Rising Sign

(first test) ford taurus sel

REDESIGNED Taurus reveals nary a hint of the awkward looking 2005-2009 Five Hundred/Taurus. Though they share a platform, the new car’s roofline is three inches lower in spots.

FRANKLIN DELANO Roosevelt drove a Ford. You’ve seen the photograph of him behind the “banjo” steering wheel of his 1936 Ford Phaeton V-8, wearing a hat, teeth clenched around a cigarette holder, the car’s added hand controls out of sight. Our patrician 32nd president could’ve bought anything—say, a V-16 Cadillac from the top of General Motors’ six brands. FDR’s four-door ragtop cost $737.50 during the Great Depression, making it the topline Ford, $23 less than the cheapest Pontiac 6 convertible.

With Lincoln the Ford Motor Company’s only indulgence and badge-engineered Mercurys a couple years away, Henry Ford figured the full Ford division lineup had a car everyone from the working man to the upper-middle classes could need. From the coming B-segment Fiesta to the 2010 Taurus, Ford is returning to those roots.

FoMoCo’s outsider chief executive officer and president, Alan Mulally, revived the Taurus name after he joined the company in 2006. The 1986-05 Toyota Camry-competitor had too much equity to throw away, so Mulally used the name to rebadge the slowselling Avalon-competitor, the Five Hundred. He also pushed for shorter lifecycles; one of Ford’s biggest problems was that it let fresh, successful models go stale before replacement. An extensive Taurus facelift quickly morphed into a major redesign. Designers had a clay model of the ’10 Taurus by the summer of 2007. The board approved its final design in early spring 2008, no more than 18 months before it was to go on sale.

Before redesign work began, Ford unveiled the Interceptor, a V-8-powered concept built off a Mustang chassis, at the January 2007 North American International Auto Show. There’s a bit of the Interceptor’s rear quarter-panels in the new Taurus, and the taillamps connected by a thin, horizontal chrome strip are straight off the concept. You’ll recognize the Interceptor’s high beltline and cowl and low, squat, and fast roofline. While the ’10 Taurus carries over the 2009’s Volvo-based platform and its nearcrossover-level ride height, designers have lowered the roofline up to three inches in spots. The ’10 Taurus also has an Interceptorlike “power-bulge” hood and a variation of the three-bar grille.

Then there’s the dash-to-axle. Ford’s program for a new rear-drive, independent rear-suspension platform to replace the decrepit Crown Victoria’s began and ended with the Interceptor concept. Mulally slashed development budgets and cut employees, placing the Blue Oval in a much better position than GM and Chrysler. And so, the front-/all-wheel-drive, V-6-only Taurus

FORD could have had RWD, except the funding wasn’t there. Instead, vestiges of the Interceptor concept’s styling made it into the Taurus’ tail. It also got dual exhaust pipes.

replaces the RWD Crown Victoria and Mercury Grand Marquis. The Freestyle/ Taurus X and Mercury Montego/Sable die after model year ’09.

Ford put some of that RWD development money into the interiors. Dashboard and interior door panels are thickly padded, as in the Lincoln MKS, and the ambient lighting in the interior door pockets and footwells, available in seven colors, is as trick as in any German luxury car. The Taurus’ center stack expands out from a deep dash, cocooning the driver almost like a sporty car with a “cockpit”-style driver’s seat.

That space-consuming center stack acknowledges that the full-size Taurus isn’t a high-volume family sedan like the Fusion, and doesn’t need to conserve every inch of interior space. There’s also no mention in the Taurus’ ample spec sheet of rear-seat TV screens for the kids.

The car comes with everything else: adaptive cruise control and collision warning with brake support, BLIS blindspot info system with cross-traffic alert and voice-activated navigation with Sirius Travel Link. Every Taurus except the base $25,995 SE, the fleet/rental car, comes with paddle shifters for the six-speed automatic. You hit the back of the steering-wheel-mounted paddle for upshifts and thumb the front of them for downshifts.

