That's why it's time to add the Taurus to the SVT list

. Heck, the F-150, Focus, and Contour are. Why can't the Taurus be??? We need to petition!!!

 

Malibu... PFFFFTT! what a joke! The new ones look like

and they are smaller than the Taurus, and they are not as powerful - I raced one before that said V6 and it was a ridiculous win (my win

)! The Impala could be some tough competition though, but I wouldn't worry about the Malibu.

 

Ford should be ashamed to have the malibu as a direct competitor

 

Originally posted by XLSuruaT@Dec 8 2003, 05:02 PM
Ford should be ashamed to have the malibu as a direct competitor

Me-ow.



Impala is our direct competitor. Malibu is crap.

 

Once again, SVT Taurus. Who agrees???

 

Originally posted by biteableniles+Dec 8 2003, 02:15 PM-->QUOTE (biteableniles @ Dec 8 2003, 02:15 PM)

<!--QuoteBegin-XLSuruaT

@Dec 8 2003, 05:02 PM
Ford should be ashamed to have the malibu as a direct competitor

Me-ow.



Impala is our direct competitor. Malibu is crap.[/b]

I was at edmunds looking for the competitors and I clicked on the video. Damn, they hated the gen3 taurus :roflmao:

 

SVT?....yes it would be sweet.....but what needs to happen is the re-awakening of the hybernating S H O!

oh yes, that would put that Impala SS right down the crapper!!

SHO for ever...SS...you hate life

 

I hate it when I hear the word Ford used in competitors commercials. It's degrading. Dodge and Chevy are A-holes. And, Malibu? What a crappy car! I wouldn't drive one even if it was given to me free of charge or any Chevy or Dodge for that matter. They can keep they're garbage.

Taurus is in desperate need of a real factory made SVT or SHO. How can Ford allow a Taurus in Nascar, but only allow nothing more than a 24v SES? What way to advertise a Taurus by having it seen on NASCAR and then being able to got to a Ford dealership and buy a SHO or SVT off the lot. What's up with this picture? Monte Carlos has their SS, Dodge has there R/T, and Grand Prix has their version (which will no longer be in Nextel Cup racing as of 2004).

I think Ford is missing a whole market by not offering a faster version of the Taurus. I think they are losing more money by not having a faster version of our car.

Nuff said

 

you are right on so many levels!! my friends....it is time!

 

Amen to that.

 

Ford isn't losing any money by not selling a high performance Taurus. Other than the people on this board (90% of which would never be able to afford the car and 10% of which would think it's cool but not buy it) there's just no interest in it. Reason being there's no interest from performance spirited drivers in the Taurus. It's a rental car, and it takes on more rental car characteristics the more it is changed.

Part of this is due to Ford's lack of decent advertising. Chrysler puts more performance oriented advertising in their Caravan than Ford does in the Taurus. You never hear anything about 200 horsepower, suspension, etc. in a Taurus commercial, all you hear is how cheap the car is, how low the financing is, and how many of them there are on the road. Can you say conformist any other way? People want something fresh and new, this is why Nissan is gaining some ground and it's why Ford needs to rejuvenate themselves before they go under, because people are tired of seeing the same blah blah driving down the streets.

The Malibu? LOL. You can keep the ugly designed, tiny interior-ed, death trap pile of crap and the pushrods.

 

Consumer reports just compared the 2 and the Taurus rolled right over it. The cars are not even in the same class.

 

I hate Japanese Cars. I can't say it's the cars themselves, but the rice thing. The american car companies all around need to do something to attract the younger consumer market soon or the japs are gonna overrun this country with their tiny upside down bathtubs with tricycle wheels and highly whimpy engines!!!

 

Your opinion is noted, Twilight and it's your attitude is an example of why we haven't seen a change in favor of us. We can't just role over and accept the inevitable, otherwise if we accept the inevitable, then the Performance Taurus will be a thing of the past and just a nice idea.

