2nd Taurus I've owned

[djacks]

Originally Posted by Dschinghis Kahn

Don't get me wrong, they build some fine cars. Those little Toyota pickups, for example. Aside from rust, they're absolutely unstoppable.

It just gets to me that the attitude persists, even when personal experience should suggest otherwise.

Yes, I had two Toyota 4x4 pickups. My first one the bed had rotted off the thing so we fabricated a flat bed for it. That truck was amazing. Another truck I wish I had never sold. Actually, my original dream would have been to find a nice and well maintained Toyota 4x4 pickup, but those are rare gems and very hard to find. Even when one is posted for sale, it's a beat up old project and not a reasonable daily driver.

I think it's dealers and private sellers alike that keep the "import mentality" going as well as extend it to every import whether it's gained that reliability reputation or not. I can't tell you how many ads I'd seen for a high mileage import where the seller stated something like those miles are "just broken in" for this car. I learned my lesson the hard way with my Nissan. Even when I was sinking money into the car constantly I figured this is stuff that just needed to be done and eventually it would pay off. The mechanic (a big Nissan fan) who looked at my Nissan when it blew up was flabbergasted by a Nissan with under 130k where the motor had blown for really no reason. So in turn, its a sellers market for any import and a buyers market for a decent domestic vehicle like a Taurus.

I still see so many ads for really decent Taurus' from dealers and private sellers alike for very fair prices. My advice to anyone looking for a good reasonably priced used car is look for a well maintained, relatively good mileage Taurus. So many to choose from out there compared to imports where selection is slim and prices are unjustly inflated.

[shoman04]

Welcome djack, I'm a two SHO TAURUS OWNER.1993&2011
http://www.taurusclub.com/forum/memb...dimage002.jpeg
http://www.taurusclub.com/forum/memb...1-100-1200.jpg

[sousa632]

Welcome to the madness.


Grab some new pics and post them up here Post a Picture of your Bull!

[Bull Geek]

Welcome to the site. Same color as my 2000. Hides dirt well if you aren't up to normal car washes! Enjoy the car. Your suggested maintenance to your mechanic is wise. Flushing the coolant every couple of years, and it'll last a long while.

Common coolant system failures on the Vulcan 3.0 are the heater hose assembly behind the upper intake manifold, water pump, timing cover gasket, and the coolant reservoir.

Where on "the hand" are you located?

[Lgbpop]

Welcome to the site. Mr. Hankey?? - holy crap.



Welcome back to American plastic, aluminum and the occasional iron. It may drive you crazy, but it will drive you.

************************************************** ***********

One of my favorite sports headlines from the 1970s: "SMU Boils Rice"

Another one, from early expansion days in baseball..."Mets Shuffle Cards"

[djacks]

Originally Posted by Bull Geek

Welcome to the site. Same color as my 2000. Hides dirt well if you aren't up to normal car washes! Enjoy the car. Your suggested maintenance to your mechanic is wise. Flushing the coolant every couple of years, and it'll last a long while.

Common coolant system failures on the Vulcan 3.0 are the heater hose assembly behind the upper intake manifold, water pump, timing cover gasket, and the coolant reservoir.

Where on "the hand" are you located?

I'm in SE Michigan. Around Ann Arbor. That's another thing is Silver Frost. If I had to pick a color I wanted my next car to be it was silver. Mr. Hanky was brown and my Nissan was even worse being black.

I'm not a mechanic by trade. But i know many of them and know Fords pretty good spending so much time at a dealer. Just like my mechanic said, people think oil is the only fluid in cars that needs checked and changed when I told him to do the other fluids. He confirmed they needed changed. Probably the same 12-13 year old fluids. Even though the car was maybe only driver 5000 miles a year at the most, the fluids looked original. The oil was recently changed less than a thousand miles ago. From speaking to the folks that sold it, the owner was pretty adamant about oil changes at least. I knew the recommended trans flushes were supposed to be every 30k so that was a must. I figure I'll do the coolant maybe more often, like every 15k.

[The White Falcon]

I think one of the issues with the imports (especially what I've heard from Toyota owners) is that the owners think they're so perfect they don't need maintenance. Yeah...not. But the myth is so great that many of them simply don't change the oil, or the transmission fluid, etc, and the car, predictably, falls apart/breaks down.

Family's had a mix of cars over the years (never a Chrysler product, I just realized) with relatively minor maintenance. As for the 'imports'...

