Ford Taurus SHO '98
I just wanted to start by saying: Hi, I'm new here. I've been on the website for a while but I recently made this new account and am finally going to start using the forums. The idea behind this thread is really great, it gets you to try out cars you'd otherwise never use. So this week I've joined in and bought the car of the week: the Ford Taurus. After purchasing it, I promptly painted it that rich metallic red from the Ferrari Enzo and 599; the exact name of the paint I used escapes me at the moment. I bought this car way back in GT4, because my young and naive self decided it looked "cool". I never drove it once. Now that I have the to look at it again and actually drive it I'll be able to see if this really is a "cool" car. It isn't. But more on that later. The first thing I did with my shiny new... Taurus... was take it down to Special Stage Route X for some speed tests.
Completely stock excluding sports hard tyres:
Recorded top speed: 268 km/h
0-100 km/h: Roughly 6.5 seconds
Its top speed actually really surprised me. Sure, its got a V8 but that only produces 234 BHP. Its also heavy and has a 4 speed gearbox, but that didn't stop it from being very fast... in a straight line. Throw this thing around a corner at high speed and you'll experience not a lot of turning and a lot of smoke from the front wheels as you spear off track and into a wall. In short, its handling is appalling.
So much weight is at the front of the car that when you turn the steering wheel it doesn't really do anything but generate a lot of noise and smoke. Not to mention the car looks comical when you slam on the brakes at high speeds.
Anyway, as mentioned previously the car's performance around corners is dreadful. It feels unbelievably heavy and slow and has the tendency to gravitate towards walls and sand traps in a phenomenon known as understeer. This is one of the most understeery cars I have ever driven in GT. The second gear of the car is also extremely long compared to the rest of the gears, so the car starts off quickly and then when you change gears it slows down and begins to slowly build up speed until the revs get higher and it starts going at some sort of speed again.
In order to avoid the car's catastrophic understeer you could always just slow down for the corners, which is actually a lot harder than it sounds in the Taurus. It's brakes feel like they're made out of play-doh. This combination of understeer, terrible brakes and general slowness at low gears proved to be a terrible combo when I tried to get a hot lap in this car on Mount Panorama. Before I started, I set the time to 5:30 am on the track and time progression to 60. By midnight that day I finally gave up and went with the fastest time I'd managed to achieve, which was 2:45:415.
Then there's the styling, and even if my younger self really liked this car I don't think too much of it now. It looks alright for what it is, but that still doesn't make it stand out in my eyes. The back of the car looks interesting, and in certain light such as late in the afternoon like in the photo above it doesn't look too bad. Its just that in pretty much every other situation it looks just meh.
Then there's the sound, which was actually a pleasant surprise to me; especially if you use chase cam. It sounds far more beefy than I expected, although if you go into cockpit view or look behind you while in chase cam it starts to sound a little vacuum-y.
I will say one thing about this car, though. The basic concept of an FF car with a V8 engine under the hood is fun. Sure, you can't go around corners quickly. That doesn't really matter when after going around each corner at a walking pace, you slam your foot down and accelerate out of it spinning your front wheels and suffocating several children in your tyre smoke in the process. It's dumb, and I find it amusing. Far from practical or efficient and definitely not handling-friendly, but amusing.
But, unfortunately, when it comes down to it this car is well and truly a beater. It performs poorly around a track, doesn't look too great and will probably get several people killed after they've suffocated in the tyre smoke its sure to cause. I have to say just one more thing. I decided that, because the car is terrible at going around corners, I'd take to down to Sierra Andalucia to see how it did. It did not end well.
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