Below is the entire contents of an official press kit binder announcing the new and improved 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable.

1996 FORD TAURUS LX WAGON IN TOREADOR RED CLEARCOAT

With their trendsetting exterior styling, spacious interiors, and high-performance powertrains, all-new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable are once again the design leaders in a segment that accounts for about one of every four cars purchased in the United States.
    Just as the 1986 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable changed the way buyers thought about four-door sedans with their inventive aerodynamic styling, the 1996 models introduce buyers to an innovative shape that embodies the "form contains function" concept. "With these new models, we aimed for tension and tautness in the design to express the energy beneath the surface," said Jack Telnack, vice president, Design, Ford Automotive Operations. "We wanted a one-piece
overall silhouette -- a seamless quality with everything integrated." 
    Listening to the voice of the customer and turning quality into an obsession was paramount to the development team. The results are breakthrough vehicles that combine superior features and functionality. These features include:

• Greater body strength and structural rigidity, resulting in quieter, better-handling cars.
• A redesigned 3.0-liter Vulcan V-6 engine and a new 3.0-liter 24-valve Duratec V -6 modular engine, both requiring only fluid and filter changes for 100,000 miles under normal driving conditions.
• A front suspension system that offers improved handling, greater steering precision and reduced noise, vibration and harshness (NVH).
• Improved braking system that provides better pedal feel.
• Major improvements in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning performance.

By preserving their appeal to current owners and increasing their appeal to younger and import-oriented buyers, Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable look to outperform the sales marks of the previous models. In early customer testing, the cars are perceived as distinctive, trendsetting, sporty, fun to drive, stylish and sophisticated.

World Class Design Distinguishes Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable
From the start, both cars were designed with an elliptical theme that is carried throughout, even in the cross section of the car. The hood surface flows into the windshield, and the rear window flows into the deck to achieve a seamless look of quality. The front and rear fenders wrap smoothly into the body side, and the high shoulder or "bone line" ties together the front and rear.
    The greenhouse is large and open, with the overall glass area increased 28 percent from the previous models. The bodyside has more curved shape, or plan view, from the front of the car to the rear than any car in the segment. The shapes wrap tightly around the mechanical components to emphasize the wheels and tires, giving the resulting basic design a "tready" and stable look. Packaging efficiency and the smoothness of the new shapes paid off in aerodynamic terms.
    The hood profile is low, with reduced cowl and fender height. The base of the windshield at centerline has been moved seven inches forward to improve appearance and aerodynamics. Rounded corners, softened shapes and extended windshield make the cars appear to be the same size or smaller than the original Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable. In reality, Ford Taurus sedan has grown 5.4 inches in length and Mercury Sable sedan, 7.5 inches. They are nearly two inches wider overall than the previous models.
    Wagon models retain a family resemblance by repeating the elliptical theme that characterizes the sedans. Much of their design was carried out in a wind tunnel, resulting in superb aerodynamics and a coefficient of drag (Cd) of .34. Although derived from a common theme, Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable have their own distinctive styling, driving dynamics and customer-focused features.

Ford Taurus: Sporty and Fun to Drive
Low, sleek and sporty, Ford Taurus offers a unique, sculpted, open grille flanked by bright, nickel-chrome-plated headlamp housings with jewel-like complex reflector lamps. "Most participants in our market research believe the 1996 Ford Taurus will appeal to a more diverse audience than its predecessor," said Ross Roberts, Ford Motor Company vice president and Ford Division general manager. "They like the fresh, modern and more luxurious look."
    All secondary design details continue the design theme. The door handles, grille, lower bumper openings, headlamps and rear window all have an oval shape. From the rear, Ford Taurus features full-width, three-color taillamps with a design contour that wraps into the decklid to mimic a spoiler. Ford Taurus sedan has a Cd of .30.