2003 Accord, bought with 25k, sold with 60k (parents said trading it in was the biggest mistake ever). Only problem was a left-blinker that didn't work. (repaired under warranty)
2005 Odyssey, bought with 47k, still going with 170k. This thing has literally been from coast to coast-we took it on a cross country trip to D.C. in the summer of 2009. 28MPG nearly all the way (only time it's ever gotten that). The only odd problem it had for a while were bad catalytic converters. First one failed at 60k, replaced by Honda for free. Second failed at 105k. Initially, they weren't going to cover it, but after the dealer talked with corporate they covered half and threw in a three year warranty on the part.
1993 Accord. My parents bought this beater for my brother as his first car. 5 speed manual, cute little four-banger. 235k miles. Still runs rather well(lots of low-end grunt), though it burns a bit of oil and they had to replace the distributor a week after they bought it.

My point? Nearly any car these days will last if you take care of it. But there are quirks, and there are defects, and our friends from Japan got a little lazy there for a while.

Prices for used Honda's are bad enough, but used Toyotas? Even worse. It's one of the reasons I'm looking at a Taurus-I'd rather save some cash, get a higher-end model, and spend some extra money making it look sharp.

[djacks]

Originally Posted by The White Falcon

I think one of the issues with the imports (especially what I've heard from Toyota owners) is that the owners think they're so perfect they don't need maintenance. Yeah...not. But the myth is so great that many of them simply don't change the oil, or the transmission fluid, etc, and the car, predictably, falls apart/breaks down.

Family's had a mix of cars over the years (never a Chrysler product, I just realized) with relatively minor maintenance. As for the 'imports'...

2003 Accord, bought with 25k, sold with 60k (parents said trading it in was the biggest mistake ever). Only problem was a left-blinker that didn't work. (repaired under warranty)
2005 Odyssey, bought with 47k, still going with 170k. This thing has literally been from coast to coast-we took it on a cross country trip to D.C. in the summer of 2009. 28MPG nearly all the way (only time it's ever gotten that). The only odd problem it had for a while were bad catalytic converters. First one failed at 60k, replaced by Honda for free. Second failed at 105k. Initially, they weren't going to cover it, but after the dealer talked with corporate they covered half and threw in a three year warranty on the part.
1993 Accord. My parents bought this beater for my brother as his first car. 5 speed manual, cute little four-banger. 235k miles. Still runs rather well(lots of low-end grunt), though it burns a bit of oil and they had to replace the distributor a week after they bought it.

My point? Nearly any car these days will last if you take care of it. But there are quirks, and there are defects, and our friends from Japan got a little lazy there for a while.

Prices for used Honda's are bad enough, but used Toyotas? Even worse. It's one of the reasons I'm looking at a Taurus-I'd rather save some cash, get a higher-end model, and spend some extra money making it look sharp.

For the cash I was comfortably willing to spend during my search I was seeing a few Hondas and Toyotas with high miles and high asking prices or a plethora of Tauruses with decent miles and reasonable prices. Even as bad as I thought I wanted an import, I was seeing an extremely high amount consumer reviews of Hondas with several high cost failures (auto trans failures galore, air conditioning failures). Even the vehicles themselves I had called on some had no AC, or had been on at least their second trans, or had didn't have a clean title. Even the ones I did bother to go see weren't at all as they were described. It really seemed like it was going to be a gamble on any one of these vehicles. Even with my thorough used car buying history, I'm living proof that you can buy an import with under 100k, take very good care of it and fix anything that goes wrong, and still have the car blow up at 128k. I didn't want to take that risk again.

On the other hand there are several nice Tauruses out there with decent miles that are a lot less of a gamble investing in. To find a Honda or Toyota for the miles and condition my Taurus was in would've cost an absolute fortune. I actually did see a 2002 Honda accord that had less than 30k (same story as my Taurus, one elderly owner couldn't drive anymore). They were asking a ridiculous amount of money for it. Furthermore, those Honda accords were absolutely notorious for trans failures under 100k. My point is that my Taurus trans could fail as well (although there is much less documentation with Taurus trans failures that I've seen compared to Hondas of same era). But I got such a good deal on it that it is a much better gamble to take than to pay too much money for an Accord and still worry it might have a flaw.

[Lgbpop]

I have come around to buying domestic used vehicles for another reason, related to level of care. I have noticed, at least since moving to Florida, that the older people from my parents' generation, those who were raised to take care of what they had, also were those people more reluctant to buy imports because they remember WWII when Japan and Germany were the enemy. They buy domestic, service the vehicles regularly, and usually keep detailed service records. If one knows where to look, one can find plenty of private sales by people who want their baby to go to a good home.