In late 1998 or early 1999, I traded my Chevy Beretta for a 1996 Mercury Sable wagon in Pacific Green Metallic. Because I was fully busy with my young family, this is the only car I’ve owned that I never photographed, so I found other photos of this model around the Internet.
We loved our five-speed coupes, my Beretta and my wife’s red 1989 Toyota Corolla SR5 coupe. My Beretta was used up at 150,000 miles. Her Corolla had plenty of life left at 170,000 miles.
She was reluctant to give up her manual transmission, which I understood. But she drew an unexpectedly hard line: she would not own a car with cruise control. I couldn’t understand it. “Just don’t use it,” I said. “No. I won’t have it on my car. Period. You can have it on yours all you want.” It was nigh unto impossible to find a family car without it, even in 1999.
I thought it made more sense for her to have the family car since she was the one who toted the kids around the most. But I wasn’t going to be without cruise on long trips, so I would be driving the new car. I was ready to move on from the Beretta anyway, and this would let my wife keep her beloved Corolla for a little while longer. I liked that.
At the same time, this was part of a larger pattern of me accommodating my wife rather than being clear about what I wanted. I didn’t see how it was eroding our marriage until it was too late.
I had a visceral negative reaction to the thought of owning a minivan. I considered a couple SUVs, but I didn’t enjoy their tippy handling and poor gas mileage. Then here was this Sable wagon. A little rear-facing seat even folded out of the cargo floor in case our oldest needed a respite from his small siblings. Wagons had been out of favor for so long that owning one might seem retro. “This won’t be so bad,” I told myself as I signed the loan papers.
The Sable’s wayback proved sufficient for packing three kids and their gear. Two babies needed a mountain of stuff to go anywhere. But when it came to riding in the third row, our oldest said not just nope, but heck nope. I could already see that as our younger kids grew, we’d need something bigger.
Say what you will about the styling of this generation of Sable and Taurus, but I liked it. I thought the wagon was its best expression. The ovoid dashboard was neat in concept, but the materials were cheap and, much like this pictured dash, it had large gaps between some panels.
I missed shifting my own gears, but the Sable was powerful enough with its 3-liter Vulcan V6 that it made up for it. At 157 horsepower, it was a big step up from the Beretta’s 90. I loved shoving the gas pedal to the floor and letting the car peel out. I’ve always been the driver who likes to get to speed fast.
It wasn’t a sporty handler — the car leaned and the tires squealed when you threw it into a curve. At least it didn’t wallow under normal handling. It was remarkably composed in the snow, a prized trait in Indiana.
I owned the Sable barely more than a year when the problems started. First the head gasket blew, lightening my wallet by $1,200. Six months later, a freeze plug blew. The lowly freeze plug is designed to pop out when too much pressure builds in the cooling system so the engine block doesn’t crack. The idea is that it’s cheaper to replace a six-dollar freeze plug than an entire engine. Good thinking, but unfortunately the one that popped on my Sable’s engine could be reached only by dropping the engine out of the car. That cost $1,300 in labor.
As I wrote the check, my mechanic warned me, “These Sables, once they get cooling system problems, they never seem to get rid of them. You’ll keep dumping money into repairs. I’d get rid of this car if I were you.”
I traded it in the next week. That car’s story is next.
You, my good sir, needed the ugliest but most superbly crafted wagon of the era. You’ll find no panel gaps, cheap materials, and blown head gaskets here.
I was under the impression that this generation of Taurus and Sable was heavily invested in to counter the expensive-feeling early 90s Camry and Accord. I can’t speak to the interior materials, but I noticed they seemed to leave the road much earlier than the Toyotas and Hondas.
.
It’s sort of interesting how relatively rare these Camry wagons seemed (seem?) to be on the ground. While priced similarly or within about ten percent of the Honda Accord wagon and the Taurus/Sable wagons they (purlely anecdotally) seemed to be (when new) maybe half as popular or just less available as compared to the Accord wagon and maybe 10% as popular as the Ford/Merc duo which you saw everywhere. I imagine in Indiana in the late ’90s it was pretty easy to find a low mleage recent lease trade-in Ford as opposed to the Toyota. But the Toyotas do seem to rack up 300k+ mileages quite commonly whereas the Ford/Merc wagons mostly didn’t seem to get anywhere close to that.
