Ford Ends U.S. Production of Taurus, Again

Ford Motor Co.’s Chicago plant built its last Taurus sedan on Friday, ending U.S. production of the long-running model.

The carmaker will continue building the fullsize car at a joint venture facility in Hangzhou, China, for the local market. The Chicago plant is being retooled to make updated versions of the Ford Explorer, Lincoln Aviator and Police Interceptor SUV/crossover vehicles.
 

Last April, Ford announced plans to discontinue sales of most of its conventional cars in North America.

The carmaker says it has built more than 8 million Taurus cars since the first-generation model was launched in 1986. This makes the car Ford’s fifth-highest-selling nameplate in history, after the F-Series pickup, Escort, Fiesta and Model T.

Praised for its then-radically rounded styling, the Taurus was the best-selling car in the U.S. for four straight years in the early 1990s. Subsequent generations of the vehicle didn’t fare as well, prompting Ford to pull the plug on the model in 2006. But the Taurus name returned two years later on a mid-cycle replacement for the short-lived Five Hundred sedan.

Ford scrapped the sedan’s Mercury Sable twin when the Taurus was redesigned for the 2010 model year. The entire Mercury brand was killed at the end of 2010.