1997 Ford Taurus Interior Review at Automotive.com
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1997 Ford Taurus Review: Interior

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1997 Ford Taurus Review

Shaping up as number one.
Interior
The oval theme is picked up on the inside on the instrument panel, vents,

door handle recesses and elsewhere. At first glance you may not like the

large oval in the center of the dash which contains the climate and sound

system controls. Give it some time. In an era when instrument panels all

seem to look alike, the one in the Taurus is a refreshingly distinctive

change.

It is also well organized. The buttons and switches run from lower left

to upper right within the oval, but the arrangement is quite logical and

it doesn't take long for a driver to make adjustments by touch alone, without

taking attention away from the road. We also liked the high-quality, high-tech

feel of the pushbuttons and switches.

The basic G model comes with a bench front seat for six-passenger capacity.

The GL and LX are available with a front bench or front buckets.

If you go with seating for six, you will get a patented three-way flip-fold

40/20/40 console seat. Yes, seat. The center portion can be used as a seating

position, with its own safety belt, or it can be flipped forward to become

an armrest, or it can be folded open once more to reveal storage compartments

for cups, tapes, coins and other small stuff. For organizing the small

items that get scattered around in a family car, this is an exceptionally

inventive piece of design work.

Manual air conditioning is standard across the board, electronic optional.

Electronically-controlled sound systems are also standard, with the LX

getting a cassette player and six speakers.

Typical of American manufacturers, the mix of standard and optional

features on three sedans and two wagons requires the assistance of a Cray

supercomputer (or a 12-year-old with a laptop) to determine what goes with

what. The base Taurus is adequately equipped, the LX very well equipped.

The price-leading G starts at $18,545, the GL at $19,535, the LX at $21,610.

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Our LX sedan tester was fully loaded, lacking only leather and a moon

roof, and topped out at $24,085. At the end of 1996, 80% of Taurus sales

were GL models, which means most owners began to balk at spending more

than $22,000. Next Page



1997 Ford Taurus