Ford Taurus: From No. 1 to scrap heap — again

DETROIT — For the past decade, Village Ford owner Jim Seavitt has exclusively driven black Taurus SHOs.

That streak, which started when the nameplate was last redesigned in 2009, ends in a few months when he turns in his 2018 SHO, a high-performance variant that gained a cult following during the car's early years. Ford stopped making the Taurus outside of China this month, and there are four of the cars remaining at his dealership — which once sold 40 to 50 a month. Seavitt said he'll likely opt for an Edge ST.

"I love it," said Seavitt, whose dealership is three miles from Ford's headquarters in Dearborn, Mich. "I'm sorry it's going away. I'm going to have to get used to not having it."

Seavitt knows he's in the minority. Taurus sales at Village Ford have slowed to, at best, a handful a month, mirroring the nationwide trend. In fact, the Taurus, America's best-selling car for five straight years in the 1990s, has fallen so far from the public consciousness that even its death went largely unnoticed.

Ford ended production of the full-size sedan at its Chicago Assembly Plant on March 1, but the news was overshadowed by national media coverage of the final Chevrolet Cruze being assembled at the plant General Motors is idling in Lordstown, Ohio. Aside from a final group photo and a ceremonial hood signature by line workers, it was a relatively subdued end for the Taurus, at one time a revolutionary sedan dubbed "The Car that Saved Ford."

The Taurus' aerodynamic design — derided as a "jellybean" and "potato car" by former Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca — marked a radical departure from the bland, boxy cars of the 1980s and helped propel the Taurus to No. 1 on the sales charts from 1992 through 1996. It was the last Detroit 3 sedan to win the crown that Japanese brands have owned since 1997.

The Taurus helped usher in a companywide focus on quality, and its eye-catching looks and front-wheel-drive performance even earned it a role as the police cruiser in the movie RoboCop.

And yet, Ford briefly tossed the venerable name aside in 2006, when it discontinued the Taurus following years of neglect and relegation to car-rental lots. Alan Mulally, who became CEO later that year, quickly resurrected the name, this time as a full-size sedan instead of a midsize, because he felt it still had cachet.

But the Taurus never recaptured its magic from the late '80s and early '90s and was doomed, in part, because of the success of the Fusion that Ford introduced as a fresh start in the midsize category. In addition, buyers have increasingly dropped large cars for more useful crossovers and SUVs. If they do buy sedans, they tend to opt for reliable, affordable Japanese models such as the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord.

"It was the last stand of the great American sedan," Karl Brauer, executive publisher at Cox Automotive, told Automotive News. "It represented the last version of a mainstream American car that could appeal to a wide range of people."

Jack Telnack was always confident the first-generation Taurus would be a sales hit, even if Ford's marketing department was not.

Telnack, as chief design executive for Ford's North American automotive operations, was in charge of the team that designed the Taurus and its sibling vehicle, the Mercury Sable. He faced pressure from then-CEO Philip Caldwell to deliver.

"Caldwell told me, 'I want something to light this place up,' " Telnack recalled to Automotive News. "He gave us pretty much open field on any design we wanted."

After the team had mocked up some early prototypes, Telnack said Caldwell came to the studio and surprised them by asking, "Are you sure you've reached far enough?"

"Normally they tell us to pull back a little," he said. "He was serious about it. He said we had to make a really strong statement."

The Taurus marked an epochal shift in American car design, featuring soft lines and curves in what Telnack described as an "aero" look inspired, in part, by his time working in Europe.

The vehicle also was unique in that it didn't feature a standard grille — just a small opening with a "floating oval" Ford logo. William Clay Ford Sr., the company's design committee chairman, had to approve the grille-less front end, and although he seemed to hesitate, he ultimately gave a green light to the cleaner, contemporary design.

"I about leapt out of my chair and put my arms around him," Telnack said.

Telnack believed the vehicle would succeed because Ford already had experimented with more rounded looks on the 1979 Mustang and 1983 Thunderbird. He eschewed advice from traditional market research groups, because he felt they would be more predisposed to like familiar, boxy shapes.

