Ford Stops Making Taurus

The Ford Taurus didn’t have the panache of a Lamborghini, nor the stately dignity of a Rolls Royce. Then again, it didn’t draw giggles like an AMC Pacer or an East German Trabant. Ford sold 7 million of them, and it is a pity they won’t sell anymore. The last was built on Friday. America needs more cars like the Taurus and fewer SUVs and trucks.

Making its debut in 1985, the streamlined profile earned it the epithets “flying potato” and “jellybean” from its critics. However, in the mid-1980s, all the cars looked like breadboxes with wheels. The Taurus was different, and with the gasoline lines of 1979 fresh in drivers’ memories, Ford sold 263,000 of them in 1986, its first full sales year. In 1992, it knocked the Honda Accord off the top spot, selling 410,000. It held that spot for five years until the Toyota Camry supplanted it.

Jack Telnack, chief designer on the original Taurus who retired in 1998, told MSNBC, “We were in terrible condition financially. [Philip Caldwell, chief executive officer of Ford then] said `Look, we need something really different, really new, that will kind of set the pace out there'." And 1,000 Fordians went to work on it, based on the premise that Americans were more interested in better-handling cars like Mercedes, BMW and Porsche rather than the mushy ride US sedans typically had. They were right, and an amazing thing happened. The car was a huge success.

Then, Ford did what US companies always do; they forgot to keep the Taurus fresh. Mr. Telnack said, “They put no money into that product for the last several years. They just let it wither on the vine. It’s criminal. The car had a great reputation, a good name. I don’t understand what they were waiting for.” Mr. Telnack, they were waiting for the profits from SUVs to save them from competition; fatter margins make it easier to ignore market share (where the Japanese are kings).

Gas is expensive again, and probably will be from here on out. The American car buyer still wants to have the car as part of his or her personal identity (“I’d rather push a Ford than drive a Chevy” and vice versa are real bumper stickers). What is needed is for car design to move away from the accounting, quarterly report, financial mind-set and toward making a car the American driver wants to own. Given the size of the US market, and the abilities of the labor pool, cars will always be made in the USA. The question is whether any “American” car companies will be making them. So long as they can create something like the Taurus, or the Model-T, a car suited to its times, they will. If not, BMW, Honda and even KIA Motors can make cars in the US for Americans with American labor.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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