I'm not a car aficionado, nor do I get sentimental about cars. They are transportation to me, nothing more or less. I confess, however, that I felt a little wistful yesterday as we purchased a 2017 Nissan Sentra SV for my other half. That meant I would inherit the 2016 Nissan Altima she was driving, and the odd car out would be the 2003 Ford Taurus SE I bought in Maryland over 16 years ago. We got a lot out of it - almost 233,000 miles over those 16 years, but it had reached the point where it made no sense to put any more money into it.
We didn't trade it in - it would have netted $222, according to the dealer website. Instead, I donated it in the hope it could be useful to a single-parent family in need of transportation. I've seen how vital transportation is to struggling families trying to make their way, and I know dedicated volunteers will clean it up, check it out and make it ready for a deserving family.
The Taurus was one of the first cars I was actually enthusiastic about. Given how common it became, some might not see it as an enthusiast's vehicle, but that means you're not old enough to remember how revolutionary it was when it first came out in 1986. Up to that time, most American cars were rectangles on wheels, and the Ford Taurus and its cousin, the Mercury Sable, were the first American cars to embrace the shape of European sedans like the Audi 5000, the first car to really catch my eye as an object of desire. We bought a Mercury Sable while we were stationed in Germany, and it turned European heads with its sleek shape and the light bar that went across the front, making it look like something from "Back to the Future".
Competitors like General Motors mocked the shape, calling it a "jelly bean", but it was an instant hit and, at one time, was the most popular car in America. As sales slumped, it was discontinued in 2006, but brought back in 2007 by popular demand, although they really just relabeled the new and larger Ford 500 "Taurus" so they could keep the name of the car that revived Ford back in 1986.
It seems appropriate that my Taurus is moving on, as the last Ford Taurus built in the U.S. rolled off the assembly line on March 1, 2019. Sedans are fading out in favor of trucks and SUVs, and only a few holdouts remain. We have a 2013 Ford Fusion hybrid that owes its design to the sleek shape that the Ford Taurus introduced to the American auto industry back in 1986, but today's drivers wouldn't know that. The Taurus became "dad's car", even though my wife might have driven it longer than I did, and it served us for a long time. I hope it serves someone else as well as it did us.