Mercury Sable: A Touch of Sophistication
Mercury Sable has its own distinctive, luxurious personality, while at the same time it looks and is fun to drive. Mercury Sable picks up several of the Lincoln luxury cues with the use of chrome strips. "During customer research, many thought Mercury Sable was one of the most beautiful vehicles ever designed," said Keith Magee, Ford Motor Company vice president and Lincoln-Mercury general manager. "Customers thought Mercury Sable was an expensive luxury import model." 
    Mercury Sable is longer than Ford Taurus, and the Mercury Sable rear window is extended, resulting in a longer roof line and a longer rear deck. Mercury Sable features a bright grille edge with bright inset turn signals. The body side window-surround mouldings are bright, and the protective bodyside moulding has a bright insert. The greenhouse has a distinctive, unique profile that sets it apart from its Ford-brand sibling. A more formal rear window, sloping decklid and separate taillamps distinguish the Mercury Sable rear view from that of Ford Taurus.

Dramatic Interior Blends Function and Comfort
Attention to detail and occupant comfort characterize the totally redesigned Taurus and Sable interior. Mirroring the seamless exterior design, the interior features an instrument panel and dashboard that flow into the door design. The "touch areas" of the instrument panels, sun visors, door panels and seat levers are soft to the touch. 
    For the first time, Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable feature a fully integrated control panel to house all entertainment and environmental controls in a central, easy-to-reach, easy-to-read and easy-to-use arrangement. New seats provide improved lateral and lumbar support in stylish sew patterns and luxurious materials. Resistance to fabric wear, marking and fading has been improved. Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable seat five passengers with front bucket seats, or six passengers with bench seats. A 60/40 fold-down rear seat is standard. An integrated child seat is planned for the wagon. models. On six-passenger models, a patented three-way flip-fold console converts from a center front seat with safety belt to an armrest or a center console. The console provides storage space for audiocassettes, cups, coins and other items. 
    Buyers will have a choice of two V -6 engines, each with a 100,000-mile scheduled tuneup interval under normal driving conditions with routine fluid and filter changes. An enhanced 3.0-liter overhead-valve Vulcan V -6 is rated at 145 h.p. at 5250 rpm, developing 170 foot-pounds of torque at 3250 rpm. The redesigned Vulcan V-6 engine that is standard on the Ford Taurus GL and Mercury Sable GS includes changes to every major system and resulted in substantially improved NVH characteristics. 
    A new, high-performance 3.0-liter 24-valve DOHC V-6 Duratec engine will be standard on the Ford Taurus LX and the Mercury Sable LS. It uses a reinforced aluminum engine block with ribbing added for extra strength and lower operating noise. The engine is rated at 200 h.p. at 5750 rpm with 200 foot-pounds of torque at 4500 rpm. Both V -6 engines are managed by an EEC- V electronic engine control module, the newest of Ford's computerized engine controllers. The control module provides onboard diagnostic capability that allows the car to continuously monitor powertrain performance. 
    Outstanding driving dynamics result from an anti-dive/anti-lift suspension system and stiffer body structure for improved ride, handling and noise control. By reducing steering component friction and steering free play, better steering response, precision and feel are achieved. 

Safety and Security
Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable place a premium on safety and security. A safety engineering system consisting of "safety cell" body structure, integrated 5-mph bumpers and side door beams help protect occupants during collisions. The protective impact-absorbing system meets 1997 Federal Dynamic Side Impact requirements. Both vehicles offer the Passive Anti-Theft System (PATS) on the high-series Ford Taurus LX and the Mercury Sable LS models. The system provides a unique electronic signature for each car by matching a specially coded ignition key with a sensor located in the vehicle. The system prevents the vehicle from starting with an improperly coded key or by hot-wiring.

