+Dan Bouchard you are wrong you ignorant Ford Taurus hater. That car was revolutionary and A DECADE AHEAD OF ITS TIME. Compared American and Japanese cars from the mid 80s to the Taurus. Compared to the Taurus those cars looked like outdated pieces of shit with their late 1970s looking interiors, cluny box shape giving the aerodynamics of a brick. The Taurus looked like a 90s car and it came out in 85.
5 лет назад+6
Design-wise yes, but mechanically it was absolute junk with head gaskets prone to failure.
@@justenough730 Funny. The redesigned Taurus being a hot seller prompted everyone else to stop building cars that still looked like they were from 1982, and build a more modern, sleeker car.
Best part of the car...I think the only one too, in it's time...or ANY time....the entire front end light bar actually lit up, when the headlights were on....but I don't know if it gave off more light for the driver.
If you want an idea of how radical this car was when it came out, imagine an '86 Taurus or Sable parked right next to an '86 Crown Vic. Then you'll get an idea of how radical the design was at the time.
Love Motorweek and Fords:) The Taurus/Sable was really the start of the modern family car..nothing else from Detroit came close for years. We owned both an '86 Sable and a 2000 Taurus and both were great cars.
@ The Vulcan V6 was not prone to head gasket failures. It was relatively uncommon in the later years of the engine. I own a 2006 Taurus with the Vulcan, it has 121,000 Miles and still has the same head gaskets, original transmission as well.
Funny thing is that the Taurus went on to become one of the most popular vehicles of its time (that being in the 1990-2000 or so, with I think sales peaking around the 94-95 era, right before the style change in 1996). In fact, I still see some old 94-95 Taurus's on the road still (a bit rusty of course, but still driving).
I had a 1986 Ranger Supercab when I was in high school in the 90's. 4 cylinder/5-speed/2wd; very reliable little truck! I learned to drive a stick shift on it. Made a lot of memories in that truck; some I can't repeat here...
I would have been 5 years old when this came out. I remember how cool the new Taurus seemed at the time. Nowadays every car is designed around aerodynamics, but in 1986 the Taurus seemed so different at a time when most other cars were square and boxy.
I remember how hot the Taurus was back then. Everybody was calling it the Car of the Future. And all the police cars in Robocop were modified Tauruses! And then about a year down the road all the transmission failures started coming through and people weren't so hot about it anymore. Really, it was a great car saddled with a lousy transmission.
The 1986 Taurus/Sable is the Bob Dylan of the automotive industry. Everyone will always know the Taurus/Sable, it was the inspiration of so many cars that followed, was a complete gamechanger, but the car itself wasn't quite as great as everyone was told it would be.
Carey Bird, Crown Vic 85-88, Mercury Grand Marquis 85-88, Mercury Colony Park wagon 85-88, Ford Country Square 85-88 is beautifulls cars. Mercury Sable is great car, revollutionary car from 1986, wagon is my favorite
A really poignant time for Ford, Lincoln & Mercury, remember the commercial, Have you driven a Ford lately ? Mercury, the shape you want to be in ! My first car was a 79' Ford T-bird, purchased used when it was 3 yrs. old, 1988 Mercury Cougar XR-7 ordered brand new, 1995 Lincoln Mark VIII LSC, ordered new, lastlly ordered, 1997 Lincoln Mark VIII LSC. All great cars for me, with no nightmares.
Vermon Small this commercials Haven You Driven a Ford Lately? Mercury The Shape You Want To Be In is remember every todays. Mercury Sable wagon 86-88, Ford Taurus wagon 86-88, Ford Mustang SVO 85-86, Mustang GT 85-88. Mustang LX Coupe 85-88, Mustang Convertible 85-88, Ford Thunderbird 85-88, Bronco II 85-88, Aerostar 85-88 and, Crown Victoria LTD 85-88, Ford Ranger is my favorite
I had 2 1988 escort gt"s one white and the other red they were badass little machine they were tuff as a Sherman tank never got stuck in snow and I could be almost anybody off the line form stop light to stop light put spitfire sparkplug in different air cleaner it was as beast seats were comfortable you sat up right not slung down like them Tice rocket hondas
Joseph Rogers My uncle used to own the very first Ford Taurus sedan like the one shown here. He also used to own a 1997 Chevrolet Lumina LS until he experienced a whole lot of mechanical & air conditioning problems when he had the Lumina. Few years ago, he was pulling out of the driveway until of the tires & axles caught on fire as he was driving it.
