(Originally posted 12/27/2017 as the finale for Taurus Week. Content updated to mark the last American Taurus rolling off the assembly line on Friday, March 1st) What is there left to say about the Taurus that hasn’t already been said? The 1986 model transformed the American auto industry; simultaneously ending the Brougham epoch and Malaise Era in one fell swoop. Fifteen years later it became the poster child for the incompetence of the American auto industry. And its demise in 2019 likely marks the beginning of the end for mainstream American full size sedans. Equal parts triumph and tragedy. But the Taurus legacy lives on for reasons both obvious and obscure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBnxooQNi9I
Almost immediately after its introduction, the Taurus literally forced rival automakers back to the drawing board. Chrysler and General Motors may have beaten Ford to the market with front-wheel drive vehicles, but when the Taurus rolled into showrooms, those products were like CD players in the age of streaming audio. Chevy’s Celebrity went from selling 362,000 units in 1987 to 260,000 in 1988, clear evidence that the Taurus was shaking things up.
The Japanese automakers were similarly affected by Ford’s breakthrough mid-size, mainly because they didn’t have one. Both the Camry and Accord were considerably smaller when the Taurus came about. Everyone was playing catch-up.
Toyota caught up with the new sizing paradigm in 1991, releasing a Camry that offered a refined powertrain and unbeatable quality.
Honda’s fifth generation Accord also grew in size to better compete with the Taurus.
Chrysler oddly positioned itself both above and below the mid-size segment with its LH and cloud car programs.
General Motors famously delayed the GM-10 program once the Taurus debuted, but when they finally released a competitor to the Taurus, it was too big, too conservative with its styling, and too cheap with everything else. The 1997 Chevrolet Malibu, while right sized for the segment, also suffered from poor quality materials.
Nissan stumbled until 2002, when the Altima finally grew to modern proportions.
Even today, modern mid-size dimensions aren’t too far off from where they were 30 years ago; the sedans have grown a bit in height and width, but overall length has remained roughly the same.
But the Taurus did more than just set the sizing standard. It revolutionized mainstream car interiors as well.
Ford effectively ended the era of thoughtless cabins in non-luxury vehicles. Borrowing its climate control system from Saab, Ford introduced the masses to the “three dial” system that is still prevalent in cars without digital climate control.
Here is the setup on a 2013 Ford Focus SE.
The Taurus also featured high quality door panels that didn’t simply looked tacked on.
Dashboards now also melted naturally into the rest of the car, and the center stack was angled toward the driver in order to make the controls easier to reach.
Here is the same design concept in a Honda HR-V.
Other thoughtful changes extended to the engine bay, where Ford engineers clearly labeled the various fluid reservoirs and dipsticks for ease of use.
It’s easy to understand why so many people dismiss the Taurus as revolutionary, over three decades after its debut. Ford didn’t invent many of these thoughtful touches and all of these features quickly became standard practice on almost every mass produced vehicle up to the present day. But the Taurus set the precedent.
The Taurus also set the standard for modern vehicle introductions. Not only was the car revealed months ahead of its on sale date, it did so in spectacular fashion at MGM Studios.
Chrysler notably borrowed this idea when introducing the Jeep Grand Cherokee, literally crashing the vehicle through a massive pane of glass.
At Ford, the success of the Taurus had little effect, at least initially. The F-150 and Mustang received the same kind of attention that the Taurus got during its initial development, but the Team Taurus approach wasn’t replicated for other cars in the lineup. Only a few individuals stayed on for the Taurus redesign, and by 1991, CEO’s Phillip Caldwell and Donald Peterson had retired. Lewis Veraldi, widely considered the “father” of the Taurus, retired in 1989 and died one year later.
The 1990’s were a bi-polar period for the company; trucks and utility vehicles propelled the company to new heights while the dual launches of the Contour and redesigned Taurus were massive flops. Due to Nasser’s tumultuous reign creating a new era of corporate dysfunction in Dearborn and beyond, the initial success of the Focus quickly dissipated, while the fourth generation Taurus stemmed the bleeding of sales to other brands, albeit temporarily.
The Fusion, effectively the successor to the Taurus, arrived in 2005 and brought back several elements that made the Taurus a player in the mid-size segment.
