Ford Motor Co’s revamped Taurus, a priority for Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally, debuts as a “flagship” vehicle on sunday more than a decade after ceding its title as the US’s best-selling car.
The 2010 model, being unveiled at the Detroit auto show, was rushed into production a year ahead of schedule to meet demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Cars outsold trucks in the US last year for the first time since 2000.
Now, Ford’s challenge will be to rekindle demand for a brand whose fading consumer appeal left it relegated to purchases by rental companies before being shelved in 2006. US sales of a revived version last year totaled 52,667, just 13 per cent of the Taurus’s 1992 peak volume.
“It doesn’t have a shadow of a chance of becoming the top- selling car,” said John Wolkonowicz, an auto analyst with IHS Global Insight, based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Buyers’ tastes are shifting to smaller models, he said.
Ford is responding to that shift, too, with domestic introductions planned next year for two compacts now produced in Europe, the Focus and the Fiesta.
While Ford expects renewed interest in the Taurus, the second-largest US automaker isn’t predicting a return to the days when the vehicle challenged models such as Toyota Motor Corp’s Camry for the car-sales crown. The Camry’s US total last year was 8 times as large as the Taurus’s.
“It might not be the volume leader, but it certainly is the halo product” for the Ford brand, said Marisa Bradley, a spokeswoman for the Dearborn, Michigan-based company.
Senior executives including Mark Fields, president of the Americas region, decided to speed work on the Taurus in 2008 as gasoline prices soared toward a record in July, cooling US motorists’ passion for trucks. Large pickups and sport-utility vehicles were the main source of Ford’s profits in the 1990s.
Sunday’s revamp also completes one of the first decisions Mulally, 63, made after coming to Ford in 2006 from Boeing Co.
When told by Ford managers that the Taurus was being abandoned, “I said ‘Well, it’s our family sedan and where’s our new one?’” Mulally recalled in 2007 in a company-produced video. “That kind of started the dialogue of what can we do to build on this wonderful brand.”
His restoration of the Taurus started with the 2008 model, which was built on the platform of the Five Hundred sedan. The Five Hundred was discontinued, and its sales were lumped in with those of the Taurus. The 2010 version will be assembled on a platform taken from Ford’s Volvo unit.
The new Taurus starts at $25,995 and will be built at a plant in Chicago for sale in mid-2009, Ford said in a statement released today at the North American International Auto Show.
The front-wheel-drive car has a 3.5-liter V-6 engine and the option of shift-control paddles mounted on the steering wheel. The car’s roofline is lower than previous models, and the headlights are more pronounced to frame the car’s three-bar grille, Ford said.
“I’d take that new Taurus and put it right next to the old one” at the debut, said Erich Merkle, an independent auto consultant based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “The new car is worthy of the Taurus marque.”
Options include cruise control that automatically adjusts to the traffic ahead and a warning system that signals when a vehicle enters the driver’s blind spot.
Those features weren’t available when the Taurus went on sale in 1985, sporting an aerodynamic look that contrasted with the boxy styling of the era and drawing critical praise and showroom traffic.
By the end of 1992, the Taurus had overtaken Honda Motor Co’s Accord to become the top-selling car in the US, at 409,751 units. A 1996 revamp proved unpopular, and by 1997 the Taurus had lost its top US sales ranking.
Now, Ford will have to figure out how to lure younger buyers, said Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Oregon. The average age of an interested Taurus buyer is 59, and of that group 31 per cent had at least one Taurus in the household in the last 15 years, Spinella said.
“They’re going to have to throw an awful lot of money at it in terms of marketing,” said Joe Wiesenfelder, a senior editor for Chicago-based cars.com, an online auto-sales service. “It had gotten a bad reputation. People had started to know it as a rental car.”
