IS THE 2010 FORD TAURUS A "FAT BUDDHA?”

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It now seems that SHO in the current Taurus vernacular stands for . . . .

Slow
Heavy
Overpriced

But does the base “Bull” (or more fittingly, the “steer” -- based on recent road tests) stand for something else? Something theological?

Usually automobiles do not have any religious qualities. They are non-sectarian machines. They have no consciousness or an eternal "soul." Accordingly, manufacturers tend to avoid religious themes.

But a recent press release from Ford Motor Company suggests that “centered” interior designer Lon Zaback apparently attributes Zen Buddhist aesthetics to the 2010 Taurus interior design!

For example, Zaback jabbered to FoMoCo’s in-house P.R. scribes that:

The rubber mats in the storage compartments have a pebble-in-pond water droplet pattern,” said Zaback. “It’s a Zen detail that imparts a sense of harmony and well-being. It really shows the distance we’ll go to impress a customer with our attention to the most minute detail.”

A similar Zen “wave” pattern also is repeated in the pads in the base of the center console.

This sort of new-age gibberish causes eyes to glaze over in much of the heartland.

Most certainly potential Taurus customers will appreciate “attention to detail” and the absence of cheap, smelly molded plastics. But few, if any, will anticipate . . . or appreciate . . . that the “patterns,” “harmony” and “well-being” were apparently inspired by misplaced devotion to some obtuse, morbidly obese, dead Chinese religionist!

On the other hand, perhaps it does explain the Taurus’ weight problem . . . .

And all that "harmony and well-being" balogona will give Taurus drivers something to think about when they're getting their clocks cleaned by the Hemis, V8s and Eurotrash sports sedans in the next lane . . .

This is not FoMoCo’s first foray into the “Zen” morass.

Truth With Speedzzter readers will recall that “Zen” nonsense was part of the plan for revitalizing Mercury (See "Zen and the Art of Killing Mercury" in the "Best of Speedzzter" sidebar) And unsubstantiated flirtations with Buddhism have long dogged Chairman William Clay Ford, Jr. A 2004 USA Today article contained this interesting passage:

Ask Ford Motor CEO Bill Ford if he CEgO [sic] surfs, and he shakes his head. "It's too depressing," he says.

What Ford would find are frequent mentions of him being a Buddhist. He pinpoints it to a 2000 article in The New York Times magazine with the headline: The Buddha of Detroit. It was a straightforward profile, but the lead paragraph seized on Ford's interest in Eastern mysticism, acupuncture, homeopathy, Zen -- and Vipassana Buddhism.

Ford says he wouldn't "categorize" himself as a Buddhist. "Not exclusively a Buddhist by any means, although I have read quite a bit." Still, it's grist for the Internet mill. A recent search for "Bill Ford" and Buddhist on the search engine Dogpile.com returned 72 hits.

(Perhaps if “Lil’ Billy” read more about automobiles and less worthless bilge from false and deceptive Eastern religions, his tenure at Ford wouldn’t have been such a mess).

Undoubtedly somebody at Ford has market researched all of the silly “Zen talk” and decided that it is not a liability. Perhaps they believe that it makes FoMoCo more “Oriental” in an age when Pacific Rim predators are raiding the American market. Of course FoMoCo market research also brought us the Edsel, so perhaps faith in it is misplaced.

And this sort of thing may not sit too well with some of Ford’s more conservative and sensitive Judeo-Christian Taurus customers. Some of these customers still have a bad taste left over from FoMoCo’s pandering to the radical homosexual rights lobby and the resulting boycott. Moreover, it was bad enough that Ford named the original front-wheel-drive “steer” after an astrological symbol. But now some may blow all of the allusions to new age and Buddhist religions out of proportion to attack the image of the car.

A memorable line from the film “Animal House” is "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” To paraphrase it for the 2010 Taurus – Fat, slow and Zen Buddhist is no way to design (or market) a sedan, son.