***** Ya they're unicorns now. The 85 escort GT Turbo falls into that category as well as any turbo EXP. I'm still wondering what those little cars are capable of now that we have e85 and wideband tuners. lol. Detonation and tuning were the limiting factor back in those days. Now people are pushing 300whp with a lot of stock 4 bangers.
+Paul Cyr Had an '87, but mine got hit by a bus in college back in 1995. It was a blue GT with grey trim. Great car, for an 80s car, it only left me on the side of the road once. That's pretty good.
@@Ithinkiwill66 he can't like more than one car? im a ford guy but i like a lot of diff cars except dodge. the always seemed the bottom of the barrel. the newer ones look good ill admit though
Oh boy, I love these annual reviews. The Taurus was a big hit. Too bad Ford screwed up the design in 1996....looks like a catfish. Would be neat to find a pristine 1995 Taurus Wagon and upgrade to a new V6.
I owned a 1989 Taurus. It was a gem. The handling, ride, reliability, and ergonomics were top notch. The transmission finally blew in 2003 at almost 200,000 miles. I still miss it.
@@CamoShirt over here in mexico is still a pretty common size in small trucks and cars. Common sizes are 185/65 , 195/65 , 205/70, and 195r15 for ligh duty pick ups
He is comparing the "Big 15-inch wheels" with the former staple 13-inch wheels which is, almost exclusively, what compact 'econo-boxes' were equipped with back in the day. Nothing to giggle about, unless you're a little girl.
@@MrMenefrego1 I know, I was there "back in the day". Just laughing at the wheel sizes then when today we live in the era of 21" and 22" wagon wheels on land yachts.
Hiya. Have you anything on the Ford Festiva? I know I'm gonna get laughed at but the more Ford videos you get up the more informative and complete the collection will be. Cheers
Thumbs up for pronouncing Merkur correctly ("mare-coor")! And thumbs down to Ford for coming up with that stupid name, instead of just selling them here as Fords or Mercurys.
I wish I was an adult back in 86! Love these cars and trucks and just a much simpler time to be alive. But being a kid growing up in the 80's was pretty great too.
mark marshall the SVO was a nice car. Ford could've built the Barchetta and the Vignale Mustang in the 80s but chose not to. Instead they went with the Probe and the Mercury Capri. A step down from the aforementioned cars.
James Bond Ford was reaching out globally at that time. Europeans wanted nothing to do with our heavy rwd cars. So, Ford came up with a solution. GM took the smarter direction, letting Opel & Vauxhall do the European market while keeping Chevys & Pontiacs in tune with American buyers.
I had a white '86 SVO a year ago. Very fun car when the boost kicked in at 3k. I traded it for a much better condition '88 supercharged MR2, but I very much miss the SVO. I'll probably never get another chance to buy one locally.
The Escort GT deserved a better power train and it needed a damn turbo! It was suppose to be a cousin to the awesome RS Euro car. But we never got anything like the cool Escort
It was a different time. American manufacturers focused on low-rpm torque, not horsepower, in most cases. A lot of engines ran out of steam at 5000 rpm (or less) back then, and did their best work much lower in the rev range.
ugly jelly beans, crap cars all the way not much rust in southwest deserts but fords like this were crushed 25 years ago they belonged to a taxi company just nasty oil leaking emission failing cyl head cracking junk I can hear their noisy p/s pumps as they waited to have there emissions system. repaired didn't have to look up and see what junk was coming in to the shop noisy power steering pumps so many oil leaks 25years later I can still hear the sound of the power steering pumps, Ford is the God damnedest piece of American junk no American car is or was as bad as a ford
You can really see the shared design language with the Mustang of the time in the Escort. I dig it. I forget what year they changed the Mustang headlights though.
Mercury Grand Marquis and Mercury Cougars,,,always been my Mercury favorites,Since they makeover most of Ford's line up,how come,they never did pick up trucks?
My 1997 Grand Marquis was around that decade (1990s), and the one after that, and the one after that, and probably for another two more decades. Only has 84,xxx actual miles and still drives like it did on day one. The 1992-2011 Grand Marquis and 1998-2011 Crown Victoria are still the best highway sedans ever made.
