(VERY LATE) Monday Mileage Champion: 2002 Ford Taurus

Tauruses are the kudzu of cars here in the South. You find them everywhere to the point that you never ever notice em'. At the Waffle House. At the Coke Museum. At Braves games, and most definitely at the heavily suburbanized neighborhoods of metro-Atlanta. To be perfectly frank about it, Atlanta has always seemed to be a Taurus-tee type of place. Popular, affordable, a little bland, and just plain functional. Tough to hate. Tough to love. Such is the case of the Taurus. We even had a Ford plant that built Tauruses by the hundreds of thousands year, after year, after seemingly endless year. 22 long years in all with many quality awards rightly given to the hometown team. This particular one you see above had well over 263,000 miles before the owner finally decided to use it as trade-in fodder. Ford made the last generation of mid-sized Tauruses for eight long, fleet ridden model years.  In much of the United States you would see Impalas and Crown Vics of varying bare equipment levels take up the brunt of modern day government mules. But here in Georgia during the 2000′s it sometimes seemed like Taurus-land. The auctions that liquidated these vehicles would offer three things with every Taurus that was liquidated by the local, city and state governments. White paint. Black antenna masts. V6 3.0 Engine. Ford offered the hammer of a 24 valve DOHC engine with 200 horsepower engine, or an over-head valve model whose origins dated all the way back to the era of Sony Walkmans and MS-DOS. 1986 to be exact. The question(s) for today are the usual. Which engine is it? What price did it sell for at auction? Oh, I'll even throw in third. What are your experiences with Tauruses… or Atlanta for that matter? If you were just passing through don't worry about it. A lot of people do thanks to our super-sized airport.   from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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