First Shots: Ford Taurus ST

"fords stylish mondeo"? are you for real. its boring as hell!

Personally, I think the Mondeo really is stylish. The problem is that the Taurus is based on the larger Volvo platform S80. And, if you read between the lines... they say that the revamped Taurus is taking styling ques from the Mondeo. That's like putting a 50 yr old overweight guy in the same tuxedo as a 20 yr old athletic guy and trying to pass them off as the same. My take - The styling will be an improvement over the current Taurus but it won't be enough to attract those who prefer the true Euro models. Also, this this is going to be a heavy porker, ala Chrysler 300. They'll need 350 hp just to keep up with a sub-300 hp Japanese sedan. The the gas mileage is not going to be pretty (like the Chrylser 300).

Benz - Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see Ford pull off something good. I just don't put a lot of faith into models or renderings these days. I also find the D3 to be a "chunky" platform, even in it's smaller sizes. As for the mpg on the 300, you must be looking at the RWD 2.7l for those numbers and that's not a very peppy engine, and for that level of performance, 18/25 is not good fuel ecomony. Even the Chrysler 3.5 isn't as motivated as the Ford 3.7 and that drops to 17/24. To get decent performance on a 2 ton chassis, you're forced to go up to a HEMI which drops you down to 15/22. I just think that's getting down into truck territory. Hopefully, the Big 3 can apply some lessons learned to decrease weight and improve mileage. I'm holding off at least a couple of more years just to see if we see improvements.

..the side windows look small..