NASCAR WCUP HISTORY: The Great Cars: The Ford Taurus
Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
July 31, 2001Ford Racing is in the midst of a year-long celebration marking the 100th anniversary of the start of its racing program with a win by Henry Ford on October 10, 1901. In the next of a series of feature releases, Ford Racing looks back at one of the greatest development stories in NASCAR ... the race to design and build the NASCAR Taurus. Other feature releases focusing on "Great Drivers," "Great Races" and "Great Innovations" will continue throughout the year.
FORD TAURUS FOUR YEARS LATER:
50 WINS, THREE CHAMPIONSHIPS AND A WHOLE LOT OF BELIEVERS
DEARBORN, Mich. - In 1997, when Ford Motor Company needed a model to campaign in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series to replace the soon-to-be-discontinued Thunderbird, it took a giant step forward by looking back to the days when Grand National drivers would "run what ya' brung."
And if that happened to be the country's most popular family sedan, so be it.
Four years ago today - July 30, 1997 - Ford officially announced that the Taurus, Ford Division's flagship car, would compete on the Winston Cup circuit, starting with "The Great American Race," the Daytona 500, in February 1998. The Taurus would become the first full-time, four-door competitor in the history of America's flagship racing series.
"We saw this as a great opportunity for Ford to race what it sells in the marketplace and position Taurus' image with a whole new group of loyal fans," said Dan Davis, director, Ford Racing Technology. "Taurus was the right size, has an aerodynamic shape, and it's a car we felt NASCAR fans would relate to."
But the change would not go without a healthy dose of skepticism.
One news reporter wrote: "Ford Motor Co.'s mild-mannered Taurus sedan doesn't exactly call to mind the sound and fury of top stock-car racing."
Another chimed in: "This is the most popular American car on the market, but it has four doors, room for five people and a relatively sedate V-6 engine under the hood. Racing just isn't natural for a car that Mom and Dad drive."
And another told of discontent among the drivers: "When Ford announced that the Thunderbird would take a hiatus until a new model could be whipped up in 1999 to bolster sagging sales, loud groans could be heard in the NASCAR Winston Cup garages from the 21 teams that race T-Birds."
On the surface, perhaps, the criticism was easy to justify. The Taurus' mission was merely to replace the most successful single brand to date in NASCAR history. The Thunderbird, which had been the Ford car of choice since 1978, would finish with 184 victories, two drivers' championships and two manufacturers' championships.
In 1997, the Thunderbird's swan song, it would win a series-leading 19 races and the manufacturers' title. Dale Jarrett led the Ford brigade that year, piloting Thunderbird to victory lane seven times and finish second in the drivers' championship.
The hottest issue for Ford teams, though, wasn't whether Taurus could win like Thunderbird had. Rather, the biggest concern was whether the NASCAR Taurus would be approved and built in time for the 1998 Daytona 500.
The announcement that the Thunderbird was going to be discontinued had come nearly one year earlier than originally expected, accelerating the planned Taurus race car development by over12 months.
It's a fact that the NASCAR Taurus that fired and drove out that July evening at the Indiana Convention Center was the only Taurus race car in existence that day. And the Taurus used for advance publicity photos a week or so earlier was a cobbled-together old Thunderbird, painted in a snazzy NASCAR Taurus paint scheme to disguise the imperfections in the bodywork.
In fact, the time from NASCAR's first peek at the prototype on May 14, 1997 to the first day of practice for the 1998 Daytona 500 was just 261 days. Remarkable.
The first run of the new Taurus came Sept. 2, 1997, at Daytona International Speedway with NASCAR officials looking on. Rusty Wallace and Bill Elliott got the honor of the driving the first laps.
But that was the only real test until Dec. 16-18, 1997, when nearly every Ford team arrived at Talladega Superspeedway with their first Taurus race cars. Each team had built its cars a little differently, making a best guess at a final configuration since NASCAR had not approved final templates. They all hoped that their guess was the right one, so that they wouldn't have to go home and rebuild their cars.
Three days of testing in front of NASCAR, including intense morning and evening de-briefing sessions in which teams debated the benefits of various bodywork issues, brought the teams and NASCAR close to final templates. An additional day of testing at Charlotte on Dec. 20 gave NASCAR the final bits of information it needed to complete the templates and release them to the teams.
The work, thought to be nearly done, was just beginning. Two weeks to the first Daytona test. Five weeks to Speedweeks. The speedway cars had to be cut up and rebuilt. And the clock was ticking.
Dan Davis, who came to the job on Nov. 1, 1997, used his first decision to bring Dan Rivard, the former head of SVO, out of retirement again to help in the race to Daytona. Rivard worked with the teams and Ford aerodynamic experts to help manage the final details of the testing and building of the first cars.
Many of the Ford teams were stretched to the limit switching from Thunderbirds to Tauruses. They worked day and night, literally. Holiday vacations were cancelled or postponed. When haulers drove into Daytona Beach in early February, many arrived with a Taurus to race, and a T-bird as a back-up car.
Unbelievably, Rusty Wallace - in the first competitive race for the car - won the Bud Shootout just two days after the car's first competitive appearance on track. It capped a nine-month odyssey to bring a new model to racing, perhaps the fastest a car has ever been prepared for the Winston Cup series.
"This was truly a team effort," Davis said. "Without everyone being cooperative and involved, including NASCAR president Bill France, Jr., and his staff, we could never have taken the initial idea of a four-door race car to what we have in less than a year. It shows what can happen when people work together with a common goal."
The Taurus' success on the Winston Cup circuit was nearly as quick. Following its debut in the 1998 Daytona 500, Mark Martin scored the Taurus' first victory at Las Vegas - in just its third race. Since it's debut, Taurus has been the most successful nameplate in NASCAR since 1998, scoring 50 victories, and a pair of manufacturers' championships in 1999 and 2000.
Dale Jarrett and Jeff Burton each have recorded 13 victories in a Taurus. And Jarrett, who in 1997 finished second in the drivers' championship while piloting a Thunderbird, won the title two years later, in 1999 - in a Taurus.
The first four-door race car, considered a gamble at the time, has proven to be a success both on and off the track. And it's also proven to be a trend-setter. The "new" Dodge? A four-door Intrepid, of course.
So much for that "mild-mannered" Taurus.
Text provided by Greg Shea
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