Bought an used Taurus X (2008)
After we sold off the Volvo Wagon (because hunting and fixing tornado injuries is fun when you are a single guy, but not fun when you have a kid and a wife who screams bloody murder everytime you approach a car with a wrench), we had to borrow my parents car (a white civic) for a while because of the huge expenses and need for a buffer amount in these uncertain times. Now that the expenses have dropped off and we have our buffer built up, we decided it was time to get the second car once again.
I think both of us wanted it to be a wagon, so I searched exclusively for that and found what I think is a good deal. So it's not a RS6 Avant or a Caddy CTS-V Wagon like I really want, but I can't afford to go for a sporty wagon just yet. I also think only Volvo and Audi gets wagons really right. (*cough* not even Subaru *cough*). Taurus X is a Volvo chassis regussied (and basically ruined) for American market. It is still less rattly over train tracks than a Subaru, and leagues better than anything offered by any other company).
Would have liked to buy one with sporting intentions, but it is only meant to tide us over until we can afford something better. What do I think about it?
Of course when I get any car I put it through it's paces. It is nowhere near as tossable as the Volvo was. I like FWD cars because of the twitch/jump quality. You can flick a hatchback into the next lane over as fast as an eyeblink and continue driving like nothing happened. You can get responses that fast in a MR (still not as quick IMHO, but then I've never driven a ferrari), but you aren't going to be driving off like nothing happened. The Volvo was somewhere between a hatchback and a 2000 era BMW 3 series in that regard.
This Taurus is around a Hyundai Sedan in the tossability standards (I hear they have gotten better this year, but I haven't tested a recent one out). Not bad for something pretending to be an SUV. Not anywhere near sporty, but not bad. Also, fact that they jacked up the roof and put the seats on stilts to make you think you are driving an SUV exaggerates the motions of an already fairly soft suspension and massively big sidewalled tires to make it feel a lot more tippy than it actually is. The tire camber, however stays pretty steady even at high roll angles and it tracks as true as most any car I've driven. Not to mention the roll is surprisingly low on this car even before considering it doesn't come with stabilizer bars.
I also liked how easy it is to rotate the car. I haven't tried to spin it yet, but it does rotate very well without even having to lift the throttle to nudge it along.
Negatives are how it all feels. Everything is highly muted in feedback. At least you can feel the road, which you can't in a SUV, but it's still pretty low. You really have to pay attention to sound more than tire feel to know you are on blacktop rather than concrete. The sound is pretty low too. Put it around my favorite skid pad (a place with mainly flat textured concrete with very thin expansion joints that I measured out 30 meters on) and I had to do a double take at the speedo because I calculated I was doing a good .81 to .86 g's (the speedo is hard to read for exact numbers) but it honestly did not feel like it. I would have predicted it had 1/3rd of the traction of the Civic Si from feel alone (The Civic hits 0.94 G's consistantly with the current Continental Extreme Contact DWS but these tires tend to marble have high levels of tread squirm and flex their sidewalls and generally feel terrible doing it).
I'd say that puts traction at near what my Jetta was capable of with its OEM tires and many people would remember what kind of cornering that one was capable of.
The engine sounds horrible. I mean economy car horrible. It does not sound like a V6. It accelerates okay. Not amazingly. I'd say the 263 hp is adequate. Both the Civic and the old Volvo would leave it in the dust. The AWD is slow to react, almost like it's not there at all intil you really ham handedly force it into life. I wonder what use it could possibly be of except to drive down the MPG numbers.
With fairly aggressive highway driving, full throttle starts, the skid pad and other handling tests, I got 24 mpg avg. on the computer so far, but I will be tracking miles and gallons like I do with all cars over the long haul anyway because I don't trust those computers.
It's not a fun wagon by any means. It's a simple people mover. But I still like it. I like it a lot, of course, overwise I wouldn't have bought it.
I think both of us wanted it to be a wagon, so I searched exclusively for that and found what I think is a good deal. So it's not a RS6 Avant or a Caddy CTS-V Wagon like I really want, but I can't afford to go for a sporty wagon just yet. I also think only Volvo and Audi gets wagons really right. (*cough* not even Subaru *cough*). Taurus X is a Volvo chassis regussied (and basically ruined) for American market. It is still less rattly over train tracks than a Subaru, and leagues better than anything offered by any other company).
Would have liked to buy one with sporting intentions, but it is only meant to tide us over until we can afford something better. What do I think about it?
Of course when I get any car I put it through it's paces. It is nowhere near as tossable as the Volvo was. I like FWD cars because of the twitch/jump quality. You can flick a hatchback into the next lane over as fast as an eyeblink and continue driving like nothing happened. You can get responses that fast in a MR (still not as quick IMHO, but then I've never driven a ferrari), but you aren't going to be driving off like nothing happened. The Volvo was somewhere between a hatchback and a 2000 era BMW 3 series in that regard.
This Taurus is around a Hyundai Sedan in the tossability standards (I hear they have gotten better this year, but I haven't tested a recent one out). Not bad for something pretending to be an SUV. Not anywhere near sporty, but not bad. Also, fact that they jacked up the roof and put the seats on stilts to make you think you are driving an SUV exaggerates the motions of an already fairly soft suspension and massively big sidewalled tires to make it feel a lot more tippy than it actually is. The tire camber, however stays pretty steady even at high roll angles and it tracks as true as most any car I've driven. Not to mention the roll is surprisingly low on this car even before considering it doesn't come with stabilizer bars.
I also liked how easy it is to rotate the car. I haven't tried to spin it yet, but it does rotate very well without even having to lift the throttle to nudge it along.
Negatives are how it all feels. Everything is highly muted in feedback. At least you can feel the road, which you can't in a SUV, but it's still pretty low. You really have to pay attention to sound more than tire feel to know you are on blacktop rather than concrete. The sound is pretty low too. Put it around my favorite skid pad (a place with mainly flat textured concrete with very thin expansion joints that I measured out 30 meters on) and I had to do a double take at the speedo because I calculated I was doing a good .81 to .86 g's (the speedo is hard to read for exact numbers) but it honestly did not feel like it. I would have predicted it had 1/3rd of the traction of the Civic Si from feel alone (The Civic hits 0.94 G's consistantly with the current Continental Extreme Contact DWS but these tires tend to marble have high levels of tread squirm and flex their sidewalls and generally feel terrible doing it).
I'd say that puts traction at near what my Jetta was capable of with its OEM tires and many people would remember what kind of cornering that one was capable of.
The engine sounds horrible. I mean economy car horrible. It does not sound like a V6. It accelerates okay. Not amazingly. I'd say the 263 hp is adequate. Both the Civic and the old Volvo would leave it in the dust. The AWD is slow to react, almost like it's not there at all intil you really ham handedly force it into life. I wonder what use it could possibly be of except to drive down the MPG numbers.
With fairly aggressive highway driving, full throttle starts, the skid pad and other handling tests, I got 24 mpg avg. on the computer so far, but I will be tracking miles and gallons like I do with all cars over the long haul anyway because I don't trust those computers.
It's not a fun wagon by any means. It's a simple people mover. But I still like it. I like it a lot, of course, overwise I wouldn't have bought it.