Advertisements do in a way do some persuasion, but not all. When was the last time you saw a Monte Carlo SS commercial? You don't and you won't. If Ford wants to sell a car, they need to promote it better than what they did with the Taurus in the mid 90's. I don't think I ever saw a SHO commercial and the dealers never really pushed for sales, because they left it up to the consumer to order it. That was bad sales etiquette. On the other hand, if you went to a Chevy dealer, SS models were all over the lot. I rarely if ever went to a Ford dealership and found a SHO on the lot. It never happend. Ford took the easy road to make a quick buck off a cheaper assembly lines and screwed the consumer to satisfy the masses who only wanted a sedan with better gas mileage and strictly targeted the middle and above age class.

Many cars have made comebacks due to demand and it doesn't take millions to make a vehicle return or come back to life. It take persistance and dedication and tons of correspondence. Why should we leave it all up to the auto makers to make up our minds on what we get to choose from? We need to voice our opinion and actually be proactive. I won't accept that this is it and what's done is done.

The future is not set, so why let it be written. Changes have known to be made.

 

Your opinion is understandable, mykej27, but you seem to not realize that this is Ford you're talking about, and you're talking about their model fleet car. This isn't the Focus or one of their other 'toys' to play around with and hopefully please a niche market; the Taurus has and will always be marketed as a family car.

Plus, Ford (as well as alot of other companies, but..) isn't in the best of times. They want to maximize profits, and keeping around a performance version of a family car that has minimal margins is NOT in their interest, no matter how many Taurus lovers scream that they would buy the car (not many.)

Me? When I get enough money, I'm buying me an RX8 for the sportiness, and keeping a Taurus on the side. It would be nice to have a super-leet sports taurus around again, but thats not realistic.

 

Well said mykej27. Dodge for example has done just this by reintroducing the concept of the Hemi Engine into the market. And as they are only offered in trucks right now I think they will slowly work their way into their cars. Ford needs to do the same. For example, with the release of the '05 Mustang they should also redesign the Taurus to be a more sleak looking family car - not rental crap- and offer it with a high performance mustang engine option and call it the new SHO.

 

I watch a lot of Speed Channel and I like watching Motortrend. What gets me frustrated is seeing all these high performance sedans being made by almost every manufacture out there and we are stuck with a econo FFV fleet or an SES. WTF? I'm telling you, Ford is blind to think that no ones interested. They need to make people interested.

Well, I'm done complaining for today. Late!

 

Well, Ford is still making money on the Taurus/Sable, rental or not. Look at the 6 year 0% financing deals that were offered a short time ago. That is why I bought my Sable. The car sells to rental outlets and what not, and it is a good all around vehicle for confort, power and safety.

An SHO model would be nice, but would the market demand it? And besides, you could probably get a Mustang GT cheaper. The Taurus and Sable will be around for a while yet. Why? It still makes money and has paid for itsef.

The Malibu an the Malibu Maxx where you can siit sideways in the rear, not even in the same class, had one for a rental, not impressed at all.

Now on to the ever popular retuurning segment, the RWD V-8's. The only ones that are avaialble are the Crown Vic, Grand Marquis, Town Car and Marauder. These are becomming ever more popular again as more people want bigger cars and not SUV's or Vans. Now these cars are geared toward older people (OK, I own one and I'm not even 30) and are making a great deal of money for Ford.

However, Chrysler has a trick up its sleeve, as most of us know, the Dodge intrepid, Concorde and 300M are Gone after 2004, no more FWD V-6. Chrysler will instead be going to the 300C and New Intrepid which will be RWD and standard V-6, Optional 5.7 Hemi V-8.

This is going to throw a monkey wrench to Ford, so we shall see what happens.

 

ONE of the reasons the sho stopped production is the cam problem on the v-8. Ford quietly stopped making the car with the design change for 2000 and didn't have to admit a fialed design by changing it or going back to a v-6 for a gen IV SHO. and they also didn't want to have to fix the cars that have failed.

 

Well keep in mind, this is what made the original SHO so infamous...people just weren't thinking of performance for a family sedan of the Taurus' range back in the day. All I'm saying is that we will need another contracting blunder (like say...Ford cancels plans for a hi-output v6 coupe, whilst cosworth, or yamaha, or some other indy contractor has already made the engine...sound familiar?) to get a high-performance version of the taurus.

