Ford Makes Last Taurus in the United States

Ford has announced that it has just made the last Ford Taurus. Ford had earlier stopped production of the Taurus once before, back in 2006 when it stopped production of the Taurus at its Hapeville facility near Atlanta in October, 2006. The silver Taurus that last came off the production line was taken to the company headquarters of Chick-Fil-A in Atlanta, where it was added to the collection of the company’s founder, Truett Cathy. The car became the twentieth such car in his collection, which also had another Ford model.

In 2008, Ford revived the Taurus brand and assigned the name to a revamped Ford Five Hundred. The actual Taurus was relaunched in 2010, but the generation of cars that was launched then has now come to an end. The final Taurus came off assembly line at the Chicago plant.

The Taurus first made its appearance ’80s, and signified a bold new design direction for Ford. It had two variants – the Tempo, which looked quite similar and the Probe coupe, which had moving parts from Mazda and an external structure that was a variant of the Ghia which had been optimized for aerodynamic efficiency. This model proved to be quite a winner when compared to the models made by Ford’s competitor, General Motors. Some of the Taurus designs that merit a mention include a Yamaha collaboration which had the outcome of a model that was a punchy SHO sports sedan and an aero shaped sedan. The Taurus was positioned as a basic car with just a few frills but movie buffs fondly remember the police Tauruses in Robocop films are fondly remembered by movie buffs.

The Ford Taurus underwent its first redesign in 1992, but the fresh design retained many elements of the first iterations. In order to counter the competition posed by models like the Honda Accord and the Toyota Camry, Ford came up with the ovoid third-generation Taurus, which was not received well by customers. To fix this issue, Ford gave a facelift to the model to make it cater more to those who want a more conventional design. The new design failed to serve as a differentiating factor and this is why Ford decided to first stop production of the Taurus in 2006.

Stopping production of the Taurus is part of Ford’s gradual plan to phase out all models except trucks, SUVs and the Mustang. Unless Ford makes a crossover in the future called the Mustang, we are unlikely to see the Taurus name on a Ford model again. Henceforth, the Taurus will only be available in the Chinese market and it will not be exported to other markets.