You’d likely enjoy reading Mary Walton’s “Car” about the development history of this generation of Taurus/Sable. The chapter on how dejected the team felt when they got access to this generation Camry is priceless.
They all ended up in Eugene. 🙂
It’s true they were never very common, but then I never saw all that many Accord wagons either. I suspect the Camry may have just been production limited, but I’m not sure. As to its cost, without looking it up, I suspect out-the-door prices were more than 10% above a Taurus or Sable, which could be had with discounts unlike the Camry. These generations Camrys were the most expensive ones ever, inflation-adjusted.
But yes, they were golden. Cheap in the long run.
I was in the market for Taurus type sedans in this era and I remember that the transaction price for Camrys was significantly higher, even for the four banger.
OTOH Bob Lutz claimed later that Ford significantly overproduced the Taurus running two shifts in its two very efficient factories, so it had to be incentivized to move the numbers. He said that Chrysler didn’t do that volume, but didn’t have the financial headaches of selling volume that the market didn’t need.
The Camry wagon was a real class act but it cost the earth. My in laws bought a two year old lease return in fall 1996 after the 1997 Camry dropped the wagon. A wonderful car, smooth and silent. My ex’s sister got it. She had it towed to the junkyard a couple of years ago near its 30th birthday.
The “fair prices” in my 1995 Consumer Guide auto book suggest you’d typically be paying almost as much for the four-cylinder Camry wagon as for a Sable LS wagon, and you could expect to pay around $2,000 more for the Camry V-6 wagon. That presumed that you shopped around enough to find a Toyota dealer who was actually willing to deal rather than just tacking a few hundred bucks of ADP or AMV on top of the sticker price and calling it a day, which was problem enough.
That Ford Atlanta factory was once the most productive car factory in the country, possibly in the world. And also one of the most profitable. Ford didn’t have to incentivize much in the earlier years, but after this unfortunate restyle appeared they certainly did. Demand fell off a cliff.
That book is in my to-read list for sure. Or to-listen as that seems to be how I consume all books these days.
I have that book. I met the designer of that generation of Taurus. He was a nice guy and very proud of it. His sketches were nice, but so vague that they could be interpreted any which way. Everything was over exagerated and lacked the teutonic discipline of the original Taurus.
The main thing for me though, was that the ’96 Taurus looked overbodied and teetered on it’s wheels. The customer perceives what we call a “poor stance” as unsafe. They also reacted to the visually and factually smaller trunk on the 3 box version.
For a mainstream vehicle this design and the process that led to it was as destined to fail as the original Taurus was bound to succeed.
Not ugly and they had 2 wipers at the rear – loved that!
I would have gladly had a Camry wagon. I even went looking for one when I decided to ditch the Sable.
We had an 88 Sable LS wagon brand new and, for the time, it seemed that Ford was giving a whee bit better build quality. And I only thought that after renting a brand new 96 Taurus. Comparing the two, there were big differences.
But if you’ve read the true heartache that out 88 Sable gave us (new trans at 6000 miles, electrical issues that almost burned the car to the ground, engine issues) you’d know why I quit Ford.
It’s so much worse today with seemingly every vehicle built being recalled. But back in those days, you could still rely on a few very good car choices. IMO
The Sable was reasonably well screwed together, especially for the era. The panel gaps in the dash stood in contrast to the rest of the car’s build quality.
Your mechanic was right, as that ruined a ’87 Taurus in the family. Pity they hadn’t fixed it a decade later.
I wonder if Ford’s bean counters decided it was better just to charge ahead with an engine with known major problems.
That seems to be a common trait with every automaker – I’m trying to think of one who isn’t guilty of that.
We had a bunch of 1990s Taurus wagons as fleet cars at the government agency where I worked. All LX or whatever the lowest spec was. Even for fleet cars, they seemed to show their age pretty quickly. I remember driving one with 80 or so thousand miles on it which had squeaks in the front suspension that reminded me of the bad bushings on old Falcons and Mustangs.
I didn’t own my Sable long enough for that kind of thing to start happening.