My Dad bought an '86 Taurus LX with the 3.0L V6. Put 258,000+ miles on that thing before it finally blew a head-gasket (aluminum heads, cast-iron engine block -- prone to blowing head-gaskets). Very surprising quality in that car -- very much not the usual when dealing with American-made mid-1980s cars.
My brother bought a 86 Mustang LX new and my dad bought a 86 Ranger with the V6 at the same time. My dad worked at Ford and they got huge discounts on both of them. Both were great vehicles.
I can't believe how many nice cars Ford had in production at one time; Escort GT, Cougar, Taurus, Thunderbirds, the various Continentals, Crown Vics and so on....nice to take trip down memory lane...
Shit. That gamble paid off . Being a kid in the late 80s early 90s every road you went down had a number of Taurus/ Sable cars. I can remember riding in many a Taurus like the 86
I've never seen a front grill like the one on the blue Taurus sedan at the beginning. it's not the police grill, maybe it's very early production. love these cars. I had many even the sho Taurus.
This boxy headlights and squared off front ends just made those cars feel so dated; especially those trucks and that mustang. It felt like Ford had only updated half of its lineup. If I'm not mistaken, I think it took 4 more model years before the trucks had a redesign.
The problem with such innovations is within a few years everybody else is doing it to. You get 1 maybe 2 years of being the sole proprietor of your modern car inventions.
May not get the recognition, but the Taurus was really revolutionary
no it wasn't revolutionary just typical ford junk with ugly jelly bean body fucking junk
+Dan Bouchard you are wrong you ignorant Ford Taurus hater. That car was revolutionary and A DECADE AHEAD OF ITS TIME. Compared American and Japanese cars from the mid 80s to the Taurus. Compared to the Taurus those cars looked like outdated pieces of shit with their late 1970s looking interiors, cluny box shape giving the aerodynamics of a brick. The Taurus looked like a 90s car and it came out in 85.
Design-wise yes, but mechanically it was absolute junk with head gaskets prone to failure.
@@justenough730 Funny. The redesigned Taurus being a hot seller prompted everyone else to stop building cars that still looked like they were from 1982, and build a more modern, sleeker car.
@Mike DeMarco they are garbage just like you pinhead,they had shit transmissions and shit engine's
the Sable .. I could always remember the light bar front end, absolutely iconic lol
until it broke down
Best part of the car...I think the only one too, in it's time...or ANY time....the entire front end light bar actually lit up, when the headlights were on....but I don't know if it gave off more light for the driver.
Have you noticed manufacturers are installing lights that stretch the entire front end??
Thanks, MotorWeek; always a fan of these retro reviews!
If you want an idea of how radical this car was when it came out, imagine an '86 Taurus or Sable parked right next to an '86 Crown Vic. Then you'll get an idea of how radical the design was at the time.
doesn't look much different than Volkswagen rabbit from 1975 but Volkswagen was a way better car
It looks nothing like a volkswsgen rabbit. You must be blind.
I was just thinking that seeing the crown Vic and town car.
lol it looks like shit
@@justenough730 HAHAHA
It's weird seeing these cars when new.
Love Motorweek and Fords:) The Taurus/Sable was really the start of the modern family car..nothing else from Detroit came close for years. We owned both an '86 Sable and a 2000 Taurus and both were great cars.
That's cool. I have an '88 Sable. What color was yours, and what options did it have?
What options did it have and was it a GS or LS Sable.
That Taurus stays nice and flat in the slalom in comparison to a lot of other '80s cars.
@ The Vulcan V6 was not prone to head gasket failures. It was relatively uncommon in the later years of the engine. I own a 2006 Taurus with the Vulcan, it has 121,000 Miles and still has the same head gaskets, original transmission as well.
Funny thing is that the Taurus went on to become one of the most popular vehicles of its time (that being in the 1990-2000 or so, with I think sales peaking around the 94-95 era, right before the style change in 1996). In fact, I still see some old 94-95 Taurus's on the road still (a bit rusty of course, but still driving).
I had a 1986 Ranger Supercab when I was in high school in the 90's. 4 cylinder/5-speed/2wd; very reliable little truck! I learned to drive a stick shift on it. Made a lot of memories in that truck; some I can't repeat here...
Don't want to know. Thanks.
I would have been 5 years old when this came out. I remember how cool the new Taurus seemed at the time. Nowadays every car is designed around aerodynamics, but in 1986 the Taurus seemed so different at a time when most other cars were square and boxy.
haha i remember that wagon and the fold down seat in the back was so cool!