"If you saw pictures of the first clay model and the final approval, we didn't change it," Telnack said. "And we never really changed based on feedback from market research. I really believe if we listened to market research, we wouldn't have had that car."

Ford was in need of a win when the Taurus went on sale in 1985. The automaker, along with its American rivals, had fallen behind the Japanese in terms of quality and design.

The Taurus helped change that perception.

"I think it was seen as a turning point for Ford in their vehicle design, engineering and quality," Brauer said. "If you could build a critical mass of awareness in those areas, you could shift a lot of customers to a vehicle. It just all came together."

Telnack credited a strong connection between the design team and the engineering team, led by Lewis Veraldi. The two had worked well together in Europe, Telnack said.

"The unique part of this is that we were definitely on the same page," he said. "The teams at the time — both had that same kind of feeling, same kind of drive."

Ford added the Taurus SHO, which stands for Super High Output, in 1988, creating the first domestic challenge to the BMW 5 series. The SHO was intended to be a limited offering but more than 100,000 were sold over the next decade.

Taurus sales peaked in 1992, stealing the best-selling-car title from the Accord with a record 409,751 units. The Taurus reportedly made Ford more than $100 million that year, according to CAR: A Drama of the American Workplace, a book chronicling development of the second-generation Taurus.

"At GM, it drove us crazy," said Mark LaNeve, a former General Motors sales executive who is now Ford's head of U.S. marketing, sales and service. "We didn't have anything to compete with it. Chevy and Oldsmobile were the two that were trying to figure it out, but they never did."

The car's dominance continued through the middle of the decade and a major redesign.

The next-generation Taurus wasn't as well-received — it was "overly ovoid," Brauer said — but the new-model sales bump helped it retain the crown for a fifth year in 1996.

In the ensuing years, the vehicle's luster faded, driven as much by external forces as anything Ford did — or didn't — do.

"Whether it's the shift in the marketplace to SUVs or lack of profit that sedans offer, the concept of an American company having the best-selling car in this country is pretty much inconceivable at this point," Brauer said. "The Japanese continued to focus on that segment and poured substantial resources into developing better and better sedans. I don't think Ford had that same driving force."

By 2006, the Taurus was languishing on rental car lots. Ford shuttered the Atlanta plant where the car was produced. The final Taurus, painted silver, went to Truett Cathy, the owner of Chick-Fil-A.

But the Taurus story didn't end there.

Mulally, who declined through a spokesman to be interviewed for this story, chose to rename the full-size Ford Five Hundred the Taurus for the 2008 model year.

Earl Lucas was among the first to know. He was the head exterior designer on what he expected would be a freshened Five Hundred, until Mulally made the change.

"Then things got real serious," Lucas recalled. "We knew historically the Taurus always signaled style, so there was a certain expectation."

Lucas, who is bald, jokes that before Mulally decided to call the vehicle the Taurus, he had hair. But he said he's proud of the vehicle he crafted, even if sales never quite picked up.

"The Taurus did exactly what it was supposed to do," Lucas said. "It took the responsibility of setting a vision that other products could learn from."

Lucas admitted that the Fusion, which Ford had anointed as its new volume car, was better suited for some of the Taurus' exterior design cues.

On the interior, the Taurus had slightly less legroom and passenger volume than the Fusion, despite being a class bigger and costing thousands of dollars more.

"Cars for that price and that size seem to be unnecessary," Brauer said.

Ford, citing privacy reasons, won't say who will get the final full-size Taurus, another silver model. Chicago Assembly is being retooled to make the next-generation Ford Explorer and new Lincoln Aviator crossover, which Ford is betting will be big sellers.

Lucas and Telnack, who both keep scale replicas of the Taurus they designed on their desks, said they were sad to hear the name would go away, at least on this side of the world. The Taurus remains part of Ford's lineup in China, where a redesigned version was introduced in 2015.

"I think that name has an incredible amount of potential," Telnack said. "It could have stood for a new design and continued on that way, I think."

Lucas said he's hopeful Ford might one day consider reviving the name again.

"The marketplace is ever-evolving," Lucas said. "It's still a legendary product. It answered the call when we asked it to deliver, and if we need to call upon it again, it will be there."