Taurus & Sable Enjoy a Rich Legacy
Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable have become the flagships of their respective divisions since their introductions in 1985 for the 1986 model year. Ford Taurus has been America's best-selling car for the last three consecutive years. Thanks to Ford Taurus, Ford Division nearly has doubled its market share in the upper middle segment. Lincoln-Mercury Division has sold more than one million Mercury Sables -- more than any other Mercury vehicle since it was introduced. Mercury Sable transformed the image of Mercury from a provider of traditional cars to one of innovative, contemporary vehicles. It accounts for nearly 20 percent of the division's total sales. The original team that developed Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable set standards that the industry takes for granted today by introducing concepts such as platform teams, aerodynamic styling and easy serviceability. 
    For the 1996 models, the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable team vastly strengthened the pre-program phase of designing and testing basic architecture, structure, powertrains and vehicle dynamics. Cray supercomputer technology was used to design automotive systems and subsystems and for aerodynamic modeling. Through design leadership, outstanding driving dynamics and product value, and superior engines and powertrains, the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable are ready to
repeat the market impact of the original models.

1996 TAURUS BODY STRUCTURE

When the all-new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable debut, they will be the culmination of a 38-month engineering development program involving hundreds of designers, engineers, managers and suppliers. The program involves two assembly plants, five new body styles, two new engines, and the largest vehicle export program from the U.S. to markets around the world ever conceived by Ford Motor Company.
    Techniques developed on the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable program are expected to provide a foundation for the development of future car and truck product programs at Ford Motor Company. Collocated teams, a timing framework, enforced checkpoints, and supplier participation helped to structure the process, according to Dick Landgraff, Ford's large-front-drive vehicle line segment director for the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable program.
    "We started with a dedicated team of people, all working in the same building," Landgraff said. "It was one of the largest teams of its type ever assembled at Ford Motor Company. Everyone worked exclusively on Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable in their specialty area. 
    "We saved countless hours by having all of our people in one place, so that information could be processed quickly, meetings could be called on short notice, and key decisions could be made with all concerned parties at the table."
    The framework for the process was World Class Timing, a system Ford developed to bring new products to market more quickly than ever before.
    "This means using fundamental timing plans and checkpoints along the way, measuring the deliverables against the timing," Landgraff said. "The World Class Timing process had never really been tried before Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable, and
had never really been put to the test."

Timing is Everything
"The major checkpoint in any program is always design. If you make your design freeze dates, everything else pretty much happens on schedule," Landgraff said. "Our World Class Timing plan and our market research plan called for two sessions of market research. We did four iterations of our clay models before we were convinced that we had the designs right. We could have taken another tack, but we wouldn't have had the designs we have now."
    In World Class Timing, each checkpoint is laid down on a wall-size chart, which is then reduced and duplicated so that every individual on the team works from the same timing plan on a daily basis.
    "First, there's the design freeze date," said Landgraff. "Then you have to deliver all of the mathematical surface data for all of the bodies to the manufacturing group 24 months before Job One so they can start production tooling. 
    "There are basic building blocks of time. First, we had a block leading up to the building of our structural prototypes. Then our second major block led up to the construction of our confirmation prototypes. The next phase led up to the final engineering sign-off phase, and finally, we got into the launch phase at the Atlanta and Chicago assembly plants."
    Landgraff viewed the quilt work of charts in the team's conference room as key to the process. "You don't have a process unless you have tools to measure, and the charts and graphs are our tools, or what we call 'metrics,'" Landgraff said.

Measure of Success
"You must have a rigid and disciplined system for monitoring progress. In the day-to-day struggle of trying to get an individual job done, people can lose sight of the fact that the whole car's got to come together. We aligned our priorities. Everyone knew what they were. And we had a closed-loop process. We set out our expectations; we monitored ourselves through it, and if it got out of control, we took extraordinary action to get it back under control."
    The control center for the entire program was a large conference room, steps away from the offices of Landgraff, chief program engineer George Bell and program business manager Brent Egleston. The conference room walls contain a large number of computer-generated charts and graphs that were constantly updated to reveal the program's progress, and available for all team members to see. In effect, every system was measured every day. 
    "Our role was to set up an environment, an overall system, so that people could understand the broad sense of their job instead of the very narrow sense of their job," Landgraff said. "We constantly need to train people in what it is they need to do to
get a product that meets all customer requirements, not just a very narrow focus on some aspect of the job."