A coworker had a Sable, bought new. It broke down so frequently we called it the “DiSable”.
Hilarious. Wish I’d thought of that.
My impression had been that the Vulcan 3.0 was pretty reliable, especially compared to the notorious head-gasket-blowing 3.8. But you proved that wrong, at least in your case.
The issue of your wife with cruise control is truly baffling. As soon as I read that I had some insight as to why this marriage was doomed. Irrationality can be toxic.
I was left wondering what she’s driving today! I believe that cruise control is standard equipment in (virtually?) every new car sold nowadays. The only thing I can think of is maybe some zero option fleet-spec pickups.
When the Ford Maverick truck came out a few years ago, CC wasn’t installed or available in the XL trim. Owners quickly figured out that a $100 button from the parts counter, combined with a flip of a software switch, would give them cruise control. Ford gave up the fight and now cruise is standard across the board.
Reminds me of a calculator I had as a kid. Understand that this was in about 1974 when that wasn’t common. My grandfather was a mechanical engineer who loved electronic gadgets like this and made sure his grandkids had them too. The calculator was a TI-1200, simple four function. The TI-1250 was the same calculator with a +/- button. They were actually the same calculator with different face plates — the 1200 had a blank where the +/- button was on the 1250. If you removed the face plate you could access the membrane that would have been under the button.
What was more damaging was that I just kept doing what she wanted. In the end it diminished me to nothing, and I was angry about it all the time. Backbone. Sure needed one.
Been there; got the t-shirt. 8 years later despite her authentic overtures to join her family’s holiday gatherings, etc., I really have no wish to be in her company despite 20 years of marriage and a beautiful child (whom I continue to cherish, and we have the best time together). Call me a small man, but I don’t see my feelings changing in the near or distant future. Life is too short.
There was a rumored change in the casting process for the block in that generation, I recall talking to a factory field service engineer at the time, the coolant was turning brown with sludge in less than a year, something about not completely clearing out the coolant passages during casting. Multiple service bulletins ensued involving new coolant bypass hoses, flushing the cooling system, and replacing freeze plugs on the sides of the block, but not the one under the bellhousing. If I recall correctly, the flushing chemical was corrosive to the aluminum freeze plugs and the new plugs were the rubber type. Somehow, the plug behind the bellhousing was miraculously immune to the chemical. I do recall removing the water pump and flushing the block with copious amounts of water during the process. The engine to get in this generation was the DOHC V6.
Ah, a blown head gasket and cooling issues. Not unknown in the 96-99 Vulcan engine. Brown sludge. Now in my 98 the cooling issues caused a crack in the #1 combustion chamber. I educated myself on why and went about fixing the Ford factory problem after I replaced the head. Ran to 200,000 miles till there was a rod knock after changing the oil. Very strange and so off the road since 2016. Soon to be back on the road. As I assemble my 410 FE my machinist, who can see perfectly now with my intervention, will assemble a brand new Vulcan short block. The NOS block, crank, rods, pistons and bearings were like 0.10 cents on the dollar. Other than that it was a great “California” car. The looks did take some time to get used to as it was the best available used car at the time from a club member.
Now that is real dedication to a Mercury!
It’s a shame that these were as flawed and unreliable as seems to be the case. I recall being rather attracted to these at the time they came out. For some reason though, we wound up with a (much smaller) Saturn wagon and then shortly thereafter a Volvo V70 (which may not have been a much better choice than a Taurus/Sable wagon).
I understand (or at least hear) the cruise control hatred. It’s been on every new car that’s lived in my house since the late 1980s. I think it’s never ever been used by the other drivers in the house other than me…and I love it on long trips. For others, Never figured out how to use it, never saw a need. Suspicious of the technology.
I’ve had cruise on every car since the Beretta and I consider it to be indispensable on the Interstate.
Apparently we dodged a bullet. Our 93 Ranger with an RWD Vulcan was toruble free until we sold it in 2002. I’d forgotten how Luigi Colani like the shifter was, but I’ve only driven this generation Taurus once as a loaner. They certainly looked different from everything else, and in a world of increasingly similar cars that’s wort something. We only had two children, so everything and everyone fit into the Escort and we saved money
Oh, if only we had an Escort-sized family. At least from the perspective of automotive choices.
