2003 Ford Taurus Commercial

 

Canadian Commercial featuring the 2003 Ford Taurus

The Ford Taurus is an automobile that was manufactured by the Ford Motor Company in the United States from the 1986 to 2019 model years. Introduced in late 1985 for the 1986 model year, six generations were produced over 34 years; a brief hiatus was undertaken between 2006 and 2007. From the 1986 to 2009 model years, the Taurus was sold alongside its near-twin, the Mercury Sable; four generations of the high-performance Ford Taurus SHO were produced (1989–1999; 2010–2019). The Taurus also served as the basis for the first-ever front-wheel-drive Lincoln Continental (1988–2002).

The original Taurus was a milestone for Ford and the entire American automotive industry, being the first automobile at Ford designed and manufactured using the statistical process control ideas brought to Ford by W. Edwards Deming, a prominent statistician consulted by Ford to bring a "culture of quality" to the enterprise. The Taurus had an influential design that brought many new features and innovations to the marketplace.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, sales of the Taurus declined as it lost market share to Japanese midsize sedans and as Ford shifted resources towards developing SUVs. The Taurus was withdrawn after the 2007 model year, with production ending on October 27, 2006. As part of a model line revision, the Taurus and the larger Ford Crown Victoria were to be replaced with the full-size Five Hundred and mid-size Fusion sedans; the Taurus station wagon would be replaced with the Ford Freestyle wagon, branded as a crossover SUV. During the 2007 Chicago Auto Show, Ford revived the Taurus and Sable nameplates, intended as 2008 mid-cycle revisions of the Ford Five Hundred; the Freestyle was renamed the Ford Taurus X. For the 2010 model year, Ford introduced the sixth-generation Taurus, marking a more substantial model update, alongside the revival of the Taurus SHO; in 2013, the Ford Police Interceptor Sedan was introduced as a successor for its long-running Crown Victoria counterpart.