Supply-Side Realities
Suppliers were involved in the process from the beginning and were key to its success. "We've had much deeper and much earlier involvement of the suppliers than in previous programs," Landgraff said. "We did that so they could work with us to meet cost, function, timing and manufacturing targets that we mutually agreed upon. The process included our senior purchasing staff and the engineers.
    "We met with each of the outside suppliers to ask, 'Where are you on your testing? Where are you on your controls? Do you understand the latest level of change? Can you support the timing? If you can't, why not? What will you have there? When will you have the right part?' 
    "Based on other programs that I've worked on, and there have been a lot of them, that was a great leap forward, because it put some teeth in the business of making sure the deliverables really happened." 
    Now that Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable are about to roll off the production lines, there's one task left.
    "We've learned a lot of lessons for the future, and now we need to capture them and transmit them to our colleagues as we move into the era of Ford 2000 and a global company," Landgraff said.

 
1996 TAURUS WAGON GL (LEFT) AND LX (RIGHT) IN WILLOW GREEN

With the introduction of the curvaceous new Ford Taurus and sculptured, ultramodern Mercury Sable sedans and their leading-edge wagon counterparts, Ford Motor Company has made the next great design leap in mass-produced family cars. Both families of the cars are characterized by their new size and proportions, elliptical grille openings, rounded shapes, heavily sculptured body sides and the repetition of elliptical design themes both inside and out. The interiors of both Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable are characterized by a completely new oval-shaped Integrated Control Panel for environmental and entertainment controls, a broad palette of dramatic new paint and upholstery colors, and modem fabric designs.
    Both cowl height and fender height have been reduced in the new designs, and glass area has been increased by 28 percent compared to the previous models. The windshield angle has been increased to 63.7 degrees, the most rapidly sloping windshield of any car in the market segment, and the base of the windshield has been moved forward seven inches.
    The all-new Ford Taurus is more than five inches longer and Mercury Sable nearly eight inches longer overall than the previous design, and nearly two inches wider overall. Inside, the Ford Taurus offers 17 percent more total interior room, 117 cubic feet, and the Mercury Sable is rated at 118 cubic feet. Striking new interior designs are configured for either five passengers, with front bucket seats, or six passengers, with bench seats.
    John J. "Jack" Telnack, Ford vice president, Design, describes the development of the new cars, starting from the revolutionary 1986 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable designs and the 1992 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable design update, as a stretch for the entire design team.
    "These cars are a big stretch from our current Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable. Back in 1980, Ford set out to challenge the world's best sedans with an all-new family of front-wheel-drive family-sized cars. With the original Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable, introduced in 1986, we made a conscious decision to depart from 'me-too' styling that prevailed at that time.
    "Back then, we wanted to go beyond 'boxy,' with an overall unity of design in terms of both function and style. A history of marketplace success proved that our bold new approach was correct. The first-generation Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable took the design lead, and Ford Taurus went on to become the best-selling car in the United States.
    "With the original program, we sought and captured softer, rounder, more fluid and aerodynamic forms. We created functional shapes that produced exceptional interior room without wasted exterior space. Team Taurus was successful not just with the product, but also because of the first application of organizing Ford's Product Development department into a series of program teams."

Fresh. New Look Evades Constraints of Past Designs
"But time moves on, while markets and products evolve. These 1996 cars are not evolutionary. We didn't want any constraints going in. But we did take some cues from the original cars -- for example, sculptural interiors, and with the new Ford Taurus, the six-light side windows and continuous left-to-right taillamp scheme at the rear. Mercury Sable is more than two inches longer than the Ford Taurus design, uses a more formal four-light greenhouse design and has forsaken the light-bar grille in favor of an ovoid theme, and uses separate taillamps rather than the previous full-width taillamp design.
    "We wanted a fresh, new look. We started with an elliptical theme. It's even in the cross-section of the car, and you'll see it most strongly in the plan view and rear window of the Ford Taurus. We followed the philosophy that in product design, form
contains function."

