as bad as a toyota cavalier or a chrysler neon / wich is worst ?
mrfxit,
Nov 12, 1:55am
Arrogant old mans car. Driven a couple & they were simply horrible Rear windows crap to see out. Hard to judge where the end of the bonnet was Soft suspension Thirsty Seemed like a mix of Euro & English controls & in odd places.
Plenty of pep when pushed hard but nothing great about the cornering at speed
franc123,
Nov 12, 2:06am
All of those are throwaway junk designed to be thrown away after about 5 years tops. Cavalier and Neon were created specifically for rental/student first car market. Taurus is a huge seller in US that is a comfortable mid range car but that's really the end of the good points.
The same author says that those Chrysler neon are good race cars.
kazbanz,
Nov 12, 7:26am
Best described as a "ok" car.--not spectacular in any way. For NZ use theres either far more practical cars or far more fun cars to be had--and for the same sort of money
intrade,
Nov 12, 8:44am
i did not know any still existed. there was a other sports car with the same bad reputation same year i think 1988 + - i could not think of the name till i walked away from the computer then it clicked Ford Probe was the sports car . First official poo fighters of this time . Now its not unique to see a poofighter back then that was sticking out.
mrfxit,
Nov 12, 9:00am
Interesting. he said
LOL I thought it was all of . .>> sad/ enchanting/ hilarious AND, pretty much bang on the mark
gubay,
Nov 12, 10:33am
Had a '98 Taurus wagon for 2 years a while ago. Engine by Yamaha. just a 4-wheel armchair, radio actually inside rear left wheel arch. Never again.
sw20,
Nov 12, 11:30am
Mazda MX6 in drag.
s_nz,
Nov 12, 11:32am
Are you talking about in NZ? - I think they are all over 20 years old now. There are none available on trade-me.
If you are talking internationally, the most recent version is essentially a stretched mondeo for the Chinese market.
Its out of production now, but the prior version was reasonably common in the USA especially a police car.
Was the next size above a camry, and competed with the likes of the Chevy Impala etc. The Taurus was the class leader for sedan boot (trunk) space at 20cu feet before it went out of production last year.
Well they do look like they were 'pooped' or extruded out.
807,
Nov 12, 5:30pm
see the occasional one, but never seemed to be many even back in the day . ditto for the Probe.
franc123,
Nov 12, 6:27pm
Both the Taurus and Probe were very low volume cars in NZ new form and were only on sale for a limited time, the Taurus Ghia sedan was the only version imported. Both were $60k vehicles, this was more than the likes of an EF Fairmont Ghia or VS Holden Calais at the time. The Probe wasn't very high spec, it wasnt any more mechanically sophisticated than a Telstar V6 and was actually a stripped out Mazda MX6 with a Ford USA body and dashboard, minus the gimmicky stuff like 4 wheel steer. Why they chose to import those is anyone's guess, given the terrible reception the Capri has only a couple of years earlier. Taurus was only brought here because Ford Australia wanted to test the Aust market response to it as a Falcon replacement, it was obviously rejected but it didnt stop them applying styling cues to the AU Falcon, known as new edge architecture. Controversial wasn't the word.
hkjoe,
Nov 12, 6:54pm
I remember reading, probably 20 years ago, that the Ford Probe in the US was not popular with women; because of the name. Think about it. Probably just apocryphal.
rbd,
Nov 12, 7:47pm
I remember driving around downtown Atlanta in a rental taurus in the late 90's. Three big blokes driving around at 5am, all the drug dealers we reaching into their jackets as we passed, must have thought we were cops.
We got out of their ASAP, eventually found the airport we were lost looking for!
tgray,
Nov 13, 2:15am
I remember when the 1996 Taurus was launched - I wish I didn't.
richardmayes,
Nov 13, 8:21am
So many memories. I was a teenager getting interested in cars when all of that happened!
I thought what they did with the sides of the body on the Taurus was quite cool. Pity about the front end, and the back end, and the roofline. I sat in one once in a car yard, and they are even ugly on the inside, just a blob shaped wheel in front of of you, and a high blob shaped dashboard to minimize the view out ahead. I noticed the auto had a PRND21 selector like a 1960s English car.
The first time I saw a ford Probe was at a car show, quite a fancy looking thing but unfortunately it was in the same room as a Ferrari 355 Berlinetta. The 355 motor was about twice the power of the Probe, but both cars had their bonnets up and the Ferrari you could see the engine, and you could see past it down to the floor, like a proper old car, you could imagine yourself getting in there with your socket set and replacing the coils or the plugs if you had to. The Ford probe engine bay was just a wall of spaghetti plumbing and plastic covers, the classic East-west car of the period.
(To me, all of these cars existed in the shadow of the 1997 Audi A6, which was an impossibly smooth, minimalist, clean-looking thing that looked like a futuristic design concept from a car show or an architecture magazine, compared to everything else that was on the road at the time.)
intrade,
Oct 25, 2:51am
There was more details about problems with the Taurus. like 2010+- The problem was back then these advanced problems where quite difficult. I remember we had a 4wd opel something to get diagnosed and no one could figure it out. There was no internet to find out that a guy like Richard mcuistian in the usa already had the know-how back then to find these electronic problems. i was thinking back in the 1990s gee i am glad i got a fiat diesel with 1 wire to make it go doing close to 60 mpg . i just googled i could not recall the one it was a opel calibra 4wd system had problems.
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