended (like the new roof and rear glass) and It wouldn’t surprise if the stylists were told to scrap the existing designs for the 2001 and start over with a mandate to make the styling much more conservative. Accelerating the refresh schedule and the likelihood that they essentially started over had to require more funding that they would normally allocate for a mid cycle refresh.
These looked much much better with the optional rear spoiler to break up the droopiness of the tail, and a dark color to hide the rest. My friends mom bought a loaded dark purple colored 96 immediately when they came out, it was the first ovoid Taurus I had ever seen and it wasn’t nearly as repulsed as I was when I saw the next one without those features in silver.
I knew someone who had a Black on Black SHO of this Gen, the color combo actually made the styling bearable.
It’s kind of sad though because the earlier Taurus was a car that looked good across the entire color palette. Also one of the last mass market cars to offer a full spectrum of interior colors.
Weve had two Taurus’s in the family, a Sable and a Taurus wagon. The Sable was okay if cramped in the back due to style, the wagon died from a 5 mph parking lot curb.
Otherwise they were okay, not as nice as a second gen I rode in once. For me, the only desirable part of the third gen Taurus is the surprisingly heavy duty electric fan under the hood, which can be had at the junkyard any time of the week.
When these came out, I remember not being crazy about the style, but figuring that everyone would get used to it and that the Taurus would continue to be a juggernaut in the sedan class. Wrong.
I can’t blame Ford for taking a risk in design leadership. After all, Ford had been the only place among the domestics that really had brought some fresh ideas to the table, starting with the 83 Thunderbird. But a design language has its limit, and Ford took this one beyond it. Chrysler picked up the crown for styling leadership in the second half of the 90s.
Ford may have missed the mark with the ’96 re-style, but I give it kudos for trying something different. Even though the styling left some cold, the early years of this generation were refined, well-built and loaded with features. The real sin occurred a few years later, when they were decontented into oblivion. By the end it lost headrests, armrests, dual exhausts, lumbar supports, heated mirrors, rear seat pockets, courtesy and glove box lights and many other things they think we wouldn’t notice.
The stripped “G” models were brought out in mid year 1996, and made headlines, but were just bait/switch models.
Me, I disliked the dash and frog eyed fascias, but the was glad to see a new version after a decade. The 92’s were too similar.
The 2000 refresh was not really promoted, Ford was like ‘well here is a less polarizing car, now buy a Truck!’
By the way, my older sister has owned only a handful of cars in her life: Cortina MkII, 1st gen Civic, Mitsubishi Colt Vista, 1st gen Taurus and now an Element. The Taurus was perhaps her favorite; even after 200K reliable miles on her Element she says she misses the power, comfort and fuel economy of her V6 Taurus wagon.
I wouldn’t call these cars a ‘flop’ or a ‘blunder’. Unless Ford actually lost on their investment, then they made money. How many camrys or accords were sold relative to these is irrelevant if Ford actually saw return on investment.
Don’t get me wrong…Im in agreement on the criticisms of the looks of these things. But what midsize sedan has ever been a looker? Inoffensive and conservative is the name of the game here. And Im one of the wierdos who is actually offended by attempts to not offend. As in muzak pisses me off. FWIW, the saggy ass of these things is actualy beneficial, since you can actually see behind you.
All that said, these are good cars in the vein of the appliances they were meant to be. My sister got a ’98-ish model as a program car in ’99 or so. She drove it for quite a while til her husband found a good deal on a ludicrous low mileage Olds Silhouette. My parents bought the Taurus from them for something like $3K when gas prices spiked in ’08, as my mom’s daily was an ’02 Expedition and Dad had a company truck. She still uses the ‘tore-ass’ as her grocery getting beater. Dad has suggested giving that back to my sis since my niece is near driving age, but Mom has declined repeatedly. Her logic is, the car is paid for and while presentable its an old car. If some cretin at WalMart door dings it, then who cares? Its a slow, ugly, boring transportation device. But that’s all any midsize sedan was ever meant to be. It does its job reliably, stays in the background and doesn’t make waves.
I always liked the first few generations of the Taurus better, and it took me a while to warm up to the later models. My in-laws bought a new Taurus in 1999, trading a nice ’88 Cadillac Sedan DeVille for it. I drove it a few times, and it seemed kind of bland, but it grew on me, and after renting a few over the years, I realized that the Taurus, even with the jellybean styling, was a pretty good car. I liked the room, and they drove well, with decent mileage and performance from the Vulcan engine. I still like them, though I’d prefer an earlier SHO with a manual.
I’m talking about the team at Ford. The folks who sculpted the automotive equivalent of the Star Wars prequels upon an unsuspecting public.
What a great analogy!
My experiences with the catfish Taursues were surprisingly good. Back in my telecom days we had some ’96-’97 vintage Taurus wagons that were former management company cars pressed into service as cell site technician vehicles. These cars were already high mileage when we got them and yet we could still beat the hell out of them loading them down with tools and test gear and taking them off-road to tower construction sites. They sure beat riding around in a rattle trap Chevy G-van!
