Test Drive review: 2010 Ford Taurus is full of surprises
ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- A bright red 2010 Ford Taurus with lots of goodies. A sunny spring day. Hundreds of miles of open road. Hit the interstate, wind 'er up, settle in. Pleasant surprise: Taurus is wonderful to drive all-windows-down. The entire 569 miles from here to USA TODAY Galactic HQ in McLean, Va. — in temperatures of 91 to 95 degrees — passed with nary a buffet or a roar. Never once considered closing up and airing down.
The Taurus SEL with optional all-wheel drive, leather, satellite radio and so on, makes a road trip more of an opportunity than an imposition.
Unpleasant surprise: Partway home, the seat cushion began to feel rump-wrecking stiff. The optional massaging-seat feature didn't help, and neither did the array of inflatable support bladders.
It's crazy. You could adjust the seat every way from Sunday and not find that just-so position. A $45,175 high-performance, loaded Taurus SHO with the same singing, dancing seats, likewise began to make a person butt-weary.
Physiques differ. Yours might take more fondly to Taurus' fancy seat options.
Another unpleasant surprise: torque steer. That's when the front pulls to one side under hard acceleration as the front-drive system copes with more power than it perhaps was built to do gracefully.
All-wheel drive would quell that, right? Nope.
Nail the throttle in the AWD tester and hold on. Ford's six-speed automatic downshifts a gear, the front end yanks sideways, then the trans downshifts again and the front really skews. Unexpected, surprisingly virulent. Powerful SHO did the same.
It's a hard flaw to overlook.
Other salients:
•SHO uses electric power steering, and it's nicely tuned. It feels better than the conventional hydraulic power steering on the non-SHO cars.
•SHO is the first Ford-brand car with "EcoBoost" technology that adds two small turbochargers to the V-6. The claim: V-8 power, V-6 mileage.
On premium fuel, Ford says EcoBoost delivers 365 horsepower, 102 hp more than the standard V-6. But use the EcoBoost the way you're tempted and V-6 fuel economy fast becomes an illusion.
