Ford's problem isn't that they don't have exciting cars, it's because they have too many outdated, boring cars that covers up that image. If they would have spent that money on marketing the Taurus as a sport sedan again while using engines that would blow away the Nissan Altima while being competitive in fuel economy. They also should have offered a powerful I4 instead of the Vulcan because the most inefficient I4 gets 3mpg better fuel mileage than the Vulcan. I could talk all night about what they are doing wrong. The Crown Vic is the root of their problem. It hasn't had a real update in over 14 years.

 

I hear what you are saying about the Taurus and I have owned about 12 of them, but the reality is most of the younger
crowd do not like them because they are boring. Ford tried to raise interest by racing them but nobody looked twice.

Ford also has a reliablity problem. I had many issues with all of the Tauruses I used to drive.

You are right the Crown Victoria is a police cruiser, taxi......I mean boat anchor.

 

Well 11 years ago the Taurus wasn't considered to be such an old person's car because it was sportier with the SHO model. Then in '96 they ruined the car's performance image by making it look less sporty and replacing the competitive and reliable 3.2 and 3.0 SHO models with the 3.0L Duratech and 3.4L (Duratech based) SHO which was supposed to be slower and the 3.4L had serious reliability issues.

The thing that makes me laugh is when I hear people bad mouthing the transmission series used in my car. They say their junk. The problem is they don't understand the transmission fluid needs to be done every 30,000 miles with Chrysler's fluid. Meanwhile, my uncle is on his sixth transmission in his Vulcan-powered '95 Taurus there is no excuse for that to happen that many times. The older Taurus's had problems with the 3.8L blowing head gaskets as well and the thing that caused this was they switched from cast-iron to aluminum heads without making sure it was perfected first.

What problems did you have with yours?

I think this is the biggest contributer to their failure. It is a simple fact that if you don't have reliability, nobody will buy from you no matter how good your fuel economy or acceleration is.

 

Mine were many muliple failures of the automatic transmission and fuel type sensor( this caused the fuel flow to fail in the closed position
and my engine died going 70MPH on the freeway).

 

Wow! What engine was that in? How long did your transmissions last before they kicked-the-bucket?

 

These were all vehicles that I didn't keep for longer than a year and never put more than 30K miles in that year.

The fuel sensor issue were used in corporate cars and would detect if you were using gasohol or gasoline etc..

It was defective and to me designed wrong. I would never have designed it to fail in the open position but maybe
they thought it might damage the engine and so it failed without warning on an interstate, in another town, in the fast lane
going 70 MPH. I didn't realize at first but the tach showed the needle at 0 RPM and I knew I was in trouble.

Funny how God helps us as I was able to manuever across 4 lanes on, able to exit and coasted into a Texaco MiniMart in San Antonio, Tx.
where the car stayed for 5 hours. I radioed the van was following us as we were traveling with a church van to go watch the San Antonio Spurs
vs. Miami. The church van picked us up and we left the car. That is were I first saw the big man Shaquille Oneal about 5 feet away. Boy he is big.

I had to be a tow truck haul me and my son and the car back at 1:00 in the morning back to my town. The cost was $130.00 because
of a failed sensor in the open position.

BTW all of the engines in all of the Tauruses were 3.0L.

 

Were the 3.0Ls all the Vulcan engine or were some of them the Duratech or SHO?

 

I do not know as I never had to maintain them since we had a maintenance crew for that.

 

Was it the base level 3.0L each time? Did the car ever say 24 valve DOHC on the side of any of them?

 

OK this is an outdated show, so RLSH may not know it. Remeber the kit car that was in Hardcastle and McKormick? That one was pretty cool(minus the red color. I hate red vehicales for some reason), but not sure what it was.