I did the flops, now lets turn to white and look at the biggest successes in automotive history
Ford Taurus
1986-
The FOrd Taurus hit the ground running. It was orignally meant as a futile attepmt to bring Ford out of a finincal tailsipn, but it turned out to be an glorified success story. It's jellybean body redefined car design and it turned out that it started the trend that is now on every new car today, and it's Mercury Sable twin looked like something out of Demolition man, and it was also rthe most aerodynamic production car on the market at the time, but it was later overtaken by the Probe. the Sable and Taurus didn't share any sheetmetal until 1996. In 1992, the Taurus got a face lift and it overtook the Accord as the best selling midsize car, which it would carry this whole generation, and to the next. In 1996, the Taurus got a radical new design composed completely from ovals, and because of this, in 1997, the Camry over took the Taurus in sales. The Taurus was then toned down and so did sales, but they still topped 100,000 units each year. in 2004, the Five Hundred debuted as it's replacement, but it's sales have been sluggish, Ford hopes to boost sales with it's Fusion, which surpirsingly shares sheetmetal with it's European counterpart. I doubt if Ford will match the success of the Taurus.
oh, and to show you how futuristic the Sable was back in the day, here are a couple of pics.
Ford Escort (north american)
The Escort has been a european car since the 60's, but in the 1980s, the name was applied to some compacts in North America, they didn't share any sheetmetal. It was the sigle best selling car in the 80s, and it was redesigned in 1991, where it looked more like the Taurus, and shared some sheetletal with the ford Laser sold overseas.sales still were pleantyfuland these generation esocrts are known to run over 200,000 miles with little or no trouble at all. The Escort was redesigned again, with Ford's new oval theme, and the sporty ZX2 was introduced. in 1999, Ford doomed the popular Escort when they introduced the Focus, designated it's replacement in all countries. te Escort wagin was dropped in 2000, and in 2001 the sedan was limited to only fleets. In 2002 the whole Escort name was dropped and the coupe lived on as ZX2, and it was discontinued in 2004. The Focus, it's replacement, has been able to match the Escort's sales success.
I have more to add, but i'll let you post your ideas of very successful cars.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by my porsche
. Can't go past that as far as successful cars go.