2003 Cadillac CTS
The 2006 Fusion received contemporary styling which emulated designs from luxury manufacturers and paired it with the riding and handling characteristics of European sedans. Ford needed Mazda DNA for this to happen, but spiritually it carried much of the Taurus ethos. Unfortunately the first generation Fusion suffered from anemic powertrains and a spartan interior.
The legacy of the Taurus wasn’t directly felt until the Mullaly era. Alan was a devout member of the Church of Taurii, having studied its success story before coming to Dearborn. Following the vision set forth by Taurus patriarch Lew Veraldi and head designer Jack Telnack, Mulally successfully integrated the Team Taurus mantra into the entire corporate structure. This meant a company more effectively tackling product development and utilizing global assets without petty factionalism.
The result was cars like the 2013 Ford Fusion, by far the closest spiritual successor to the original Taurus. Not only does the car employ design trends popularized by successful European nameplates, it offers driving dynamics in line with them as well. Ford introduced us to complex design with the third generation Taurus in 1996, but this time the Fusion introduced a bold new design without going too far.
To paraphrase Harvey Dent, the Taurus lived long enough to see itself become the villain; it certainly didn’t die the hero; Mulally’s insistence that the Taurus name be slapped on something else contributed to a Taurus being sold continuously in one form or another from 1985 to 2019.
As for the fifth generation, it was essentially just a place holder until the 2010 model.
The sixth generation embodied the best and worst of the Taurus legacy. It’s notable for a comfy highway ride and a spacious trunk, but the team responsible for its creation sacrificed functionality for style. The full-size sedan with a mid-size interior. Like the Taurus models before it, the sixth generation also represents a good value on the used car market.
The seventh generation Taurus was revealed at the 2015 Shanghai Auto Show, riding on a stretched version of the platform that also underpins the Fusion. Americans never got it. With low gas prices and the shift towards crossovers, selling the Taurus as a China-only model makes sense.
Unlike the Taurus, the Mercury Sable did actually die, although it was briefly resurrected alongside the fifth generation Ford. Aside from having unique body panels in its first generation, the Sable barely distinguished itself from its fraternal twin. That’s not to say the Sable was completely insignificant; if you combine its sales with that of the Taurus, the third generation fielded far more competitive numbers relative to the Accord and Camry. But that argument deserves its own story.
Over thirty years later, the legacy of the Taurus lives on in pretty much every mass market car available today. For the mid-size segment, it had a worthy successor in the Fusion. It forced the competition to step up their game, and set the standards by which we continue to judge mainstream sedans. When you hear the word appliance being lobbed at cars like the Camry, its because the Taurus proved things could be different.
Thanks for this summing up. I wonder the situation if Ford belatedly had not gone FWD but instead had put their more modern interiors and exteriors on the fox platform. With that leaving the possibility of V8s for performance versions, it would have given buyers an actual choice for their midsize dollar. The platform offered 4, 6, and 8 engines, the Vulcan could have still been used, this time with a decent transmission. Over time fleets were ever more important to this type of car and those buyers would have preferred the simplicity of RWD and an actual range of powertrains. The Mustang and Tbird would have kept on the platform and would have then cheaper to keep up to date and not so endangered by low volume platforms.
A lot of stock is put into the fact that the Taurus was a hot car for a year or two in 86-87 and that up provides a good narrative for the models ups and downs until the mid size version went Mazda and a Volvo based full size inherited the name. How it ends make it a sad story, apparently with a China only epigraph. The bull lost the fight.
The Fox was OK for mustangs with its live axle, but even a major refresh was not going to compete with other modern sedans in terms of handling, packaging, rigidity, safety, etc. Some people would have appreciated a simpler, if cruder RWD car like that, but everyone else that was cross-shopping with modern cars would have been turned off
It is interesting to consider what would have happened if Ford would have put that level of effort into designing a right-sized RWD platform. That would have been a car with the basic dimensions of a Taurus, inside and out, with a modern suspension, which would have required IRS. One significant disadvantage of that would have been no ability to share major drivetrain components with the minivans.
I guess the success of the 1986 Taurus pretty much answers the question—they and the CamCords sold like crazy, so apparently the FWD platform was fine with the demographic they were targeting. In the end, most buyers care more about the combination of interior space for the family and fuel economy that FWD provides.
The thing is, FWD cars had been catching on for almost a decade before the Taurus even arrived, and customers bought them in droves. Ford would have been sharply criticized for developing a RWD platform instead of the Taurus, and its doubtful buyers would have wanted it anyway.
