Faults:
Nothing for the first 100,000-miles.
Sometime after 100,000 miles the following items went out.
Several bulbs on the dash-no big deal- all gauges still light up a bit.
A front brake caliper seized up on a trip down I-70. We were using the brakes for 20-miles solid. I am a retired mechanic, so I was able to temporally repair the car on the scene and make it on to the next town.
Passenger side power mirror will not get power. Just move the mirror with someone’s hand.
The coolant reservoir busted. I made my own, which is much better.
At 190,000 miles the transmission went out. Not bad considering that this car was driven a lot in the cities and was always heavily loaded. The 1-2 clutch started slipping. I rebuilt the transmission and all the hard parts were still in factory tolerance specs and looked brand new at 190,000 miles. Most of the soft parts still had lots of life, but that 1-2 clutch was paper thin. This was caused from my wife’s super hard accelerations from dead stops. She is a race demon, but so am I.
Make sure you get a Taurus/Sable with the AX4N, not the AX4S. In 2003 all Taurus/Sables got the heavier AX4N transaxle. Look at the bottom of your trans pan to identify, or you code on the door jam. 1995-2002 most Taurus/Sables were built with the AX4S.
General Comments:
I get 28 mpg on the highway and about 19 in the city.
The car drives great and has decent room up front and tons of room in the back seat and trunk.
The car is overall very solid, safe, and reliable.
The Taurus is a good looking car. I feel that if the car was driven right it could easily go to 300,000-miles with out much more than oil changes every 4,000 miles and a transmission servicing every 50,000 miles. See no expensive ($700-$900p&L) timing belt to replace every 90-110,000 miles like most other FWD cars on the market.
We would get a new one, but we can’t buy a new car that is no longer built, so we are looking a used 2006.
Heating and A/C are superior. ABS works like a dream, 4-air bags are their if you need them-on some models, fairly bright headlights, and good brake/tail lights makes it easy for others to avoid hitting you.
This car is at 193,000- miles and has never needed an alignment. It measures right every time.
1st Mar 2007, 20:34
Good news for you. They are bringing the Taurus/Sable name back they're just taking the names off the Five Hundred/Sable and putting new names on them. They are coming back this summer they improved them quite a bit. I don't know much about the Taurus/Sable I'm a Grand Marquis fan.