Have Yousa Driven a Ford Lately?
10/10 on the ugly-o-meter. The wagon gets 11/10 & pegged the needle.
And if the Taurus was from GM, it would be a deady sin here.
I appreciate how Ford tried to “out-do” themselves in the same direction about ovoid design themes. However, I think they went just a bit too far for the masses, and just plain shocked everyone, ending up in poor sales. Anyway, here is another example of this ovoid theme gone too far (in my opinion), the 1994 Chevrolet Caprice sedan.
Another one where the wagon is the best-looking of the lot. Maybe it’s trunks that are the problem?
I simply do not understand you guys. Not only do I love the Taurus everyone says looks bad, I also love this Caprice you are criticizing.
I’ve always liked this version of the Chevrolet. Caprice and Caprice Classic. 🙂
Never liked these Caprices.
Maybe it’s because my grandparents drove Chevys and enjoyed them. But I’ve always been partial to Caprice, Caprice Classic, and the Impala SS. 🙂
The 1996-1999 Taurus/Sable are the deadliest of sins IMO. There were singularly responsible for the fall of grace from best seller to rental car fodder. The only real good that came from these cars was the 200 HP DOHC V6 and the handling/ride characteristics. Otherwise they were very mediocre and looked like a stranded guppy fish with the oval theme done to death, even the controversial radio pod. The fact that the majority of these came out of the factories with that big fat bat like column gear shift selector, odd off color dashes that didn’t match the rest of the interior with much cheap plastic and nasty exposed cut-lines, such as in the glove box, said much about how Ford felt about this car. Even worse was the not very polished carryover 3 liter OHV V6 that made but 5 more HP than it did in 1986 tied to a real turd of a transaxle. Those ovoid windows also started the poor visibility trend we relentlessly see today. Ditto the ugly cat crap tan seats and over use of gray that took over as the only choices in the 2000’s. Even the trunk was compromised by the ovoid insanity. True story- we rented one of these in 1999 in GL trim with the Vulcan and went on a long weekend trip. The best mileage we could muster was a dismal 26.8 MPG on pure highway travel going 72-75 MPH. The exact same trip the following year in a 2000 Impala with the 180 HP 3400 tested out at 31.2. Say what you will about the W-body cars but the Impala’s of this generation were very frugal with gas and had much better behaved drive-trains.
Ford had wanted to give the beige interior a beige dash but they had found the color produced too much glare on the windshield in the driver’s eyes, so they gave that color combo a black dash. I read that in that “Car” book by Mary Walton.
It is odd that the team concept that developed the first Taurus with key points that had to be addressed and matched to competitors were not used at all in the ovoid Taurus. Even some of the key items from the original like the unique sunvisors were not retained. It is as if the new Taurus totally ignored the development system that made it class best when it rolled out.
I can say that Ford trucks still use the original Taurus development system right down to the war room system and highlights of the best of the competition that are the basis points for minimum progress with the F-Series. It is queer that a proven system (original Taurus and F-Series) is not used everywhere at Ford. It is proved that when that company establishes high benchmarks as a minimum, it kicks the competition.
I heard that the Mustang adopted this system with the latest one.
I have always thought that the 3rd generation Taurus was a composite design taking elements of the rounded 5th Generation T180 (1989-1993), especially the ovoid rear features combining them with the frontal treatment of the T200 6th Generation Celica (1993-1999).
T180 5th Generation 1989-1993 Toyota Celica
It’s interesting how the notch back versions of the 1990-93 Celica were in my opinion one of the best looking of an already great line of cars. But that diving bell looking oval rear windshield on the hatchback was WTF ugly. I’ve never been a fan of the feminine round jellybean post generation one and two Taurus. The third with the oval themes was just too much coyote ugly! I also despised the rounded cloud cars of the lemon I mean Chrysler corporation. Those pygmy hippos were big sellers in the hood. Just like the 2005 generation Big RWD Chryslers were plentiful in a ghetto near you. Back to Coyote Ugly 1996 Taurus back in the Clinton/early W (Bush) era I worked as a bellman in an upscale hotel where I got to park and drive many cars. Adding insult to injury the 1996 era ovoid Fords rode and handled like boring…the word is pronounced like that infamous creek named Schitt’s. But, the SHO drove and handled like a totally different car. Actually fun to drive, go figure. This generation Taurus was almost as bad as the difference in styling of the iconic Continental Mark of 56/57 to the Unibody Breezeway window rolling abortion that were the 58-60 “slant eyed forgotten Continentals.” I didn’t like the first two generations of the homely at best first and second generations of the Nissan Altima. Just like politics and music car design can be polarizing.
