The car Ford should have built in the first place

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Origins

The story of the original Taurus is well known, but here’s a quick, oversimplified refresher: Desperate company makes good car; company makes money; company lets car get stale; company introduces weird-looking replacement for good car; company winds up desperate again.

Fast forwarding past that to modern history, the 2005 Five Hundred was based on the Volvo S80, and if you’re going to introduce a family-oriented full-size sedan, starting with Volvo parts isn’t a bad idea. It would have been nice if Ford had used Volvo engines, too. Instead, it saddled the Five Hundred with a 201-horsepower 3.0-liter V-6 that, when in all-wheel drive configuration, was mated to a continuously variable transmission that made the worst of the engine. The anonymous styling and name only a true Fordophile could appreciate didn’t help, especially considering that Chrysler introduced its excellent and boldly styled 300 at exactly the same time.

Ford says that “Taurus” is the company’s third most recognized nameplate, right after Mustang and F-150. If it had simply glued the name to an unchanged Five Hundred then the mockery would have no end, but the truth of the matter is that this is a much improved car, addressing every complaint of the 2005 model and then some.

There are two other vehicles in the mix here, neither of which we drove. The first is the redesigned Ford Freestyle crossover, which is officially added to the Taurus family with its new designation, Taurus X. Based on the same general platform, it bows later in the summer with many of the same improvements as the 2008 Taurus. The Mercury version of the Taurus gets its old name back too, but as always the Sable lives in its bullish brother’s shadow. Accuse us of lip service to the Mercury version if you want, but frankly, we’re giving as good as we’re getting from Ford on this one.