By Matt Wellumson

Neuwerks

While at the Chicago Auto Show, we took a few moments to get up close and personal with the new Taurus SHO!

By Katherine Helmetag

Atomicalex

The Ford peeps bussed me out to the Chicago Assembly plant where they will build the new Taurus and the new SHO (complete with track package!) The plant covers over 2.8 million square feet and has at any given time about 1400 vehicles in process. That takes over 7.5 miles of conveyor belt, according to the plant manager Anthony Hoskins. We toured the final assembly side of things, where the unit body is mated to the interior and drivetrain, the wheels are put on, and final QC is done. Final assembly is a 5 hour process, if you started a car and moved it non-stop down the line, you’d spent a total of about 12 hours building it. About 35 SHO enthusiasts were along for the tour, holy cow you guys and gals are serious about your Tauri! More pics after the jump.

Continue reading "Ford Chicago Assembly" »

By Katherine Helmetag

Atomicalex

Derrick Kumar couldn’t let it be. He scoped out the enthusiast market and pushed a new Taurus SHO through the product channels at Ford. CarDomain, your voices have been heard. With a high boost EcoBoost V6 driving a 6-speed manumatic with paddle shifters, upgraded suspension was required. It’s ok to be old school if it means the kind of cool that this is. The interior is full of SHO-specific trim details. Matt will have a gallery up as soon as we can get close to this new hottie!

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Jalopnik just posted pics of the 2010 Ford Taurus SHO, which was spotted doing humid weather testing in Florida. Other than the dual exhaust and SHO emblem on the back, it looks the same as the standard Taurus we saw in Detroit. The new SHO is expected to get the 335 hp EcoBoost V6. You can see more pics at Jalopnik

So I’m curious: are you guys excited about this car at all?

By Katherine Helmetag

Atomicalex

My favorite detail of the new Taurus is the logo font—it’s totally retro and a throwback to the days when the Taurus was the hottest thing on the road. The new Taurus seriously impressed Rob and me, and it’s going to be very competitive. It’s based on the MKS platform and shares the basic profile, but the shared components pretty much stop at the floor pan. The interior has great detailing, with piped panels in the door cards and this wave motif that carries through all the way to the bottoms of the cupholders. The exterior has plenty of visual interest that flows into the cabin over the dashboard. Hedonistic! The Sync system will include the non-subscription text-based GPS, navi, and crash locating system that Ford has developed for people who don’t want to pay every month. The suspension will be sportier than the MKS (thank heaven!). Ford is going back to its roots with this version—the right place to go, IMO. Thanks to Matt and Mike for the killer video. Tons of pics after the jump!

Continue reading "2010 Taurus is Hot" »

I was out of the office for the last few days, because I was in Florida for my little sister’s wedding. It was great, and I even managed to avoid embarrassing my parents by getting plastered at the reception. Hey, first time for everything. Here’s the news:

• The first Bugatti Veyron has been sold in China, for a whopping 3.5 million bucks. How’s that for Western decadence?  Autoblog
• The Bush administration doesn’t want the Big Three dragging their feet with the new CAFE standards, which is basically another way of saying, "hey look at us, we’re still relevant!" Automotive News
• Asimo, Honda’s cute little robot, will be conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in early May. The opening piece will be "The Impossible Dream," and will be followed by the composition "Submit Human Scum, Robot Liberation has Begun." Detroit News
• People really like the new Malibu. The average price consumers are paying is $200 higher than what folks are shelling out for the Camry. Good news for the General. Freep
• Employees in Ford’s Design Center will not be allowed to bring their kids into the office for Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work day. Maybe the company is still smarting from the leak of this 2010 Taurus shot? New York Times

This one, grainy cell-phone photo of a car that’s rumored to be the all-new 2010 Ford Taurus isn’t the kind of thing that’d normally attract more than fleeting attention… until Ford’s legal department contacted a number of sites and asked them to pull it down, which kind of implies that, yes, this most likely is the all-new 2010 Ford Taurus. The photo first surfaced on the Taurus Car Club of America forum, then got picked up by a handful of blogs. But things really picked up after Ford laid the smackdown, sparking off a massive freak-out within the automotive blogoshphere, and a pissing contetst of epic proportions. Great strategy on Ford’s part!

