First Test: 2010 Ford Taurus SEL at AutoFans www Auto Com

First Test: 2010 Ford Taurus SEL

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 Ford 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 slow-selling 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 near-crossover-level ride height, designers have lowered the roofline up to three inches in spots. The ‘10 Taurus also has an Interceptor-like “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 replaces the RWD Crown Victoria and Mercury Grand Marquis. The Freestyle/Taurus X and Mercury Montego/Sable die after model year 2009.

Ford put some of that rear-drive 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 blind-spot 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.

P235/55R-18 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 all-wheel drive. Ford admits that Taurus nearly encroaches on MKS territory. The Lincoln features a higher-grade leather and has had 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 tire-scrubbing 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.

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 full-size 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 rear-drive 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.

[source:MotorTrend]

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First Test: 2010 Ford Taurus SEL

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 8:53 am and is filed under Ford, Auto Review, Car Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.