I inherited a 2001 Taurus from my grandmother in 2005! It only had 19000 miles on it. I thought it was a nice car. Even had leather. Vulcan engine was fine, I'm not a racer. I upgraded to the factory Mach radio which had awesome sound. All in all , it was a pretty reliable car.
There were some major long term issues. It always pinged, quite badly. Had the computer reflashed a few times at the dealer, boroscoped ... never could figure out why it pinged so bad. Even ran the highest octane gas I could find (93) and it didn't help. Eventually, about two months before I got rid of it, it set an EGR code and I changed the sensor and it stopped pinging. I put 56000 miles on it with it pinging horribly and never could figure it out and the whole time it was the DFPE sensor.
The other major problem, and what lead to it's death, was the rust. Because it sat in a gravel driveway or a garage, unmoved for so long and was only used to run to the post office and convenience store, it just rusted away underneath. Didn't look bad from the top, but at 75000, it was ready for the junkyard. The car's unibody structure had a few rot holes in it, which caused the doors to never want to open or shut properly. Metal heater hoses (stupid Idea, ford) had rusted out and required a subframe drop to replace, so I just ran it with the cap lose for the last year and added a gallon of water a week to it as it leaked. Power steering lines were rusty and would get air in them and blow the cap off in parking lots causing power steering fluid to spray on one of the exhaust manifolds. Nice smoke snow! And the spot on the unibody where the subframe mounts had rusted away so it was quite interesting to drive.
It also went through 3 or 4 sets of coil springs - all goodwilled by Ford. They would religiously snap every 18 months or so.