Hey matt, i was born in 1981 too, neat huh. Hope u are doing well. Are you looking forward to 40 years old soon?
They are designed around aerodynamics but if you compare the mpg’s, today’s models don’t do much better than the ones from back then.
The Taurus SHO was the business
@ Sorry the SHO would smoke that little fart. it was the business.
@@Justin-A-Carter can confirm.
Had a 86 Escort. Tough little car
Love the jazzy, relaxing music @ 0:58-4:39!
I remember how hot the Taurus was back then. Everybody was calling it the Car of the Future. And all the police cars in Robocop were modified Tauruses! And then about a year down the road all the transmission failures started coming through and people weren't so hot about it anymore. Really, it was a great car saddled with a lousy transmission.
Gotta get that manual.
The 1986 Taurus/Sable is the Bob Dylan of the automotive industry. Everyone will always know the Taurus/Sable, it was the inspiration of so many cars that followed, was a complete gamechanger, but the car itself wasn't quite as great as everyone was told it would be.
my 88 escort gt was a lot like the white one man I miss that car a fun little 5 speed
Oh man that white escort gt was my first car 22 years ago, what a fun little car, loved it. It’s nice to see a small review after all these years
I Dig Ohio I always dreamed about buying one of these again to restore it just for fun since it was my first car... one day
I had a white one as well. Generally liked the way it looked... ran well enough... but wow, not sporty at all!
I had an 88 escort gt loved that little car
I had a friend that had one, back then I thought it was a really cool car.
Taurus. RoboCop.
Sable. Coneheads.
Taurus Wagon.Child's Play 2
As soon as I first saw that Taurus I knew I had to pour gasoline all over the upholstery of my 6000SUX and lob a grenade into that piece of shit.
I'd buy that for a dollar
"Your move creep!"
These cars seemed to be in everyone's driveway back then.
Have you driven a Ford lately?
I have one in my garage parked next to my Griswold Family Truckster . . . 2 more beautiful cars you will not find
"The striking wagon counterpart" - I nearly spat my drink out all over my screen lol
You must not know what most wagons looked like. The Taurus was a great looking car.
Yea, those wagons with the round back and cool tail lights looked real good for the time.
I think Mr. Regular from regular car reviews gets his impersonations from watching classic motorweek videos.
I thought the wagons looked cool.
This moron is comparing it to the cars of today lol
I had a Mercury Sable,loved it, Crown Vic beautiful car. Miss those good old American car's.
Carey Bird, Crown Vic 85-88, Mercury Grand Marquis 85-88, Mercury Colony Park wagon 85-88, Ford Country Square 85-88 is beautifulls cars. Mercury Sable is great car, revollutionary car from 1986, wagon is my favorite
A really poignant time for Ford, Lincoln & Mercury, remember the commercial, Have you driven a Ford lately ? Mercury, the shape you want to be in ! My first car was a 79' Ford T-bird, purchased used when it was 3 yrs. old, 1988 Mercury Cougar XR-7 ordered brand new, 1995 Lincoln Mark VIII LSC, ordered new, lastlly ordered, 1997 Lincoln Mark VIII LSC. All great cars for me, with no nightmares.
Vermon Small this commercials Haven You Driven a Ford Lately? Mercury The Shape You Want To Be In is remember every todays. Mercury Sable wagon 86-88, Ford Taurus wagon 86-88, Ford Mustang SVO 85-86, Mustang GT 85-88. Mustang LX Coupe 85-88, Mustang Convertible 85-88, Ford Thunderbird 85-88, Bronco II 85-88, Aerostar 85-88 and, Crown Victoria LTD 85-88, Ford Ranger is my favorite
A good year to be a ford dealer
THM SGR what was your REAL CAREER that you were waiting for?? If you don't mind me asking
Tommy Siro dcdvd
That's for sure!
Ford for 86!!!
My dad told me that our family ford dealership sales they had to order in advance!!
Love all the '86 Fords.
I had 2 1988 escort gt"s one white and the other red they were badass little machine they were tuff as a Sherman tank never got stuck in snow and I could be almost anybody off the line form stop light to stop light put spitfire sparkplug in different air cleaner it was as beast seats were comfortable you sat up right not slung down like them Tice rocket hondas
Omg the t bird Fila designer series! My grandma used to ride it to go play tennis fully matching with the car 😂
The Taurus was a game changer back then.
