Amazing the power of ambivalence. If I was to make a list of all the automobiles that I've had and those include the ones that my wife and I have purchased or leased as "family cars", I almost have to be reminded that we had a 2002 Ford Taurus. Shame too. That was a very good car.
But what makes for a great car? Performance and/or styling, right? If performance or styling was the case then my 2002 Camaro or 1977 Corvette would be considered great cars; and so not the case. Styling and performance might get you to buy an automobile but in the real every day driver world, the most important attribute of an automobile is how reliable it is. Especially one that is to be used exclusively as a familial appliance. Yes, comparing sports cars to family cars is a bit of stretch but in the context of being driven daily, not really. So, if reliability is the most important aspect of what makes a car great, then that 2002 Ford Taurus we had should have been the greatest car my wife and I ever had since, save for the time the coil packs had to be replaced, it never gave us any trouble. Why is it then that we found it, ultimately, as interesting as a dutiful librarian?
Because the car was boring. So boring and dull, in fact, that's it's taken me nearly five years after I started this blog to write something solely dedicated to it. Shoot, I have to be reminded we even had it.
We bought the Taurus because our options were limited. Wanting to get off the leasing merry-go-round, when our 1999 Chevrolet Malibu came off lease, yes, we leased that car, it boiled down to a Chevrolet Impala LS and the Taurus SEL; Asian models of similar ilk were far more expensive and I abhor Chrysler products. While I liked the Impala better than the Taurus, the Impala was more expensive and couldn't be had with a leather trimmed interior and a sunroof for the same money as the loaded Taurus. When purchasing a car you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere financially and we stuck to it; the Impala clearly crossed it. So much so that the Taurus in dreary black over black, made sense. Actually, when new the interior was quite alluring. It aged into a worn out taxi cab interior that only underscored our malaise with the car overall.
The Taurus was a tremendous upgrade over the Malibu it replaced and was, again, a solid, oh-so-dependable ride. We bought it in New York and it came with us to Hartford, Dallas, Nashville and to Cleveland. It was here in Cleveland that the heat stopped working and I, honestly, looking for an excuse to get rid of it, rationalized that we would be better off with a mint condition 2002 Monte Carlo I had found since I was getting almost a brand new car for not much more money than it would have cost to make the Taurus whole again. Long putt to reason with as there was certainly many more miles left in the Taurus, we were only around 110,000 miles at the time, but that just goes to show you how ambivalence can help sway major life decisions.
The Taurus was spacious, comfortable, fuel efficient, handled well enough and had more than adequate brakes. Our SEL model had every option available except for a rear spoiler that my wife nixed. I liked it, of course. I even found the lines of the car to be handsome. Enough. In short, the Taurus was everything any family could ask for. Problem was it was nothing more than that and was a car with the soul of a rental car. Meh. 
We bought the Taurus because our options were limited. Wanting to get off the leasing merry-go-round, when our 1999 Chevrolet Malibu came off lease, yes, we leased that car, it boiled down to a Chevrolet Impala LS and the Taurus SEL; Asian models of similar ilk were far more expensive and I abhor Chrysler products. While I liked the Impala better than the Taurus, the Impala was more expensive and couldn't be had with a leather trimmed interior and a sunroof for the same money as the loaded Taurus. When purchasing a car you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere financially and we stuck to it; the Impala clearly crossed it. So much so that the Taurus in dreary black over black, made sense. Actually, when new the interior was quite alluring. It aged into a worn out taxi cab interior that only underscored our malaise with the car overall.
The Taurus was a tremendous upgrade over the Malibu it replaced and was, again, a solid, oh-so-dependable ride. We bought it in New York and it came with us to Hartford, Dallas, Nashville and to Cleveland. It was here in Cleveland that the heat stopped working and I, honestly, looking for an excuse to get rid of it, rationalized that we would be better off with a mint condition 2002 Monte Carlo I had found since I was getting almost a brand new car for not much more money than it would have cost to make the Taurus whole again. Long putt to reason with as there was certainly many more miles left in the Taurus, we were only around 110,000 miles at the time, but that just goes to show you how ambivalence can help sway major life decisions.
My wife and I never experienced buyer's remorse or out and out regret over buying the Taurus over something else, I also to this day don't regret ditching it for something I found sexier. The amount of real life drama that my family and I experienced during the time we owned the Taurus put replacing it far back on any burner and it's with that that I'm grateful we had a car as trouble free as the Taurus was. Just wish it was a little more interesting. Perhaps if we had gotten it in red things would have been different. Red does make everything better, right? 
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