Shapes Wrapped Around Mechanicals
"We aimed for a tension and tautness in the surface to express the energy beneath the surface. We wanted a one-piece overall silhouette, a seamless look of quality with everything integrated. The hood surface flows into the windshield, the backlite flows into the deck.
    "We placed the wheels as far to the extremities as we could, and focused on minimizing front and rear overhangs. We wanted the kind of 'cockpit-forward' look pioneered by the original Probe concept car -- not a 'front-wheels-back' design. 
    "In my sessions with the designers, I kept urging them to wrap the shapes tightly around the mechanicals, emphasizing the tires. The stance suggests stability, and the car is more stable. So the look suggests the driving dynamics. But a big part of scoring a bull's-eye on the design target occurs because a collocated team can make decisions earlier and more accurately, as Lew Veraldi and the original team found 14 years ago.
    "When individual designers and engineers work so closely together, they believe that their contributions are a strong part of the team effort. We've found they buy into the decisions, then go off and work even harder to make things right. 
    "When that happens, you create cars like the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable -- where the smooth integration of form and function can please and satisfy potential buyers. So Ford customers reap the ultimate benefit of the design effort." 
    Doug Gaflka, the Ford designer who oversaw the final stages of the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable design, took over from the original exterior designer, the Australian veteran John Doughty, and the original interior designer, Briton Chris Clements, in 1992. Both have taken on new design responsibilities for Ford in Europe. Gaffka emphasizes the importance of the collocation of the design team and the lengths to which the team went to create truly new shapes and proportions in the new cars.

All-New Statement of Design Leadership
"The 1986 cars were breakthroughs -- new, fresh designs, like nothing else on the road," Gaftka said. "They were good at styling, packaging efficiency, structural properties, performance and NVH. 
    "The new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable are also breakthrough designs -- you'll realize these two cars are an all-new statement of Ford's design leadership. The new team was totally collocated and dedicated 100 percent to the design program. Because of collocation, design decisions could be made on the spot.
    "Our goal was to create cars that have the same dramatic impact on automotive design as the originals, cars that again capture design leadership for Ford. We feel it is a 'stretch' design that will appeal to family-based sedan buyers -- and people in our interior and exterior clinics agreed.
    "They saw these designs were as innovative as the originals, yet clearly so were the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable realizations of the targets we set for ourselves. We were working in very three-dimensional shapes, moving even farther from the boxy look toward what we call the 'bio-kinetic' look.
    "In plan view, the front and rear fenders wrap smoothly into the bodyside. The basic body sections through the doors -- on both the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable -- are what Jack (Telnack) calls very 'responsible' sculptural shapes. The high shoulder or 'bone line' on Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable tie the front and rear together. There's more side sculpting, which adds secondary interest to the shape. On both cars, the cross section is oval, creating an intersection of sculptural forms. 
    "Because we rounded the comers, softened the shapes, and extended the windshield forward -- making the hood shorter -- the car is perceived as being the same size or smaller than the original Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable. But the result of the windshield extension and a stretch of the rear compartment is a much larger interior environment, with a very open feeling. 
    "On the Ford Taurus, you'll see that we've also made all secondary design details elliptical, carrying out the elliptical theme of the unified shape. The door handles, grille, lower bumper openings and headlamps are all elliptical. We're especially proud of the elliptical headlamps, which we've made the focus of the front-end design. But they're not just pretty. They illuminate the road
with almost twice the candlepower of some competitors."
    Ford Taurus will be sold in basic GL and luxury LX trim levels in both sedan and station wagon models. A high-performance, V-8-powered Ford Taurus SHO version with its own front, rear and interior designs, will be introduced midway through the 1996 model year. The Mercury Sable will be sold as well-equipped GS and luxury LS models in both sedan and station wagon body styles.