Ford didn’t field a FWD minivan until the 1994 Windstar though. Granted, that one was mostly Taurus underneath, but second-gen. When the initial Taurus debuted in ’86, the Aerostar was also new on the market, and it was RWD derived from the Ranger/Bronco II platform.
However, that being said, Edward’s observation is correct that FWD was seen as the way of the future by the mid 80’s, and developing a new RWD platform would have been seen as a retrograde move.
I liked myy 1995 taurus very much . Got it used with 32,000 miles on it with a ford backed bumper to bumper warranty we had it from 1997 until 2013 by then it was passed down to my youngest daughter .the weakest part of this car was the cooling system .in125,000 miles 2 water pumps , 3 if you count the original and 2 radiators again 3 counting the original installed at the factory it was garaged kept so the paint was like new .after the last water pump it always smelled like coolant on a hot manifold that was a leak at the timing chain cover .we traded it in for a used focus
I quite enjoyed this Taurus week. Occasionally you could see the first generations of the Taurus here, as Hessing De Bilt (US Ford / Mercury / Lincoln) imported them.
Now we were used to Aero-Fords, given the 1982 Sierra and 1985 Scorpio (both RWD), but the generation below was a bit “too much”…It’s parked next to a Renault Kangoo.
I’m very skeptical about the idea that the progression of the Accord can be attributed specifically to wanting to compete with the Taurus. I don’t doubt that Toyota, in particular, did look at the Taurus, but I don’t think that was the sole consideration.
The CB Accord (the 1989–93 version) was also part of Honda’s efforts to get more of the mainstream Japanese market. They’d tried getting into the executive league with the Legend (not all that successfully as far as the JDM was concerned), but they were still trying to get out of just being the small car maker. The U.S. was an important market for the Accord, certainly, but they also had big ambitions for it at home, although that didn’t entirely work out.
Toyota and Honda had been constrained for a long time by Japanese tax laws, which changed shortly before the CB Accord went on sale. For them to go beyond certain size thresholds under the old system, they either had to get to the point where they could justify a U.S.-specific body shell (as Toyota did with the 1992 Camry) or else face not being able to easily sell the car at home, where cars in that class were still pretty significant sellers. (The FWD Camry was originally conceived for the U.S., but they sold a lot of them at home too.)
Honda certainly wanted to sell the CB Accord here, but they were also envious of Toyota and Nissan’s market share and the fact that Toyota and Nissan both had bigger cars in classes Honda didn’t. (The Legend was pitched at the Crown/Gloria/Cedric market, but Honda didn’t really have anything like the Mark II or Laurel at that point.)
TL;DR — the point is that while I’d be shocked if Honda and Toyota didn’t consider the Taurus, their model evolution can’t be considered solely in terms of the U.S. market. As I said the other day, I think the model that was really conceived almost entirely for the reasons you describe is the Toyota Avalon, since Toyota saw that there’d be more of a market for what was basically a jumbo-size Camry than for the JDM-oriented Mark II/Cressida.
With the Accord starting so small, think of the size of the 82-85 model, it was going to take several generations to bring it up to USA midsize. I know in 1990, I was disappointed to see Accords narrow A body size for 1990.
Going FWD while trying and mostly succeeding to retain the feel of an American car was a engineering challenge of large proportions for the big three in the eighties.
Imagine in 1985 if Honda had tried to build a RWD Caprice sized vehicle, that had a feel that would be familiar to Honda’s pre 1985 owner. Perhaps a V8 could be made of two of their 1.8 fours like Audi did with the VW fours. It might have had almost enough torque. Everything else would have been clean sheet. Honda’s minivans indicate there would be a few bumps on the way as there were for the big three going fwd.
The big three made radical changes in the eighties while the Japanese could get by with gradual development. It is something to think about before going on one of these American cars suck jags so common here.
The thing is that Honda was not only trying to play in the American midsize market and they were not moving gradually at all. The CA Accord (the MY1986 version) was a major leap from the 1982–85 cars in size and technology because Honda wanted a piece of the mainstream larger-sedan market, not only in the U.S., but also at home, where Toyota and Nissan largely owned the bigger/pricier segments. The CB wasn’t such a technological leap as the CA, but was a big step up in size and appointments.
