History of Ford Taurus
The start of the model is in the distant 1985. The Taurus brought many changes to Ford Motor Company. It was the first car produced using the statistical process control ideas. That was the fruit of W. Edwards Deming's work to bring about a culture of quality. The Taurus brought many design and feature innovations to Ford. The model reaped tremendous success until its decline in the early 2000s because of the Japanese vehicles gaining popularity. So then Ford took the major decision to concentrate its resources on the developing of SUVs. They built the Taurus only in one assembly plant until that plant got closed. After that, the Atlanta assembly took responsibility of manufacturing the Taurus. The Taurus is the fifth-best selling Ford model with 7,519,919 units sold. It was the best-selling car in America between 1992 and 1996 before being overtaken by the Toyota Camry in 1997.
1986-1991 First Generation Ford Taurus
The first generation Taurus debuted in 1986 with replacing one of Ford’s older models. Ford sold mainly rear wheel drive cars and the front wheel drive Taurus was a breath of fresh air in Ford’s car models. The exterior design of the car was very revolutionary for its time. Ford’s engineers designed it very aerodynamic and rounded. That was the foundation for its fuel efficient work. The interior of the car also integrated features that were ahead of their time, like user friendly controls that were easy usable without the need to look at them. That provided a chance for the driver to be 100% focused on the road instead of looking at how to turn up the air conditioning, thus lowering the reaction time for an unexpected situation. Ford offered two engines for their Taurus. A V6 gasoline engine and an inline four-cylinder. Both of the engines could be mated with mated with a manual or automatic transmission.
1992-1995 Second Generation Ford Taurus
The Ford Taurus got its redesign in 1992. With it, Ford changed almost every outer panel, but kept the chassis the same. The new Taurus was now longer, wider and heavier. With minor updates to the suspension, the ride quality also got substantial improvement. This Ford Taurus became the first American mid-sized sedan sold with standard dual airbags. With the end of this generation, that was almost a mid-cycle refresh of the first Taurus, the car became one of the best-selling vehicles in America with 1.4 million units sold during the 3-year production of this generation.
1996-1999 Third Generation Ford Taurus
In 1996, Ford released the completely changed Ford Taurus. They changed and upgraded the look, suspension, and engines of the car. With tremendous changes to the interior, from being square and user friendly to a more rounded simplistic one, Ford got some mixed feelings from Taurus’s fans.
2000-2007 Fourth Generation Ford Taurus
Ford’s engineers redesigned the Taurus with new, more modern looks. This time, Ford took a price lowering approach by lowering the quality of some trims, making the rear brakes from discs to drums, and removing the dual exhaust from higher trim levels. But all the efforts to keep the car selling were not effective. The model’s sales were low.
2008-2009 Fifth Generation Ford Taurus
This generation was a twin of the Ford Five Hundred, with some exterior changes and engine tunes. It relied on the name that the model had built up to now.
2010-2019 Sixth Generation Ford Taurus
The Taurus got a new generation that was introduced in 2010 as a luxury sedan. The new Taurus had a beautiful design with many modern features that made it luxurious. The car could include many features: rear parking camera, blind spot monitoring, collision warning, adaptive cruise control and many more. In 2009 it got a SHO version (Super High Output) powered by twin-turbocharged 3.5L V6 engine making 365hp with 470Nm of torque. In 2019, the model got discontinued in North America because of the change in Ford’s focus to build trucks and SUVs.