Best Selling Cars Around The Globe: 1992, The Year of The Ford Taurus

Bought a '92 SHO new in 1992; kept it for 11 years. I thought it was a pretty good car and struck a reasonable balance between handling and rid comfort. The car was certainly "right-sized" and could carry 4 people and their luggage quite comfortably. There were only two weaknesses on my car: the clutch (supposedly taken from a small Mazda pickup) was marginal. The throw-out bearing on mine failed at 40K. And, typical of all For performance products of the late 80s and early 90s, the brakes were inadequate. . . not as inadequate as on my '87 Mustang GT (disc/drums!) which were simply ineffective at speeds over 80 mph; but marginal in terms of stopping and made of cheap metal, so the discs warped easily. I replaced the discs with ones made of higher quality metal (which didn't warp) and used better pads which made some improvement. The supposed real fix was to replace the front spindles with those from the next generation car so you could fit the front brakes from that car. The story of Ford in the mid-90s can be summarized by the next generation SHO: slower, stops in a longer distance, uses more gas and is less reliable (also, automatic transmission only available). I believe the next generation body was more rigid (the '92 was pretty flexible; one of the handling tweaks was to add reinforcement to the rear suspension assembly and panel behind the back seats) but also heavier. The Yamaha V-6 in the SHO was a wonderful engine, very linear throttle response throughout the rpm range, loved to rev., got 26-28 mpg on the highway.

Oh the 1990's when Ford talked about the sales volume all the time. I'm kinda glad that Toyota carries that torch because it's too easy to get complacent when #1. I had a 1990 Taurus with AXOD tranny that I beat mercilessley, yeah I was young. Bought it off my father at about 90k miles and I ran it up to 200k miles w/out any head gasket, tranny or other common problems. Ford was able to make some really good ones, obviously as people were buying them. The 1996 redesign, while being a little to aggressive in the style department, was actually a much improved vehicle. The luxury features just weren't available on the previous generations. They also had a decent for the time 200hp engine option. Unfortunately Ford hadn't quite earned the reputation yet for the price increase this stuff required. Couple price with styling that people over 40 (most taurus buyers) didn't find appealing and the sales dropped. Right now if Ford were to just do some minor tweaks to the very conservative Fusion I think they could have another best seller. Instead they may be making a smiliar mistake...and for the record I'm a huge fanboy of the new Fusion design. That said, pricing is key and it has to come in at or below the Camry, Accord, Altima, etc. if they care about volume sales. I don't really care about volume, I want something that is better than the all crappy lineup from Japan (and yes I include the frumpy Altima).