I am a Taurus/Sable man myself, as my mom is on her second, my sister on her second, and I just traded my third. We represented every revision/body style of the line with those 7 cars. 2 were wrecked (and survived very well I must say), 1 ate the transmission (an '87 model, bought used, maintenance records unknown), 2 are still in service, and I just traded mine in on a Colorado. Overall, they are very reliable, well built cars. My mom's current 2001 Taurus was an Enterprise rental. The only to really look out for on the 1996 - 2006 models is that the lower ball joints are weak, expect to replace those anytime after 50k miles. My sister's had to be replaced at 110k, mine at 50k, and my mom is still running on her OEMs at 75k miles. It really varies on a car-to-car basis. The transmissions must be flushed every 30k miles for longetivity purposes. That may sound expensive, but the cost to service the transmission is still cheaper per mile than the engine. The 3.0 Vulcan is, as mentioned before, a cast iron workhorse. The 3.0 Duratec is much more powerful though the all aluminum engine made the front end of the car lighter. Having driven Tauri with both engines, I can state that the 3.0 Vulcan handles better on ice/snow than the 3.0 Duratec when the same tires are mounted on both. I can only theorize that the reason is that the Vulcan places more weight over the front wheels. The Vulcan engine is also easier and cheaper to maintain. I can get into more detail, but this should suffice for your decision-making process. Good luck with whatever you go with.
