Pity the new 2010 Ford Taurus. During the development of Ford’s new flagship sedan, it was pelted with rock and frozen, baked, and rattled. It was flogged with a steel whip, shot with high-powered rifles and slammed with loaded shopping carts.

If Ford engineers seem a bit sadistic, it is all in the name of ensuring the Taurus, debuting later this summer, can withstand anything the open road can throw at it and more. Think of it as boot camp for cars, extreme torture testing that helps Taurus deliver industry leading reliability along with its head-turning design and suite of advanced technologies.



Here are just a few of the torture tests the Taurus endured.

Shake, rattle and roll: The Taurus body is road tested for the equivalent of 150,000 miles. At various points during the road test, we secure the vehicle onto a platform that shakes and twists the vehicle like a giant paint mixer. Any squeaks or rattles detected during the tests were fixed by engineering teams, ensuring an ultra-quiet ride for the life of the vehicle.

Bumpy ride: Test drivers had a field day running the Taurus into curbs and over railroad tracks and speeding over bumps, ditches and potholes to test out the suspension and ensure air bags didn’t misfire.

Frozen and fried: The Taurus was subjected to arctic cold and Death Valley heat without ever leaving Ford’s labs in Dearborn. Ford’s environmental chamber can simulate climates ranging from 40 degrees below zero to 180 degrees to ensure all vehicle systems operate reliably in extreme weather.

Gravel vs. Paint: Best in class paint was a must for the new Taurus so Ford left no stone unturned –or unfired in this case. Engineers tested the paint finish by blasting it with a gravel gun to simulate driving on unpaved roads. Only paints that resisted chips and scratches and retained their luster passed muster for the Taurus.

Rusty situation: The Taurus was repeatedly sprayed with a salt solution, driven on a gravel road and then baked in high humidity and heat, to test its ability to fend off corrosion. The Taurus is subjected to these tests 24 hours a day until the equivalent of 10 years of severe weather exposure is simulated to ensure that rust doesn’t stand a chance.

Safe and sound: Ford engineers conduct unusual tests to calibrate the sensitivity of air bag pressure sensors, taking thousands of impact readings. These tests include ramming a shopping cart loaded with a 110-pound weight into the vehicle doors and lashing the underside of the vehicle with a steel whip. Ford engineers even fire shotguns and rifles at vehicles to ensure that air bags go off when needed and stay packed away when they are not.

Putting on the brakes: Mountainous terrain, slippery highways, stop-and-go traffic, dusty interstates and rain-drenched roads are just a few of the real-world driving conditions Ford test engineers conducted on the new Taurus to check brakes for roughness, noise and wear.

Take a seat: What may look like a robotic boxing match is actually and advanced test for the most used parts of the vehicle: the seats. Robots simulate customers entering and exiting seats thousands of times by programming real-world customer usage parameters into robots to simulate how people of all shapes and sizes affect the upholstery, seat cushions and seat structures.

Open and shut case: Robotic arms that continually open and close doors, hoods and tailgates simulate 10 years of customer use in just days. This symphony of perpetual motion results in 84,000 open-and-close cycles. This test is also run at arctic cold temperatures of 40oF below zero to desert heat cooking of 180°F.

Quotes:

“We determine what the most abusive driver would do to our vehicles, and then take it a step further. Taurus buyers can rest assured this vehicle has passed the most extreme tests we could devise.”
– Pete Reyes, Taurus chief engineer