P235/55R18 all-season tires on aluminum wheels are standard on our SEL tester, which starts at $27,995 and is the volume trim level. Also standard are supplemental park lamps, body-color dual-heated power mirrors, and Sirius satellite radio. Our black SEL was loaded, at $32,485 with leather, Multi-Contour front seats with Active Motion (stress-relieving air bladders), the top option group including Sync, a reverse sensing system, those ambient interior lights, “intelligent access” with push-button start, power-adjustable pedals, Sony 390-watt audio with 12 speakers, and P255/45R19 all-season tires on painted Sparkle Silver aluminum wheels.

About those Active Motion front seats. They massage your backside, not your back. Taurus designers and engineers believe they may be the first of their kind and are meant to keep the driver alert. They’re the first of their kind for good reason, though. Kneading of the buttocks is a strange sensation—we’ll take the backrub.

The $31,995 Taurus Limited is just shy of matching the Lincoln MKS, with perforated, leather-trimmed seats (heated and cooled in front, heated in the rear) and lots more stuff. SEL and Limited models are available with AWD. Ford admits that Taurus nearly encroaches on MKS territory. The Lincoln features a higher-grade leather and has had

FORD CALLS the electric razor-look take on the signature three-bar grille “evolutionary.” Mid-level SEL adds supplemental parking lamps over the base SE model.

TARGET TAURUS

FORD’S MIDSIZE WAS ONCE THE CAR TOYOTA AND HONDA WANTED TO BEAT

THE 1986 TAURUS was so radical that Ford kept the car it was meant to replace, the prosaic, rear-drive LTD II, in production until the new family sedan caught on with buyers. Taurus snagged Motor Trend’s 1986 Car of the Year award and set a standard for clean, modern sedans on the large end of the burgeoning midsize market. Toyota and Honda had good reason to envy the Taurus, which within a couple of years found itself competing with the hideaway-headlamp Accord for the title, best-selling car in America.

From the early 1990s, Japanese midsize cars got larger with every generation and were harder to distinguish from each other. Toyota’s redesigned 1992 Camry entered the race, and by ’93 the Japanese maker had to supplement U.S. production with boatloads of imports. For several years, the Taurus, Camry, and Accord traded fi rst through third, each breaching the 400,000-unit level. They resorted to raising fl eet sales and to generous late-December discounts. The Taurus’ Hertz lot ubiquity even made popular culture when Patricia Arquette’s character in “Flirting With Disaster” (1996) asked, “Does anybody actually own a white Taurus, or are they all rentals?”

The ’96 Taurus distinguished itself from the Camry and Accord with “ovoid” styling, to the detriment of the Ford’s sales numbers. By now, the tri-headed sales race was falling apart. Honda offi cially dropped out of the race, saying it would no longer bring in expensive import Accords to supplement domestic Accord production in its race against Camry. In 2005, Ford discontinued the midsize Taurus and then brought it back as a full-size model. Ford moved just 53,000 such Tauri last year, compared with 148,000 Fusions, the old Taurus’ successor. In a disastrously slow year, without changing nameplates or market position, Honda sold 373,000 Accords and Toyota sold 437,000 Camrys. many of the Taurus’ advances “backfilled” into it. And FoMoCo believes few buyers will cross-shop the Lincoln and the Ford.

All this cushiness and stuff translates into a rather sublime near-luxury drive. The chassis is smooth, and the car is extremely quiet. The driver’s seat is stingy with bolstering, though, and it feels as if you’re sitting on it, not in it. The ride height exacerbates the problem.

Designed for aging baby boomers, you step directly into the car, not down into it. That’s often a good thing, but the new Taurus pretty much retains the old Five Hundred/ Taurus’ ground clearance, ride height, and shoulder-line height, if not its roofline. This stance was designed to accommodate the Freestyle/Taurus X crossover, too, so you’re nearly as high up as in a minivan or low crossover.

Even with the lowered roofline, there’s space enough to wear a hat, should you be so crass as to wear one indoors (no wonder FDR chose a Phaeton). The back seat is loaded with head, leg, and shoulder

space for three adults.

No surprise then that this big family car takes fast corners with loads of tirescrubbing understeer.