1999 TAURUS UNDERGOING DURABILITY TESTING

The engineering approach for the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable was based on structure, strength and weight lessons learned from previous Ford Taurus models and on analysis by Ford's two Cray supercomputers on body structure data. This high level of body quality has flowed forward through the confirmation prototypes and into the production-level vehicles.
    What follows is a conversation with three members of the body structure development team on the methods and materials used to make the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable world-class cars in body stiffness, strength, and reduced noise, vibration and harshness (NVH). Engineers Ed Kuczera and Steve Kozak, and Andy Benedict, the structure team leader, made up the team.

Ed Kuczera: We analyzed for body torsion, then literally cut up 14 competitive D-class vehicles, foreign and domestic, and the various body joints to see how they were put together. We measured the torsion, bending and twist I and Z values (moments of inertia of a cross-section) of all those joints. Then we tabulated the data.
Andy Benedict: We went in with saws and torches and removed every one of the joints we thought were critical to making a good car. 
Kuczera: There were plates at each end of the joint, so that the joint was mounted and restrained in three directions. Then we would hold two directions, load the joint in the third direction, and record the deflection data. The data were tabulated, analyzed, and compared to the current Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable. Then we created targets for computer-aided engineering (CAE) analysis to direct the design of the body.
Benedict: In this way, we could take the best properties of every joint from every car we tested and could build a car from those data. 
Kuczera: A lot of the analytical work was started at Advanced Vehicle Engineering, in concert with Body Engineering. They designed the CAE experiments and identified more than 100 NVH items on the old car that could be improved. Then they made a chart to determine what was needed to fix the problems. We started target-setting and started our designs. After the designs were on paper, we fed the information back to the CAE people and asked them, "How does that compare to the rough targets?" The CAE people created a mathematical body without a design, using joint data and section data, about 2,000 elements of a body that would ultimately have 20,000 elements in its final design. In effect, we were working from the critical joints outward to other critical joints.
    The most critical joint in the project was the rear suspension attachment to the underbody, a potential source of body boom and rear-seat noise. We found that the suspension bushing stiffness rate was the same as the body stiffness rate, when the sheet metal is supposed to be five times the rate of the suspension bushings, as a rule
of thumb. So Advanced Vehicle Engineering's charter was to increase the body stiffness in that area without adding any weight to the car.
    The A-pillar stiffness was another problem area. The A-pillar was stiff in two directions, but in the third direction it was deficient. The B-pillar-to-rocker panel stiffness was OK in one direction but weak in another -- so we fixed that.
     Another major joint was the tie-in of the whole front structure to the body, which has been improved in lateral stiffness by 65 percent. We tied parts together more efficiently. This is where CAE comes in. It would have been easy to use additional cross-car reinforcements, but the car would have been 50 pounds heavier. Mathematically, we knew what the targets were, and mathematically, we changed those joints, then fed them back through the CAE system to see if we achieved our goals for stiffness.
Benedict: The challenge was that we could not change any of the welding lines in either the Chicago or Atlanta plants, and that made the job harder. There were restrictions on location and spacing of the welds because of our plan to do an integrated launch -- that is, to keep building the old Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable in both plants while we changed over to the tools for production of the new car. So we had to improve the structural rigidity, improve the torsional stiffness, improve the bending stiffness without using a lot of new tooling. 
Kuczera: Structural items needing improvement were identified by Advanced Vehicle Engineering, and the manufacturing people were consulted to see what was doable for the new vehicle. The fact that we were working with a common platform from the Continental luxury car program added to the complexity. 
Benedict: After all of this came together, the real proof of the pudding would be the first structural prototypes. The torsional rigidity of the new car is about 14,000 foot-pounds per degree, which is about an 87 percent improvement. The ride evaluations since then have proved it out. In terms of rear seat quietness, instrument panel vibration, vibration through the seat, steering wheel and steering column, you can feel the difference immediately.