The first and second-gen SHO with the Yamaha V6 are still amazing cars today.
And the valve covers look like a work of art
Joseph Rogers I remember when it first came out I was disgusted by it but it grew on me after a while.:D
Jay Santos Well it's still around today so it's not like it died
Joseph Rogers My uncle used to own the very first Ford Taurus sedan like the one shown here. He also used to own a 1997 Chevrolet Lumina LS until he experienced a whole lot of mechanical & air conditioning problems when he had the Lumina. Few years ago, he was pulling out of the driveway until of the tires & axles caught on fire as he was driving it.
Just love that 2-door Tempo for some reason...
My grandparents had Taurus from each generation till they went full size. Always loved the number pad.
I remember I was amazed as a child by the Taurus's curved glass on the back sides.
I'd love to get my hands on a clean 87 EXP. I'd probably end up swapping the motor to something a bit more outrageous but man would it be fun! lol
*****
Ya my uncle had an EXP that he drove around for about 20yrs. Thing was an awesome little car.
*****
Ya they're unicorns now. The 85 escort GT Turbo falls into that category as well as any turbo EXP. I'm still wondering what those little cars are capable of now that we have e85 and wideband tuners. lol. Detonation and tuning were the limiting factor back in those days. Now people are pushing 300whp with a lot of stock 4 bangers.
I want that Escort
My first new car was an 86 Escort GT, great all around fun car
I had an 84 t-bird as my first car. I loved that car!!
So cool seeing my first car shown hear (1986 Mustang Get), that I got in 1996. I really miss that car. T-tops and a 5.0. I could not go wrong!
I love this video, all the line up, I grew up looking at all these cars. Nice memories as a kid.
It's amazing how the Taurus is still so modern at 35 years old!!! Incredible!!!
...and mostly gone
Bought a brand new 1986 Ford Ranger 4x4 5 speed in January 86' for $10,400 bucks
That was alot 💰then!
That would be a 20% down payment on a new Ranger....
Was it a good buy for you? I have no experience with Rangers....
@@quacksackerthegreatstarfir6996 most of those rangers were good but the cab was a little cramped if it wasn't an extended cab
Did you finance it or pay cash? Interest rates were around 12% back then.
I was born in 1986 so this was cool to see. Growing up when had A LTD, a Tempo, and the Tarus wagon. I learned to drive on our Tarus.
That big towncar looked sexy hitting the banked curve.
I owned an '86 Escort GT... wish I had kept it. Would be a cool oddity to drive around.
+Paul Cyr Had an '87, but mine got hit by a bus in college back in 1995. It was a blue GT with grey trim. Great car, for an 80s car, it only left me on the side of the road once. That's pretty good.
My new favourite channel, just for the retro reviews
My friend had an Escort GT in white. I loved that car. For a Ford it was very impressive.
Do you have a full video on the Crown Vic?
Says a Corvette guy, what looks like ya have for your profile circle 😉😉
@@Ithinkiwill66 he can't like more than one car? im a ford guy but i like a lot of diff cars except dodge. the always seemed the bottom of the barrel. the newer ones look good ill admit though
Wish they would’ve spent a little more time on the Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. I’ve had four of them and loved driving those around. All 5-speeds.
Should have put a 5.0 in the escort GT ! Lol
Oh boy, I love these annual reviews. The Taurus was a big hit. Too bad Ford screwed up the design in 1996....looks like a catfish.
Would be neat to find a pristine 1995 Taurus Wagon and upgrade to a new V6.
I remember how futuristic the Taurus looked when it was new. It was still cheap on the inside though.
That's my XR3!!!!! Loved it!
Loved the interior to the Lincoln line up… so soft and thick cushions were awesome
I LOVE the background music when showing the Taurus. Do you know the track music?
Most background music uses KPM/Bruton music library tracks.
I owned a 1989 Taurus. It was a gem. The handling, ride, reliability, and ergonomics were top notch. The transmission finally blew in 2003 at almost 200,000 miles. I still miss it.
"With big 15 inch wheels..." LOL.
i dont buy tires often but i hear its getting hard to find 15's anymore because everything is 16 or bigger
@@CamoShirt over here in mexico is still a pretty common size in small trucks and cars. Common sizes are 185/65 , 195/65 , 205/70, and 195r15 for ligh duty pick ups
He is comparing the "Big 15-inch wheels" with the former staple 13-inch wheels which is, almost exclusively, what compact 'econo-boxes' were equipped with back in the day. Nothing to giggle about, unless you're a little girl.
