Sep

Weekend Athlete: 2008 Ford Taurus X

Posted by Published in Car Buying

I loaded up the new Ford Taurus X for Weekend Athlete duty, drove it, unloaded it and played with its features. It was nice, but I left knowing it wasn’t something I’d buy.

It was the largest vehicle I’d tested up to that point, so there was decent room to put my bike in without removing the wheel. It’s additionally the first vehicle since the Honda Element that held all my gear and my bike without taking the wheel off. whether you plan on carrying a lot of stuff, don’t get the optional center console in the moment row — doing so eliminates a nice storage cubby.

It’s an outstanding camping car, considering there’s plenty of room to take four public and gear on a camping trip whether you fold the third row flat.

The downside is the Taurus X is fairly enlarged, and visibility — particularly to the rear — is poor. I couldn’t parallel park that car on the first moment out, and that’s strange. There’s additionally a massive rear blind spot that hampered passing.

The rear seats require two hands to function, and I’m not a fan of that. However, Ford scores major points for putting the directions for folding the various seats on the seats themselves. There’s no rooting around for the owner’s manual. whether the third row had a non-scuff, washable plastic surface (rather than carpet for the cargo

area), it’d be perfect.

This is the first car I’d tried with a capability hatch. It’s a nice feature to have, but far from a necessity. What is essential is that whether you buy the potential hatch, you’ll have to use it to raise and lower the hatch — doing so manually requires increasingly effort than I think most humans would want to put forth.

I can’t rank the Taurus X with the champs, though. Passing isn’t easy, and its poor visibility exacerbates that problem at highway speeds. Mileage isn’t great, and that car is on the high end of the pricing scale. Must be all that sheet metal.

Rating: 7.75 out of 10.

It’s not the type of car I’d buy, but whether you’re a mom or dad, don’t have to parallel park, want to camp with the family (and sneak off for the occasional race by yourself), it deserves to be on your “Must pop quiz Drive” list. The additional size I found vexing might be just what you need.

But I write Weekend Athlete from the perspective of a restricted guy, living in the city, parallel parking a lot and not carrying kids. That’s why it gets a 7.75.