Steve Kozak: We used a variety of tools: material thickness, weld location, and cross-sectional shape. We have done some major work on beading techniques in the floor pans and other major panels. There is an additional cross-member in the rear underbody for extra strength. We redid the whole rear cross-section where it bolts up to the rear suspension. The body shell is a complete redesign that uses construction we've never used before at Ford.
    We have split folding rear seats in the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable, and because of that, we could not use a V -strainer or bridge truss across the rear seat area. Our strength in that area comes from a perimeter hoop that we created around the opening. It cost us about five pounds to do this, but it gives the customer a larger opening, a significant convenience feature. As a result of strengthening the rear seat and package tray area with a lot of gusseting, we were able to significantly improve the point mobility of the rear suspension attachment points.
    An entire avenue of analysis that we started was the acoustic transfer function, tracing the path of the actual road loads that were going into the body. The suspension attachment points act as drivers, a single point that, when it has a load put into it, excites the entire body. Our goal was to find each of those areas and put a "resistor" in there, to try to diffuse the amount of "current," or load, flowing into the body from those points. By stiffening the body locally, only where it is needed, we save material, weight and welding complexity.
    We wanted global stiffness to be Best-In-Class in the world, but we also had targeted local stiffness in various locations. You want a lot of global, overall stiffness so that you get good driving and handling characteristics. You can do that a couple of ways. You can make the suspension very stiff. You can make the bushings very, very stiff, and the body can be weak, and you get the same overall spring constant, but it's not very pleasant. Or, you can do it the other way around: You make the body very stiff, the suspension very stiff, and the bushings very soft like marshmallows. Then you insulate the body from the road. That was our goal: reduce the stiffness of the bushings and attachment points by stiffening the body locally.
Benedict: Point mobility is a dynamic stiffness test. We analyze specific points on the body for movement in X, Y and Z axes under specific loads. This is the first time this type of analysis has ever been done at Ford North America. It has been used at Ford of Europe and by BMW and Mercedes-Benz. It's been quite productive for us, especially in the rear seat area, with all the shock absorber tower changes we've made. We used this input to get rid of the boom in the rear seat area of the car. We now have a car that's about five or six times stiffer than the outgoing car in the rear area through point mobility testing and analysis. First, we do it mathematically, then we test on structural prototypes. 
Kozak: We excite the vehicle through a broad spectrum of zero to 500 Hz, then apply a small unit load to get the acoustical response over a range of frequencies. It's not a road load history or anything like that. It's the same unit load over various frequencies. It simplifies testing techniques, and it allows you to calculate the transfer function to the acoustic cavity of the body shell. You can create an equation that tells you: If you put so much load here, what does the driver feel? What does he hear? We want to increase the impedance in that function, so you keep that from getting to the driver.
Benedict: With that same analysis, not only did we get the suspension dynamics, we used similar analysis to stiffen the floor pans themselves. That was done with laser holography. Laser light is shone on the vehicle and the entire vehicle is mapped out to locate the sensitive areas. We used a bead design in the sheet metal that was created on a flat plate as a baseline to find which bead design gave us the best performance. We used a new up-and-down pattern, where one bead rises above the baseline and the one next to it descends below the plane of the pan about an equal amount. That made a tremendous difference, a substantial improvement. We increased the wheelbase on the new car, so we had to make the floor pan three inches longer at the same weight. We down-gauged the material from .03 inches to .028 and beaded it for strength. We were able to remove 18 pounds of sound-deadening mastic from the floor pan and still have a stiffer, quieter car. The floorpan design is elaborate, but it isn't more expensive. The original floorpans were hydroformed on presses made in Sweden, and at first our production people told us they couldn't be made here. We took two of the beads out of the floorpan design. The front pan came out perfectly on the first try. 
    We are using the same CAE analysis data for draw die development, mathematically, instead of basing designs on history. The biggest concern was the rear floor pan, a monstrous pan with the deepest draw, for the spare tire well. The manufacturing people said, "No way." But our draw die specialist, John Davis, saw ways to do it with minor concessions, and we ended up with more beads than we started with. 