This gen brings up so many conflicting feelings for me. I really found it appallingly ugly when it was brand new. I mean, I saw that thing in a commercial and was floored. I thought the Sable looked better though. The conventional rear wind shield really makes a difference for me. Strangely enough though, we had to replace our 1993 GL Wagon in 2001 after being rear ended (Car was sadly totaled) and we ended up with a light blue 1997 GL Sedan with 39k. We had it in the family for a decade and got many miles out of it. I will say that it grew on me over time and it did have a lot of admirable qualities. The interior held up well and with the care I tend to give my cars, it really looked new for most of those years. Said goodbye in 2012.
Have had Camrys since. Though both cars are good and have their issues, I would say from a serviceability standpoint, the Camry wins. I find it a lot easier to fix things on that then I ever did on my Gen3 Taurus. Gen2 wasn’t too bad. My mom has a 2004 Taurus SES with the Duratec. By 2004, the Taurus was so de-contented, that it’s one of the most emotionless appliance like vehicles I have ever driven. It does what it’s asked to do. Nothing more and nothing less. It’s really kind of sad to see where the Taurus story has ended up over the years. I can remember how ubiquitous the first 2 generations were years ago. People loved them, and regardless of the demographics of the buyers and all the other factors at play, they sold many of them and they were pleasant to look at, reasonably pleasant to drive and offered a good value for the times. When I look at my mom’s 2004, I see only a shell of that former optimism, like a sad echo of the past.
The 2010+ Taurus model, as ambitious as it may have been at the time and all of the good feelings it was intended to inspire, has never really done much for me, and I haven’t been much for Ford since. I may get an SUV down the line, but I like my sedans and I’m not the most fussy car buyer. I just need a competent vehicle that I can put oil and gas into, and get a reasonably reliable service life from. For many, myself included, the Taurus used to fit that bill, but I will admit, that the 1996 redesign alienated a lot of the that core customer base. From there, they began to cut content from the cars, and shuffle trim levels, etc. 1999 was a terrible year for content removal on the Taurus and the Sable (Pretty apparent that they were nothing more than rental car fodder at this point) and the 2000 bland refresh/continued de-contenting rampage only rubbed salt into the wound. There were people out there who wanted to keep loving the Taurus/Sable lineup, but Ford just couldn’t produce a product that people wanted to Love. Not to mention the time and money wasted on the whole Contour/Mystique adventure. That line should have just disappeared with the end of the Tempo/Topaz. They could have streamlined their Escort(Or Focus)/Taurus lineup and made it better I think than wasting resources on a car that was no bigger than an escort anyway, although the Contour did provide amazing driving dynamics. But the same thing that Happened with the Taurus happened with the Contour and the Mystique: Great ideas, maybe some a little too ambitious. You over-reach in your core market, the cars don’t sell as well you’d hoped for so you cut content.
In my memory, there were 2 Fords in the 90’s. Early 90’s Ford, where the lineup was fairly solid and even though some of the cars weren’t exactly class leading, the company was producing product in line with it’s core demographics of buyers for the most part, and it was evident from the sales figures. Sometime in late 1994-early 1995 we began to see a shift, while well-intentioned, if not misguided, on moving so upmarket that some of the things that made their cars the strong sellers they were got lost on the way to the assembly plants and the dealerships. Ford has been able to keep profits thick with Trucks and SUV’s for many years now, but they made critical, if not fatal mistakes in the sedan market at a time when bringing your A-game was crucial. The car companies who rested on their laurels in the 1990’s ended up paying for it over time with lost market share and sales. Even when they did finally seem to get it right with the Fusion, it was still too little too late.
I knew Dick Landgraff. When he was uncertain, or simply did not know, or more simply did not care, or can’t make a decision, he would continually write “TBD” A whole page of “TBDs” would often be relayed. Then those open items never were. TBD…TBD. Yeah! Figure it out yet? TBD=”To Be Determined”
His whole life was to be determined.
After reading Car, the wonderful book telling the story of the development of this Taurus, I think the main problem was that Ford didn’t focus on one thing they wanted the Taurus to be.
They succeeded in making a worthy import rival, and an styling hit. Which is what the guy in charge of the project, Dick Landgraff, wanted (“Beat Camry” was his motto).
But higher ups at Ford wanted the car to be cheaper than it really deserved to be, and to retain the no.1 spot in sales. Those are conflicting goals, and that always leads to trouble.
So the ad campaign was misguided, targeting current Taurus owners instead of import buyers, that couldn’t really afford the cars. So soon came the incentives and decontenting of some high quality parts that made the Taurus good.
I wouldn’t be so hard on the styling because you never know what will be fashionable so far ahead, as when this car started development. It is true the Taurus team went all in a radical new design because of the success of the radical original Taurus, but also because of criticism against the conservative restyling they did in 1992.
Also, the styling would have worked better if Ford had decided to market this new Taurus as a more upmarket alternative, to more adventurous buyers. But that was difficult not only because of the pressure to be no. 1, but because of the existence of the Contour and the Sable. No much room to move in there.
Probably the saddest part is that this “failure” of the second gen Taurus, lead to Ford just dropping the car altogether. Toyota wouldn’t have done that!