Rebound damping is pretty firm though, and body roll is nicely controlled. The steering mostly feels precise with good weighting, if a bit too loose just off center, with a kind of bump-steer looseness when cornering on rough or highly crested roads. The 3.5-liter Duratec V-6 is a willing partner, delivering decent, smooth power. The six-speed’s paddle-shifters are a bit slow. Best to let the tranny controller do its thing, except on steep roads. THE NEW CAR’S interior suggests a level of luxury and quality far above anything offered in previous Taurus models.

At press time, Ford was awaiting EPA certification, but expects to match or better the ’09 Taurus’ 18/28 mpg with front drive. That’s just one or two mpg better than fullsize rear-drive cars like the Hyundai Genesis V-6 sedan (18/27) and aging Chrysler 300 3.5 (17/25).

With the Taurus’ tall overall height, it necessarily has to be a longer car in order to look like a long, sleek sedan, so it weighs within a couple pounds of its reardrive competitors, wiping out FWD mass efficiency.

The 2010 Ford Taurus is by necessity a compromised redo. Unlike Ford’s last such car, the 2008-10 Focus, the new Taurus is a good-looking compromise with subtle luxury, offering Great Recession consumers a lot of elegant kit for the money. It’s the right kind of car for the times, a car our current president may want to be photographed driving, sans the cigarette holder. ■

2010 FORD TAURUS SEL

POWERTRAIN/CHASSIS DRIVETRAIN LAYOUT Front-engine, FWD ENGINE TYPE 60-deg V-6, alum block/ heads

VALVETRAIN

DOHC, 4 valves/cyl DISPLACEMENT 213.3 cu in/3496 cc COMPRESSION RATIO 10.3:1 POWER (SAE NET) 263 hp @ 6250 rpm TORQUE (SAE NET) 249 lb-ft @ 4500 rpm REDLINE 6500 rpm WEIGHT TO POWER 15.4 lb/hp TRANSMISSION 6-speed automatic AXLE/FINAL-DRIVE RATIOS 2.77:1/2.06:1 SUSPENSION, F;R Struts, coil springs, antiroll bar; multilink, coil springs, anti-roll bar STEERING RATIO 17.4:1 TURNS LOCK-TO-LOCK 3.2 BRAKES, F;R 12.8-in vented disc; 13.0-in disc, ABS

WHEELS TIRES 8.0 x 19-in, cast aluminum 255/45R19 100V M+S, Goodyear Eagle RS-A

DIMENSIONS WHEELBASE

112.9 in TRACK, F/R 65.3/65.5 in LENGTH X WIDTH X HEIGHT 202.9 x 76.2 x 60.7 in TURNING CIRCLE 39.7 ft CURB WEIGHT 4060 lb WEIGHT DIST., F/R 60/40% SEATING CAPACITY 5 HEADROOM, F/R 39.0/37.8 in LEGROOM, F/R 41.9/38.1 in SHOULDER ROOM, F/R 57.9/56.9 in CARGO VOLUME 20.1 cu ft TEST DATA ACCELERATION TO MPH 0-30 2.5 sec 0-40 3.7 0-50 5.2 0-60 7.1 0-70 9.4 0-80 11.9 0-90 14.8 0-100 19.0 PASSING, 45-65 MPH 3.8 QUARTER MILE 15.4 sec @ 91.2 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 129 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 0.81 g (avg) MT FIGURE EIGHT 27.6 sec @ 0.64 g (avg) TOP-GEAR REVS @ 60 MPH 1550 rpm CONSUMER INFO BASE PRICE $27,995 PRICE AS TESTED $32,485 STABILITY/TRACTION CONTROL Yes/yes AIRBAGS Dual front, front side, f/r curtain BASIC WARRANTY 3 yrs/36,000 miles POWERTRAIN WARRANTY 5 yrs/60,000 miles ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE 5 yrs/60,000 miles FUEL CAPACITY 19.0 gal EPA CITY/HWY ECON 18/28 mpg (est) CO2 EMISSIONS 0.90 lb/mile (est) MT OBS FUEL ECON 15.2 mpg RECOMMENDED FUEL Unleaded regular