Knew several people had first generation Taurii that lasted to 200,000 miles or so. One was driven into the ground and the other was wrecked. As adults my wife and I rode in the rear facing 3rd row of a Taurus wagon, fun experience. The Mary Walton car book was fascinating, Ford took away her access before the car project was completed. I believe the Camry wagons were only built in Japan.
I don’t know anyone who had a 2nd generation Taurus that lasted like that. Although tbm3fan is on his way.
I knew two people who had the generation of Taurus/Sable – one developed cooling problems, the other transmission problems. Too bad, because I liked these cars.
We had a friend who had a Taurus wagon in the same color, and her main complaint (before the cooling problems) was that the color was so bright that everyone noticed her driving around.
The cruise control fixation seems odd, indeed. My first cruise-equipped car was my 1998 Contour – before that, I never saw the need for cruise control, but probably because older engines were so loud and buzzy that it was easy to keep a steady speed just be ear. But the Contour was so smooth (comparatively) that I often found myself driving way faster than I’d intended. I became a frequent cruise control user with that car, and remain that way today.
I wanted cruise simply because holding the foot steady for hours was unpleasant.
I keep forgetting that you ever owned one of these. You also reaffirm that certain cars are better bought new or at least with a CPO-style warranty.
Yes, that would have been a far wiser way to buy this Mercury. I should have just gone for the minivan in the first place.
I had one of these but with the Duratec DOHC V6 engine. The engine was a beauty and by far the best thing about the car. Mine was quite reliable for the time that I had it as a (very) used car.
Yes, the Duratec was the way to go.
Bought a 2000 Taurus with the Duratec and lasted well over 200k including two teenagers. Found a deal on a 2004 with the standard V6. It was great as well at well over 150k until my wife demanded a SUV. I’ve owned a wide range of makes and models, foreign and domestic. The real problem with reliability these days is that they don’t make a model long enough to iron the bugs out. The public bears some of the blame since they like “new and different”.
In ’94 after Dad died we got Mom a gently used ’91 Sable. She had to learn to drive again after a nearly 20-year lapse. While it was a comfortable and easy to drive car, I was disappointed in its overall reliability…electrical issues, ac issues, warped rotors at under 50k miles. She gave up driving within 2 years and we were glad to send the Sable away.
Jim, when you were shopping, wasn’t the Gen 1 Honda Odyssey around then? Those always fascinated me; by the time the kid came along the Odyssey had grown to full size and I didn’t need that much vehicle.
Yes it was. But I was still pretty strictly a Buy American guy so I didn’t consider them. That changed after this experience though.
Apologies for being that guy here, but: naw, that’s an olde-tyme myth. It might have been almost a little bit sorta true a hundred years ago when engine block outer walls were a half inch thick, but mostly not even then. The core plugs (as they’re properly called) are there to enable casting sand to be cleaned out as one of the later steps on the engine block casting line. But yeah, if they’re good at leaking if they’re not well specified or installed, and/or if they’re in a hideously inaccessable location.
When I worked at the wrecking yard, one of the little games we countermen would play to keep from going out of our skulls with boredom worked like this:
Phone rings. Answer it: “Colorado auto!”. Caller says “Got a [year] [Taurus/Sable]” and we interrupt to say “We don’t have a good 3.0 V6 engine or AXOD transaxle for you”. More than nine out of ten times, they’d go “Okeh, thanks” and hang up.
It also worked for “Got a [year] [Voyager/Caravan/Town & Country/Dynasty/etc]”, by saying “We don’t have a good A604 transaxle for you”.
Thanks for ‘splainin. I’m just reporting what the mechanic told me!
Just drove back from Atlanta to Central Illinois yesterday (got home prior to a 50 degree temperature drop, thunderstorms and tornadoes; gotta love the Midwest weather).
As is typical on a long interstate drive, I had several occurrences where I’d pass a car (I use cruise control religiously) only to have them pass me a few miles later. Rinse, lather repeat. Obviously the other driver did not use cruise control and could not therefore keep a constant speed.
I can’t understand not using cruise control on a long trip. By the way, does any manufacturer even offer a vehicle without cruise control today?
I saw this one today in Cleburne TX