Towing a 6000 lb trailer with a Taurus?

gijoecam wrote:

Tystevens wrote:

Have you been involved in meetings and discussions between the engineers, marketing execs, lawyers, accountants, and everyone else involved in bringing these vehicles to market? If so, I'd love to hear some stories (honestly, I have no idea about your background, but would love to hear stories if you have been involved!). If not, how do you know that one department has no bearing on the other?

Let's just say that I am but one small cog in the machine that makes Ford products and leave it at that. But know that no one person ultimately makes those sorts of decisions. All vehicles are a series of engineering compromises from start to finish. A Taurus could certainly be designed from the ground up to tow those kinds of weights. For a plethora of reasons, it was not. That doesn't mean it is incapable of towing Anything, it simply means it was not designed to do so. A butter knife wasn't designed to be used as a screwdriver, but everybody has done it (and nobody in their right mind would recommend it).

I've chaired Product Design Teams most of my life. Not automotive, but
some pretty big stuff (biggest robots in the world, etc).

There is little difference between them if they are ISO certified.

Before that, designer or individual contributor and member of those
design teams.

A lot of the process (am also a systems and process controls designer)
of Program/Project management and design are dictated by the regulatory agencies


Those agencies level the playing field. As they mandate how stuff is
tested. Missing in my background is crash testing, but destructive
testing (along with the non-destructive testing) similar or the basic
philosophy is similar.

Maybe "not recommended" for towing means that Ford hooked a trailer up to the Taurus and it was not up to the task whatsoever. Or, more likely, maybe a marketing or accounting exec determined that, since Taurus buyers aren't likely to see any value in a tow rating, Ford wouldn't pay a team of engineers to spend the time and money to evaluate and assign a tow rating to the Taurus.

Likely some combination of the two would be my guess...

Have had marketing plead their case to my team because the competition
was eating us in the market place.

Most times nope, but a few times allowed them to change the specification
(within limits) *AFTER* forcing them to work with several other
members of my teams.

Mainly service and legal

Service insisted on relief in their warranty cost (they are graded
and bonuses based on) because by changing the MTBF number, therefore
the rating (spec) would have more warranty claims. Marketing paid
for the increased warranty costs...and....Marketing got that money
from the Sales group who started all this in the first place

Legal then made the 'new' fine print that tech pub's inserted into
the documentation (labels, manual, etc)

Finally, the rest of the team signed off...as the specification is
the teams contract with me and my boss(s) that also had our promotions,
raises, bonuses, etc based

Marketing works....

How many times has Tundra folks and even non-Tundra folks mentioned
or referenced as how tough and capable a Tundra can...as they saw it
tow the Shuttle on national TV/Cable... :S