The width of the 1990 Accord was dictated by the JDM tax rules I mentioned, which levied a substantial commodity tax premium on cars wider than 1,700mm. The commodity tax was eliminated about two months before the CB Accord debuted, so Honda wasn’t able to take advantage of that directly. The subsequent generation was designed after the law changed, so it was able to be wider without the need to do a special U.S.-only wide body.
Postulating fellatio with the products of William Lyons is entirely inappropriate John.
Ho ho ho…I admit, I had to re-read John’s comment very thoroughly to get yours.
Hehehe. BTW, finally caught up with your Daf museum exotics piece, I think the Moretti might possibly be misnamed. I’ll put my answer in the comments over there.
hilarious!
Appreciated
Regarding the Honda Accord and Legend. I’m a bit surprised that the Accord was a Taurus competitor. The Legend, introduced in 1985, was only an inch longer than the first gen Taurus (according to the dimensions I got from Wikipedia). Also: FWD and with a V6.
Or was the Legend only available as a fully-loaded flagship, and thus in another price-segment ?
The Legend was not designed as a family car and definitely wasn’t aimed at the Taurus (!). It was an executive car and its targets were (in the U.S.) the likes of Volvo and the Saab 9000. In Japan, the cheaper low-end 2-liter Legend was closer in price to the Accord, but they were still really not in the same class. A U.S.-market Legend was a lot pricier than a Taurus; it’s like comparing the Taurus directly to the Audi C2 100/5000.
Again, the Japanese in the ’80s were constrained by the commodity tax rules. The Legend, like most high-end Japanese cars of the time, was deliberately designed so that the cheaper models could slip just under the size limits.
(The North American big non-exec family car class really does not have a direct equivalent in most other markets other than Australia. To make sense of the U.S. market, you really have to look more at price spread than dimensions.)
OK, so family car vs executive car. Although I do see executives hauling their family in one and the same car. Just kidding.
In other words, your Taurus was our Sierra. Roughly the same target group.
More or less, yeah. Because we have no particular restrictions on size beyond what people think will fit in their garage and whatever the buyer’s current anxieties may be regarding fuel consumption, there’s still a big market for large family cars of no particular luxury pretension. Thus, you have cars like the first Taurus, which even in its plushest form was about $6,000 (more than 30%) cheaper than a BMW E30 325.
…”large family cars of no particular luxury pretension”…
I can think of only one current car model here that meets those criteria, the Skoda Superb. It’s a real bargain for a 4.86 m (191 inch) long car.
The real thing.
Yup, that would fit right in as far as the U.S. big family sedan market goes.
It’s actually a hatchback that looks like a sedan. And I guess it’s the biggest on the market right now. If you don’t like hatchbacks there’s also a wagon.
Is that Superb the one that’s essentially a previous-gen Audi A6 under the skin? Would make sense as Skoda is part of VAG.
Chris, there’s no direct Audi A6 – Skoda Superb relation. As you say, they’re both VAG brands. The current Superb, introduced in February 2015, is on VAG’s MQB-platform. Biggest engines are 2.0 liter inline-4, both gasoline and diesel. 4x4s are also available.
Personally I always liked the wagon models, especially the DOHC models – because of the dual exhausts. A wagon with factory dual exhausts was cool.
I like the highly trimmed and performance versions of the current generation. SHO models are remarkably quickly depreciated even when buying CPO examples.
I’m especially fond of the second generation/facelift early 90s model sedans in light blue or that dark green they came in. And the wagons from both first and second generation are classics now. They all dot the landscape of grade school memory as parents’ cars in the earlier years, as my friends’ and their siblings’ cars in high school after the parents had bought the new Explorer or Grand Cherokee in 1998, moving onto the next big thing.
I hated the ovoid model when it came out because I figured all cars would go in that direction, and in a way they have. With their big open fish mouth grills and curved back headlights, current cars and SUVs look more ranine/amphibious than those Taurii did. Just more sinister, while Gen 3 looked goofy.
But no matter what the rags, rental car companies, and people on this site say/insist, a Taurus is always going to be a mid-size to me. Not a full-size. It might be my favorite mid-size, though.