@@MrMenefrego1 I know, I was there "back in the day". Just laughing at the wheel sizes then when today we live in the era of 21" and 22" wagon wheels on land yachts.
Hiya.
Have you anything on the Ford Festiva? I know I'm gonna get laughed at but the more Ford videos you get up the more informative and complete the collection will be.
Cheers
I miss the ford festiva
a lot of people laughed at me but an equal amount of people thought how fun it would be to drive, got a lot of thumbs up driving that little car. lol
Wasnt that a Mazda based car?
A Mazda-based car built by Kia before they were a thing in the US.
Same with its successor, the Aspire.
Love the old full lineup video, keep em coming motorweek
Love the full model line retro reviews!
Thumbs up for pronouncing Merkur correctly ("mare-coor")! And thumbs down to Ford for coming up with that stupid name, instead of just selling them here as Fords or Mercurys.
+vwestlife In England (UK) they were called the Siera (see-air-ahh).
The Merkurs were indeed sold at Lincoln-Mercury dealers.
GM had already trademarked the name Sierra, so Ford had to name it something else. It's the reason VW used the name Touareg instead of Colorado.
VWestlife I wamt that 92 HP 2md Engine.. Sounds,fun to drive
Funny to see you here
I wish I was an adult back in 86! Love these cars and trucks and just a much simpler time to be alive. But being a kid growing up in the 80's was pretty great too.
No F series trucks in this one?
I was disappointed too
Nor Econoline line of the vans!
Awesome video!!! Really cool seeing all those classic cars!!
You think the Lynx is a classic?
86 SVO Mustang bought new back then here. Loved it , so fun !
Back when cars looked different from each other
without a doubt, the red svo for me
I second, the red svo for me too!
mark marshall I have a Silver 85 SVO as my weekend ride and love it!
mark marshall the SVO was a nice car. Ford could've built the Barchetta and the Vignale Mustang in the 80s but chose not to. Instead they went with the Probe and the Mercury Capri. A step down from the aforementioned cars.
James Bond Ford was reaching out globally at that time. Europeans wanted nothing to do with our heavy rwd cars. So, Ford came up with a solution. GM took the smarter direction, letting Opel & Vauxhall do the European market while keeping Chevys & Pontiacs in tune with American buyers.
I had a white '86 SVO a year ago. Very fun car when the boost kicked in at 3k. I traded it for a much better condition '88 supercharged MR2, but I very much miss the SVO. I'll probably never get another chance to buy one locally.
Had an 87 Sable wagon 👍 great car !
7:15 NOBODY talking about that capri? I have never wanted a fomoco product more in my life. Look at that nose, look at that two-tone, I LOVE it
That Sable is beautiful
Ive always loved the looks of the 86 sable in black w. Grey trim.
Tempo was my first car. Got it when my grandma passed away.
The Escort GT deserved a better power train and it needed a damn turbo! It was suppose to be a cousin to the awesome RS Euro car. But we never got anything like the cool Escort
I want to see an acceleration run on a 2.3 HSC aerostar, would be hilarious at 100hp
PhoeniX198877 0-60......yes
+Jonathan Altieri I see well whatever 2.3 it had I want to see it lol .
+Jonathan Altieri well whatever 2.3 it had I want to see it
100 Horsepower In A SUZUKI SWIFT GT Is Way Better! I'll Take THAT Over Any FORD ESCORT GT! But That's Me😀!
I love FORD but they really threw that GT badge around right much back in the day!!!!
92 hp from a _2.5_ liter? *That's* classic american inefficiency!
It was a different time. American manufacturers focused on low-rpm torque, not horsepower, in most cases. A lot of engines ran out of steam at 5000 rpm (or less) back then, and did their best work much lower in the rev range.
Gotta love the Sable and Taurus! In my opinion they were the best looking cars of the 80's!
Many are gone in salt states.
Man isn't that the truth! I've seen 4 in the last 10 years where i live.
Where I live see only the ones from 90s, none from the 80s
ugly jelly beans, crap cars all the way not much rust in southwest deserts but fords like this were crushed 25 years ago they belonged to a taxi company just nasty oil leaking emission failing cyl head cracking junk I can hear their noisy p/s pumps as they waited to have there emissions system. repaired didn't have to look up and see what junk was coming in to the shop noisy power steering pumps so many oil leaks 25years later I can still hear the sound of the power steering pumps, Ford is the God damnedest piece of American junk no American car is or was as bad as a ford
toyoscio thank you rust
You can really see the shared design language with the Mustang of the time in the Escort. I dig it. I forget what year they changed the Mustang headlights though.
