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Sedans Ford Taurus/Mercury Sable What Are Your Thoughts on the Return of the Taurus/Sable?
530 messages, Last post on Aug 22, 2008 at 10:00 PM
You are in the Ford Taurus/Mercury Sable Forum. Your Hosts are pat & karens
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Replying to: bls2753 (Feb 10, 2007 2:30 pm) it's a big market. |
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Replying to: kcram (Feb 10, 2007 10:25 am) Although none were smash successes as the original Taurus, none of those cars fell on their face. All were moderately successful and sold a little better than their predecessors. All Ford is doing by resurrecting the Taurus/Sable names for the D3's is to try increase the sales a little before redesigning them around 2010 or 2011. Sales of the Five Hundred absolutely collapsed over the last six months. No one expect the new Taurus or Sable to be huge successes, just do a little better than the Five Hundred. |
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Replying to: kcram (Feb 10, 2007 10:25 am)
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Replying to: heyjewel (Feb 10, 2007 10:42 am) The nail on the head. Ford's advertising campaigns are horrid. When I see a bold moves commercial, it seems to focus more on the cute chick and cute guy than the actual car. The "Fusion Challenge" is a step in the right direction, but I never get the sense from Ford that the car is something exciting, and sense Ford no longer has the reputation that a Toyota or Honda has, I'm not rushing out to the dealership to check them out. Flash back 21 years ago, watch the ad below, and tell me if there is anything that Ford's done recently that matches how innovative this looked back then. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piValJkSDVo
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Replying to: crutnacker (Feb 10, 2007 7:05 pm) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vHslRd8onw |
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are much better in content and are far more convincing than the current Edge ads... They're also better than the 2000 Sable ad that was on YouTube also... http://youtube.com/watch?v=7oPdFxJ2Rx4 I also like how the 1980 Escort gets better fuel mileage than a 2007 Civic, Corolla, Rabbit, or Focus.
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Replying to: jchan2 (Feb 10, 2007 7:37 pm) |
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"If you deliver only what the customer wants at the moment, somebody else is going to blow you away with something that goes beyond your product, or service, in quality, or innovation..." Don Petersen recounted in his memoirs about the original Taurus program that took six years to develop---and the 1983 T-Bird was a by-product of that program. Petersen left his "team" headed by Louis Veraldi alone from start to finish, working with Jack Telnack to create the Taurus. They managed to incorporate more than 400 desirable features into the Taurus in order to compete against the competition. They set the stage for the marketplace when the car was introduced. A unique Ford Motor product that you could not buy anywhere else. Plus Taurus had its own unique "signature" styling which the public responded to for many years. This is precisely what Ford Motor must return to. Unique styling, evoqative yes, but a 'Blue Oval' brand of motorcars, and not bland copies of everybody else. That is why BMW and Porsche are so successful today, because they never swerved from the unique product-line and have kept several generations of loyal customers as a result. Mr. Mulally used the Taurus program as an example at Boeing to save that firm from disaster. Boeing regained its sales leadership against Air-Bus as a result---the Air-Bus Chief Christian Strief having resigned over production delays of the big 550 seat jumbo jet and is now sadly "running" Peugot. A fate that did not befall Boeing, Mr. Mulally also going so far as to use production techniques from Willow-Run applied to Boeing for manufacture. No, the public won't be fooled by a rebadging of the 500. But the "500" meant nothing to anyone. People forget that the last time Ford used that name was when it was coupled with the bottom line 'Custom-500' in the 1960's! A car that Jack Webb used in the TV show 'Dragnet' of the same era. Prior to that it had also been the moniker of the 'Galaxie-500' which was once a higher end Ford. So the re-use of the Taurus name, still so resonant with the buyers is a good move. I have not met one person who thought killing the Taurus was a good idea---if anything they were angry about it---driving them to the competition. The car is OK, but needs a motor with another 75Bhp at least to give it some "get-up-and-go". Who wants to drive an underpowered car that can't get out of its own way? Why else did they rebadge the Zephry into the Z when they changed the motor? It would take less than six months for Ford Motor to up-rate the engine. If the engineers are not now testing such are car, they should do what Rudolf Uhlenhaut did in 1968 at Daimler-Benz when he encountered numheadedness in the front office with respect to performance: he secretly stuffed a W100 6.3 Mercedes-Benz V8 "600" motor into the smaller W109 bodyshell, locked the hood, and handed the keys over to his unsuspecting boss for his week-end test-drive. That's how the legendary 300SEL 6.3 got born! (It's also how the Cobra, and Shelby Mustang's came about---stuffing a lot of BHP under the hood!!) This is what Ford Motor engineers need to do today. Take the pieces from the shelf and build some cars with gusto, then ask for foregiveness later. ...and my dear "ARMSMEN"* on the 14th floor of the Glass House: Please STOP, repeat S-T-O-P, copying the old Mercedes monikers "SEL" that you have glued onto Ford Motor products. Nothing makes me scream out loud: "COWARDS" faster than when I see that on the back of a Ford Motor product. Ford does its best when their products are unique, when they act independently with verve and gusto. They did it time and time again between 1946-1969, and rarely after that, with a few hits every-now-and-then. So Ford can still win, but they need to be twice as good as the competition, unique and independent of everyone else. That is what made the Taurus a success, and that was the rubric that Mr. Petersen gave to the rank and file back in 1980 when he took over from Henry Ford II. It was good advice then, and it still stands. Mr. Mulally, are you listening? DouglasR * "ARMSMEN": CEO of Ford Motor: Alan R. Mulally, aka A.R.M., his "troops" thus should be called "ARMSMEN"---just as Earnest Breech brought in the "Whiz Kins" in 1945 at the behest of HF II. ...and "ARMING" them with thought and vision. (sources: 'A Better Idea' Donald E. Petersen, Houghton-Mifflin, NY, 1991; 'Mercedes-Benz V8s' F. Wilson McComb, Motorbooks International 1980) |
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Replying to: crutnacker (Feb 10, 2007 7:05 pm) |
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Replying to: heyjewel (Feb 10, 2007 8:29 pm) Even if 500 sales fall (like so many of Ford's re-do's lately), they would have fallen further without the Taurus name. Taurus means something, good or bad, to millions of potential customers. 500 means nothing. Zip. It was a halfway decent car in a field of cars overshadowing it. Ford needs to grasp all straws right now, as well as deliver real goods as soon as they can. That's why I, primo Ford critic, am practically wetting my pants that they are preserving the Taurus name. Such a rational decision that costs them nothing, and will have a payoff within a range from nothing, to something small but significant. Who of us semi-sane could have hoped any longer that anyone in the glass house would do anything rational, and quickly?
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