Say Goodbye To the Taurus

i thought they renamed it the "five hundred" to fit with their all-model-names-start-with-the-letter-F model...

 

Weird....

Sort of makes me think of my childhood... I specifically remember taking note of it as a kid, then seeing it in the first Robocop movie...

 

Ugh, another brand mismanaged and buried by the Ford Motor Company.

Except for the fact that I'm trying to make money on Ford's ups and downs, I feel absoutely sick about the announcement.

The Taurus was, indeed, the savior of Ford in the 80's...remember when it consistently outsold the competition from Honda and Toyota? For a while there the car actually made sense, then they went with that 'everthing needs to be an oval since that's how our logo looks' stying theme in the early 90's, and it all fell apart from there.

Also, I think Ford realized that there was a significantly greater profit margin per vehicle on light trucks and SUV's, and actually seemed to give up the whole passenger car segment.

Now, trucks are falling out of favor and they have to build a whole new name with the 'Five Hundred.'

Don't *even* get me started on J. Mays and the 'Living Legends' design philosophy...which has led to wanton strip-mining of all the Ford styling signatures brought to market over the last half century.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rancid13 @ Oct 20 2006, 12:47 PM) [snapback]335645[/snapback]</div>

And then it produced one!

The Taurus I bought 14 years ago handled really well. I only sold it when it couldn't pass the emissions test (tho' I had already poured a couple of thousand in to it in the previous year to fix various other things).

The 2004 Taurus which replaced it handled like a veritable boat.

I didn't need a boat so I bought a Prius.

Happy ever since.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mystery Squid @ Oct 20 2006, 12:00 PM) [snapback]335709[/snapback]</div>

And in the second Robocop movie, there's an ad spoof using a Ford Probe, which I used to own. It had the 3L V6 that the Taurus had.

After owning the Probe for a few years I knew my next car would have 4 doors, I actually thought of getting a Taurus for a bit. Of course, when I found out about the Prius, the Taurus idea was quickly abandoned.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rancid13 @ Oct 20 2006, 01:47 PM) [snapback]335645[/snapback]</div>

That's kind of surprising, as someone who was into cars in the 80's, I seem to remember GM going with FWD in a much bigger way with their X-cars and others while Ford was still selling RWD "downsized" efforts like the Fairmont and LTD-II. I guess they did take a big risk, though, with the Taurus.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Oct 20 2006, 01:45 PM) [snapback]335690[/snapback]</div>

The Five Hundred is an all new car and isn't based on the Taurus at all, its actually much larger than a Taurus. The Ford Fusion basically replaced the Taurus, its an all new offering too.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SW03ES @ Nov 5 2006, 09:02 AM) [snapback]344106[/snapback]</div>

The Ford Fusion replaced the Ford Contour.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Oct 20 2006, 11:04 AM) [snapback]335715[/snapback]</div>

Are you speculating on the stock market, Pinto Girl? Good luck. Seems awfully risky, though. The insiders hold all the cards.

 

Ford could have created a hybrid version of the Taurus. But oh no, they had to put priority on the Escape.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(IsrAmeriPrius @ Nov 5 2006, 12:54 PM) [snapback]344128[/snapback]</div>

If you look at the dimensions though, its really a bridge car between the two. The Five Hundred is much larger than the Taurus.

Why would they have spent the R&D dollars to create a powertrain for a vehicle they were getting rid of?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 5 2006, 05:10 PM) [snapback]344233[/snapback]</div>

Guilty as charged. I've followed Ford for decades and feel fairly comfortable that they've got a bit of bounce in 'em, still.

I'm one of those 'zig when everybody else zags' investors...playing with -- I mean, working with -- money that I can afford to lose if worst comes to worst.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Nov 14 2006, 03:14 PM) [snapback]349113[/snapback]</div>

The risk of speculating on the market (buying and selling as a stock goes up or down, trying to profit from the daily fluctuations -- as opposed to investing for the longer term) is that yhe price of a stock reflects the market's perception of a company's strength, not the company's actual strength, and the daily fluctuations are virtually unpredictable. In a rising market you'll make money almost no matter what you do. In a falling market you'll lose almost no matter what you do.

Now, if you invest for the longer term (say, 5 or 10 years), the dips and jumps are averaged out, and if the company succeeds its stock rises, though your end profit still depends on the fluctuations it was at when you bought and when you sold.

That's why I prefer mutual funds. And if you don't trust fund managers, then indexed funds are good. Again, only over a period of 5 or 10 years.

 

Some of you remember when seeing the Taurus and Oldsmobile were common sights. Detroit gladly let them go while maximizing profits on one-ton pickups and jumbo SUVs. It's strange that the Taurus and Oldsmobile were not considered all that profitible, yet Honda and Toyota are enjoying record profits in part to the Accord and Camery sales.

A secondary note: the founder of Chck-fil-a bought the last Taurus, and commented how the suburban Atlanta Ford plant's works helped his fledging restaurant get off the ground. Such plant closing cause collaterial economic damage to communities and it's because Detroit put short-term profits above market share.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 15 2006, 10:30 AM) [snapback]349472[/snapback]</div>

Agreed...but what I'm looking for is undervalued companies that will appreciate faster than the market grows. Ford was trading at 6.2 about three months ago; they just topped 9. When I bought my house, I sold a bit of Ford to help fund the down payment...it was trading in the low/mid 60's at that point.

It's difficult for me to believe that the entire Ford organization is worth 10% of what it was worth eight years ago (but I've been wrong before!)...I'm looking for a bit more bounce and a return to the mid-teens. European operations remain reasonably strong, as do those in Latin America...but all the bad domestic press is really driving the price through the floor, in my opinion. Alan Mulally (sp?) is also a well respected turn-around specialist who was able to bring another classic American company -- Boeing -- back from the brink. And the restructuring does -- finally -- appear to be having its effects...

This is what I keep telling myself, anyway.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Nov 15 2006, 02:18 PM) [snapback]349790[/snapback]</div>

Well, it sounds like you know what you're doing and I wish you the best of luck. I'm very conservative with money. Like Hermann in Pushkin's The Queen of Spades, "I refuse to risk the necessary in pursuit of the superfluous." But unlike you, I don't need to increase my capital. I just want it to produce a reliable income, so I hold reliable income producers, and I sit on them.