I cant get over all the praise for the look of the taurus, sad times.
Are you ignorant? the Taurus was a decade ahead of its time. Compare it to other 80s cars and you will understand why they are praising the Taurus.
Amazing to see how many car variants they made back then. The only one that survived was the Mustang!
and I would kill to get my hands on one of those Escort GTs
Especially one kept in pristine condition!
If they were anything like my ‘88 Escort Pony, stay away, far away, mine was an unreliable piece of shit
RIP Mercury... I had to say that
Good riddance
Mercury Grand Marquis and Mercury Cougars,,,always been my Mercury favorites,Since they makeover most of Ford's line up,how come,they never did pick up trucks?
I had a base model 4spd 5 door 85.5 escort when i was like 14. Drove it like a Bently one day a Vette the next. Miss that lil crappmobile so much
The full-size should be around for the rest of the decade. And the one after that. And the one after that, and into the one after that!
My 1997 Grand Marquis was around that decade (1990s), and the one after that, and the one after that, and probably for another two more decades. Only has 84,xxx actual miles and still drives like it did on day one. The 1992-2011 Grand Marquis and 1998-2011 Crown Victoria are still the best highway sedans ever made.
6:20 that interior looks really nice for a Ford in 86
5:32 looks like the european Escort RS Turbo....
My Dad bought an '86 Taurus LX with the 3.0L V6. Put 258,000+ miles on that thing before it finally blew a head-gasket (aluminum heads, cast-iron engine block -- prone to blowing head-gaskets). Very surprising quality in that car -- very much not the usual when dealing with American-made mid-1980s cars.
@z Maybe Toyota used a different head-gasket material? Something more resilient, and probably more expensive...
My brother bought a 86 Mustang LX new and my dad bought a 86 Ranger with the V6 at the same time. My dad worked at Ford and they got huge discounts on both of them. Both were great vehicles.
I live in Cope, SC and almost everyone in my neighborhood owns a Ford!
Because Cope is Awesome!
No turbo on the Escort GT was a mistake
lol you think the 1.9 CVH could handle A turbo over the long haul
I had a 94 Mercury topaz. The 2.5 was a solid motor. I never had any trouble with it..
I sold these cars new ... it was fun and a good time for Ford!!
I can't believe how many nice cars Ford had in production at one time; Escort GT, Cougar, Taurus, Thunderbirds, the various Continentals, Crown Vics and so on....nice to take trip down memory lane...
10:10 the way he backed into the 3rd seat..
Lol
Shit. That gamble paid off . Being a kid in the late 80s early 90s every road you went down had a number of Taurus/ Sable cars. I can remember riding in many a Taurus like the 86
1:08 A gamble that paid off quite nicely, I might add.
I've never seen a front grill like the one on the blue Taurus sedan at the beginning. it's not the police grill, maybe it's very early production. love these cars. I had many even the sho Taurus.
The Taurus was an upsized Tempo which was an upsized Escort.
That 3.0l motor was one of the best power plants ever designed.
Pretty sure the Taurus was a completely different platform than the Tempo/Escort.
Of course it's different platform. Have you been underneath these cars? The suspension looks like the same design, just bigger parts on the Taurus.
Not true...all three cars had different platforms....
The Taurus saved ford's ass. That thing was printing money for them. SHO!!
Ahhh a Bronco II..I forgot how much I loved old Rangers..I miss em
That's right, 15" wheel used to be called big. Now every car has some oversized 16-19" wheels. That makes NO sense.
This boxy headlights and squared off front ends just made those cars feel so dated; especially those trucks and that mustang. It felt like Ford had only updated half of its lineup. If I'm not mistaken, I think it took 4 more model years before the trucks had a redesign.
The problem with such innovations is within a few years everybody else is doing it to. You get 1 maybe 2 years of being the sole proprietor of your modern car inventions.
Thanks for posting these
I have been seeing Taurus cars from the 80s and 90s pop up here and there lately.
The Escort GT with a manual transmission was fun to drive.
Full size LTDs and Marquis have a big following. Lincoln's too. The Fairmont and Thunderbird has fans too