I hear you guys about the taurus being a rental car, but you got to think that it was Ford's consitent changes to the car over the years that have made the taurus more friendly towards rental fleets than private sales. It's a whole paradox; people don't want to buy it because its too much of a rental car, and its being geared towards rental fleets because no one wants to buy it.

In other words, I've given up on Ford in terms of their capability to produce, cheap, reliable, but fast and fun cars. The Ford GT is coming out, but I can't see how a 125k ferrari-beater can replace the departure of the SVT focus, cobra and lightning for the 2004 model year (I know the latter two will come back in 2005 as part of the "upscaling" of the SVT brand - whatever that means

). It's one thing to produce an obscenly expensive sports car that is supposed to perform for the money, its another thing to produce a car that is a justified competitor in terms of performance in its class; forget about one that even tries to beat anything in its class. I don't see Ford doing it anymore - going with how the gen 3 SHO turned out (sorry for all you gen3 folks out there, but you got to admit, the car underachieved everyone's expectations). The Futura and 500 will get their hi-po versions, but I don't see how they can one-up the current crop of 220, 245, 260, and 270 hp japanese sedans running around right now.

Oh yeah, the Malibu isn't even in the same category as a Taurus.

 

My uncle is some kind of manager/executive at a Ford plant in Cleveland... I was talking to him about this and he said he could probably get me some names of people we can send correspondence to. People that actually have power and could potentially be in a position to encourage whoever it is that makes the decisions about SVT, etc. to do something with performance to the Gen IV Taurus. I'll see what I can find out.

 

Originally posted by mp97taurus@Dec 8 2003, 07:04 PM
ONE of the reasons the sho stopped production is the cam problem on the v-8. Ford quietly stopped making the car with the design change for 2000 and didn't have to admit a fialed design by changing it or going back to a v-6 for a gen IV SHO. and they also didn't want to have to fix the cars that have failed.

Another reason for the SHO's demise is the peformance difference between the SHO and non-SHO models. Let's face it, the V8 is not that much more powerful than the Duratec. And the Duratec was significantly cheaper than the V8. People in general did not want to pay big $ for a not so big performance gain.

The performace difference between the 91-95 Vulcan/Essex and the V6 SHO was quite dramatic. It was certainly worth paying for.

I've heard it said that another reason for the demise of the V8 is that there was no manual transmission. I don't buy this. In 94/95 there were significantly more ATX SHOs than MTX SHOs purchased.


Mark
95 SHO

 

ford problem is marketing. how manny times have you seen the windstar and the taurus comercials back to back. and they are just marketed to famlies.

look at how nisson is marketing their cars... everyone appears to be sporty, youthful, energetic. What do we have? the old man (dad) and mom going 55mph down the road. were is the comercials of the taurus powersliding? doing burnouts? a car can be marketed as both safe and sporty.

the marketing team for ford sucks. they should make us want to buy a higher priced 4 door sports car, insted we want ford to make one. When i get another car it will probly be a mazda or nison bc of the image of the car. i love my wagon but ford droped the ball by not offering a gen4 taurus with the kenny bell sc

 

No Nissan!!!

they are evil...

 

QUOTE

the marketing team for ford sucks. they should make us want to buy a higher priced 4 door sports car, insted we want ford to make one. When i get another car it will probly be a mazda or nison bc of the image of the car. i love my wagon but ford droped the ball by not offering a gen4 taurus with the kenny bell sc[/b]

Heh. You've seen the F150 commercials, right? The Focus and Mustang commercials do it for me, too.


Ford advertises the Taurus as a family sedan because they want to sell to families. I can gaurantee you that die hard fans are the kinda people who buy cars from the same company based on the brand name and loyalty, but...uh....

What's the difference between a family owned car and an enthusiast owned car?


The family will take the car to Ford when it has a problem. And where does Ford (and every other car maker) really make money?

Labor and parts.

They're doing exactly what they want to do to make the money that they need.