Also, Ford did built at the request of Car & Driver magazine, a Taurus SHO wagon who was featured on the cover of C&D, April 1993 issue. http://www.autos.ca/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=ucrrfpa34g6qeuoo0hek1rabg7&topic=89075.msg1027194#msg1027194
Dang. If they’d only actually built that… There wasn’t much of a performance wagon market in the early 90’s–there was still the Volvo 940 Turbo wagon, but it wasn’t seen as quite the performance car as was the 740 Turbo (which was the “world’s fastest wagon” for quite a few years). We got a more legitimate contender from Volvo in 1994 with the 850 Turbo wagon. The Audi urS4/S6 was sold in this market but only in small number. And BMW did not see fit to give us the 540i Touring, though we did get wagon versions of the 535i and 530i.
So an SHO wagon would have had *some* competition, but not much (all of the above-mentioned cars save for *maybe* the Volvo sold at much higher price points), and nothing domestic.
I remember well the SHO wagon-if Ford had built that I would have snapped one up. Two were built, one with an automatic transmission and one with a 5 spd manual by a body shop in Kansas; I was walking my dog in a local park and came across the one with the 5 spd; the owner and I struck up a conversation where he informed me about it-it was a very nice looking wagon. I would see it occasionally around town but it didn’t receive very good care-the last time I spotted it it had a lot of dents and related damage. Sad.
This is a well done article on the history of what was once an extremely important vehicle in the automotive kingdom. Here are 2 books on this topic for easy reference, (I know they have been mentioned in other related posts).
Yup – those two books were immensely important in helping me put together my posts. Fascinating reads all around.
That book “The Making of the Car That Saved Ford” was very revealing about the mentality of Ford designers. They were actually bragging about how the hood was designed to disguise mis-alignment of the headlight assemblies! So in other words, they were more concerned with an appearance of quality over any actual quality. I’m sure this philosophy extended to the entire vehicle. Cynical!
All Ford car production moving to Mexico? That’s sad.
Great wrap up to Taurus week. I watched the commercial and now have that “Taurus for us!” song stuck in my head for the forst time in decades.
Which ocean? As long as it ain’t the Pacific! I think I have such feelings about the Taurus because, back in the day, Hewlett-Packard bought a boatload of these as company cars and, when they depreciated, sold them to their employees at bargain rates. In those days, H-P was one of the biggest employers in Silicon Valley, and every one of those employees seemed to have taken advantage of the deal, with the result that the streets of my hometown and all the others around it were full of the things. I could have put up with the occasional sight of “blob-ness” but the things were everywhere.
Not just Taurus…Sable, too. My brother’s 1989 Sable wagon was originally an H-P company car.
He kept it until the transmission wore out at beyond 150,000 miles, trading it for a Honda Odyssey…going from the transmission frying pan into the fire!
There were several things about the new Taurus that grabbed my attention:
1. jelly bean shape
2. lack of chrome in both the interior and exterior
3. new-fangled dash
4. lack of rain gutters above side windows
5. third brake light
6. independent rear suspension
7. body contoured headlights
8. no white wall tires
9. no grill
10. a 4 speed auto that actually worked great when passing on the interstate
11. fairly good acceleration and handling
12. very attractive factory aluminum wheels
I realize these were things that existed before the Taurus, but the Taurus was the first car I ever noticed that had all of these things combined. It was not typical in its day.
I drove a brand new LX sedan from Nebraska to Arizona in early spring of 1986. I was impressed even though I was ready to dislike it because of the front wheel drive.
Interesting that they went down almost the same road with the Explorer. Splashy introduction and huge sales of the first-gen…second-gen kept up the pace but gained size (and there was that whole unfortunate exploding tire thing). Third-gen took a big dip in volume, though that was partially due to the economy and rising gas prices rather than a disastrous restyle. The plot diverges with the 4th-gen though, as the current Explorer has seen a sales and reputation rebound. Funny that happened after it went from its truck underpinnings to a…Taurus-derived platform.
I like all the 86-95 Taureses. The 96 up I pay no attention to at all. I own a 88 MT 5 and a 94 GL. I’ve got all the sales brochures and have been studying them intensely so I can pick up the differences between years so when I spot one I can tell the year. All I got to do now is start buying parts cars!
The best thing that has ever been said about the Taurus is this comment from Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, after Ford (briefly) cancelled the model in, I think, 2006:
“Ford Motor Company announced today that it will be ending production of its long-running Taurus model. The move leaves 30-somethings across America scrambling for a new way to show the world they’ve given up.”
