I'm a member of an Australian automotive forum. It's nothing like Cheers&Gears ... more like a cross between Cheers&Gears and the /b/ area of 4chan.

Anyhow, a while back one of the members spotted a really ugly Ford Taurus with a home-made wide body kit on eBay, and we knew that for the sake of society, this vehicle had to be obliterated. We took donations from the forum members, and bought the car with the specific intent of destroying it.

There were many plans for a spectacular destruction, including one that involved a serious amount of explosives, but one by one these plans became non-events when all the "nanny state" regulations, paperwork, insurance, and occupational health and safety rules raised their ugly heads, and the event organizers backed out. In the end, we got sick and tired of the never ending crap, and just wanted to get rid of the thing ... so we burned it.

The entire episode has been imortalized in a video that one of the members (with an automotive themed video production company) cut together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr2VhZ0FLL0

So the Australian Taurus has a Mercury Sable front clip then? I notice it doesn't have the separate round signal lights inboard of the headlamps.

Yep. The US Taurus front turn signals were too close to the vehicle centerline to be legal in Australia.

That's a neat piece of trivia, James.

You should have seen how they engineered some of the RHD stuff. The master cylinder and booster were still on the left with a 1" diameter torque tube running across the car to connect the pedal on the right to the brake system on the left.

IIRC, didn't the Taurus fail in Australia?

Yes. It was a major failure for Ford. New, they were priced about $4000 higher than an equivalent specification Falcon, and nobody liked the styling.

What a bunch of bull! (Get it?) lol

Yes. It was a major failure for Ford. New, they were priced about $4000 higher than an equivalent specification Falcon, and nobody liked the styling.

Ouch!

I guess we really didn't either. It's part of why Honda and Toyota became so prolific here despite looking exactly the same as each other for so many years.

Talk about Justice, about time those ugly taurus got what it deserved.

yes, but that was a particularly ugly Taurus.

.and part of me wonders what the Australians would have thought of the 90's Thunderbird, assuming they did get it.

Yes. It was a major failure for Ford. New, they were priced about $4000 higher than an equivalent specification Falcon, and nobody liked the styling.

Nobody liked the styling in the US either. (though the Sable wasn't as bad)

Yes it was radical at first, but then it just became that boring jellybean of a car and no one really wanted to be caught in one. The only thing that kept the Taurus going was the SHO. That was a freakin awesome car.