At last year’s New York International Auto Show, I came across a post-crash-test Saab showing some pretty serious intrusion into the passenger compartment, tucked tactfully away into the back corner of their display. Ford, by contrast, intends to be loud and proud about its crash-test results for Taurus, which scored 5 stars on both front- and side-impact wrecks. The mangled Taurus will be front and center in the manufacturer’s booth, and spectators will even be permitted to crawl around in it. Watch for broken glass! More pics below the jump.

Continue reading "Taurus to Show Up Pre-Wrecked at NYIAS" »

For those of you who’ve read my first blog here on CarDomain, and noted the cars that I personally own, you’ll immediately see that I have a bad gene for station wagons. I currently own four wagons–three from 1969–an AMC Rambler American 440, a Jeep Super Wagoneer, and a 10-passenger Mercury Colony Park–along with a 1988 AMC Eagle, one of the last ones manufactured.

With my belief that wagons have an undeniable cool factor–all look great with my surfboard strapped to the roof–I want to bring to your attention a contemporary grocery getter that you might have overlooked, Ford’s Taurus X. When it was introduced in 2005 as the Freestyle, it was unfairly criticized as being ill-positioned in marketplace and for styling that was described as being derivative, just as buyers were shifting their preferences to tall, trendy crossovers. But beauty of the Taurus X is more than skin deep.

Continue reading Ford Taurus X – A Guilty Pleasure? after the jump!

Like Chrysler’s equally ill-positioned and marketed Pacifica, Ford hesitated to call this vehicle what it is, a modern interpretation of the classic American station wagon, and in the sixties and seventies Ford dominated the category and was known as the “Wagonmaster” so there’s that tradition to fall back on.

What is it about station wagons that have such a negative connotation in the eyes of marketers in Detroit and Dearborn? And like the Pacifica (and to an even greater degree, the Dodge Magnum), is it a coincidence that all didn’t find their maker’s hoped for traction in the marketplace? I believe so.

Let’s look at the positives. The Taurus X isn’t an SUV, and to my eye, the styling is contemporary and clean, with a tasteful blend of SUV and station wagon elements. And it looks like a Ford, especially with the minor refresh it received when it was renamed Taurus X from the Freestyle for the 2008 model year. The Taurus X is a right-sized package with almost all of the utility of an SUV, including all-wheel-drive, but with car-like handling and fuel efficiency.

Ford’s highly touted digital interface, Sync, is terrific, allowing for easy integration of a variety of digital players as well as Bluetooth-enabled wireless phones, including my own T-Mobile Wing (which I also use as a digital music player instead of carrying around a separate iPod). The Taurus X offers an exceptional driving position with firm but comfortable seats combined with a well-finished interior (with one nagging exception noted below) that seems at or near the top of its class.

The negatives? The 6-speed transmission, mated to a more powerful 3.5-liter V6, still needs a bit of work on the tuning front, to nail it 100%. But it is a substantial improvement over the CVT mated to the 3-liter V6 that was the drivetrain at the Freestyle’s introduction back in 2005. And marring the almost perfect execution of the interior is an unsightly mold mark on the trim on the passenger’s side A-pillar. Why Ford, was this necessary? Am I nit-picking? Of course, but it’s because the rest of the interior is so excellent.

On the road the vehicle drives small, much smaller than is its 200-inch overall length would lead you to believe and this is a big positive in my book. I attribute this to its lower, almost car-like profile, unlike most crossovers with their jacked-up stance, especially in many smaller models.

In the 2007 calendar year Ford sold about 42,000 Taurus Xs (this includes more than 11,000 Freestyle-badged units). What’s interesting is that Chrysler shifted an almost identical number of Pacificas. But looking back, to the seventies, Ford sold more than 120,000 wood-clad Country Squires annually.

Where am I going with this? I think that Ford would have been well-served had they marketed the Freestyle/Taurus X for what it is, a thoroughly modern version of a traditional American station wagon (the Taurus X is based on a Volvo platform shared with the XC90) and offered a Taurus Squire X version, complete with Di-Noc “wood” trim. Am I the only one who thinks this would have been a good idea? Over the years several SEMA Show car builders have shown Explorers and Expeditions and each one has looked classy and was well received. Might this have added 10,000 additional sales each year to Ford? For those of us who have fond memories of those Country Squires of our childhoods that now seem so long ago, I think so.

When Derrick Kuzak from Ford’s global product development team spoke about the current Taurus recently, he compared it to Homer Simpson. For the culturally illiterate, that’s not a compliment. Personally, I kind of like this car’s styling, but I appreciate that one of Ford’s top dogs is ready to call it like he sees it, sales be damned. Read more over at MSNBC.