The fish faced Taurus competed with RWD Australian sedans and wagons down here and didnt do well the FWD family sedan market was already saturated with cars from Japan and Europe, they have been a rare sighting for many years now, Fords offering in the FWD family car market has been the Mondeo and the RWD Falcon went the way of the brontosaurus extinction set in. Now Ford dealers lots are drowning in Rangers and various tallish wagons.
I recall seeing examples of the first Taurus being used as police cars in the first Robocop movie in 1986 or so. I guess the producers were taking advantage of their futuristic appearance and relative obscurity to get prop cars on the cheap.
“relative obscurity” isn’t a term that applies to the 1986 Taurus, widely anticipated before it’s release, 200,000 sales in it’s first year, Motor Trend COTY in 1986, etc, it was far from ‘obscure’ It was a major game changer, as outlined in this article.
OK, poor choice of words. It was brand new, though – I suspect a lot of moviegoers saw the futuristic shape but didn’t recognize it; I did, but I had been a bit of a car nut for twenty years at that point.
I remember the intro of the Taurus. One TV commercial in particular stood out to me–camera overhead looking down, you saw the Taurus pass a horse-and-buggy on some country road. I understood right away that this was a jab at rear-wheel-drive, you don’t put the “CARt before the horse(power).
So my friend and I go down to the local Ford dealership, where there’s a million other people, all of us looking at the Showroom Taurus.
I sit in the driver’s seat, and I think: Yup, another midsize car.
I sit in the passenger seat, and I think: Yup, another midsize car.
I sit in the right rear seat, close the door, and THE ARMREST/DOOR PULL COMES OFF THE DOOR PANEL, screws and all, and I think: Yup, Quality Is Job One. Another Ordinary Ford.
Far as I’m concerned, they should have put the car-crusher on the end of the assembly line instead of making people use these things for a hundred-thousand miles or more.
The ovoid versions should have been crushed with the designers inside them. 🙂
Not sure how I missed this the first time around. I vividly remember my first drive in one (an 86 Sable, actually).
My mother bought a new Crown Vic late in the 1985 model year, maybe July. A short while later my car-mentor Howard showed me his new 86 Sable and let me drive it. I remember thinking that Mom had just bought the wrong car. Where the Vic suffered from being engineered to eke every last mpg out of its old engineering (mainly in an unpleasant drivetrain with an obtrusive AOD transmission and a too-tall axle) the Sable suffered from none of these things. It was the first large-ish US car I had driven in years that didn’t hit you over the head with drivability compromises.
The flip side is that the Taurus did not age as well. The old-style Panther became the car to have if you wanted extended life. The Taurus was a great car when new, a good car in middle age and a money pit as an old car, at least in my experience.
RIP Taurus
It should have been shitcanned about 3 years ago. For such a big car, the interior room(especially the head room) was horrible. My folks bought a brand new 2009 Taurus(aka a Ford Five Hundred with more fake wood and chrome) and in 2010 they took it in for warranty work and was given a 2010 Taurus. My father took that car back 3 hours later and told just to drive him home and let him know when to pick his car up. The 2010 was (in his words) cramped and he kept banging his head against the roof each time he got in.
My folks just replaced their 16 year old 2003 Sable back in January. They bought an Escape. There was not even a thought about the 2019 Taurus (or a left over 2018)
CC effect… Saw a first gen Taurus at a gas station this morning. Its tail was practically dragging on the ground, and one window was neatly boarded up with bolted-in plywood, but it was running. Sounded decent.
Those first generation Tauruses-ot ‘Taurii’ were cool. I just couldn`t picture Robo Cop driving a GM midsize!
I think too much credit is given to the Taurus. It was an ugly small not too reliable car especially with the head gasket blowing 3.8 and axod transmission. It did not age well at all. Anyone buying a crown Victoria was way better off and if you figure in repairs and breakdowns the Vic was a bargain completly negating the gas mileage penalty. The 96 was one of the ugliest cars ever made and weirdly had better backseat than front. The last ones were to big to be midsized and too small to be full sized and they were cramped for the size. A car no one will miss
R & T agrees with you about the ’96; but there’s some sentiment here too..
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/classic-cars/a14504453/the-1996-ford-taurus-the-saddest-car-ever-made/
I think that Taurus, Focus and/or Fusion will be back again (as completely different cars) once Ford realizes how dumb it was to cancel all sedans in favor of just trucks and SUVs/crossovers. Same with GM’s Malibu or Impala and Chrysler’s 200, 300 and Dart.