    We changed the shape of the suspension housing and tied it into the body in a completely different way. Both the front and rear bumpers are now structural cross-members, where they were not before. We now use sheet moulding compound for a combined radiator support, grille opening panel and headlight housing. The original concern was to try to reduce the number of pieces, so we wanted a piece that we could bolt on after painting. That's why we had to have the weld-on, bolt-on bumper bar, so that the structure could be held together. In the body shop, we size the fenders so that we have a consistent width, a consistent fit, and so that in turn sets the hood opening, which we never had before. We have new locators, front to rear and side to side, so that we have a consistent lamp
mounting location.
Kozak: This is part of the no-adjust build strategy. We've created a whole new generic locating strategy, and other Ford car programs are using that strategy now. All of the initial masters are in the floorpan, and everything else on the car is located from there. You can now take the whole assembly process and always have the next level of masters up for the next part that goes on the car. Previously, parts were put together in small subsystems, and then when you tried to bring that subsystem back to the vehicle, it wouldn't fit properly. Now every single part has to go back to some global master.
    That's what we use to control fit and finish variability. We've kept current production car weight, but the car is three inches longer. Floor beads are not in line; they deliberately start and end in different locations to cut noise paths. The shape of the beads was done by CAE. There is a bead-over-bead design, metal on metal, in the rear package tray assembly at the shock absorber cap. The lower piece is the shock cap itself, about 3 mm thick, and the upper piece is the package tray support. The beads nest inside one another for strength and quiet. This was computer analyzed to give us the optimal bead pattern after about 10 iterations.
    By tying it all together we were able to create the halo structure around the fold-down seats without having it distort. We have a different philosophy of how we look at targets now. This whole process of benchmarking was not part of our practice before. But behind this vehicle are 14 cars that we cut up during benchmarking to get the best, stiffest joint structures available.
Benedict: When we did the old Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable, the CAE analysis of the modeling did not exist. There was no mathematical model until we were in production. So anything that was done analytically always was done after the fact. This is the first time that we've actually worked analytically and developed the vehicle.
Kozak: We've boxed the front and rear header, where before we had open sections. We've gone to a three-piece roof rail construction that boxes the roof rails, and we've added a full-length B-pillar reinforcement from top to bottom for NVH, which also gave us a tremendous increase in side impact test performance. 
    We have found that in almost all cases, if you target the NVH performance, the crash performance comes along almost for free. The only thing we had to do to meet the 1997 crash performance standard was to add a small bracket in the dogleg area of the rear door to keep the door from going inward in a crash. We have taken all three bows out of the roof design, and now we have a structural headliner that bonds to the roof in all areas, a glass-fIber-reinforced composite headliner bonded over its entire length to the roof panel for much better NVH performance.
    The biggest change to the program is the way we set the targets. Previously, having a car that came out with these kinds of values for torsion, bending and acoustical performance was a matter of luck. We'd throw reinforcements here and there. Before we actually released the drawings to make parts for this car, we turned the computer on, and there was the whole car, with a stiffness matrix of 40,000 elements.
    We allowed the Cray supercomputer 200 degrees of freedom. In other words, it could change 200 different metal gauges on the car. We gave it limits. The computer gave us the ability to reduce the weight of the vehicle by 17 pounds by optimizing. We let the interior sound level of the vehicle, and what the driver feels through the steering and the seat, be the upper limits. We said, "Computer, rearrange the sheet metal to tell us what is the best way to build the car." Without changing the interior sound level or changing the tactile response, it made the car 17 pounds lighter. As a human being, I can't tell which panel should be 0.7 or 0.8 millimeters or which should be 1.3, but the computer can. As engineers, we gave it our best shot, and the computer took it from there.

3.0 Liter Taurus Duratec DOHC V-6

An all-aluminum 3.0-liter 24-valve DOHC V -6 engine that is the newest member of the Ford Duratec small-displacement modular engine family is optional on the Ford Taurus LX and Mercury Sable LS models. It is based on the 2.5-liter 24-valve V -6 engine that debuted in 1995 in the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique and shares a number of design themes and components. The 3.0-liter version is rated at 200 h.p. at 5750 rpm, with 200 foot-pounds of torque at 4500 rpm, using a compression ratio of 10: 1.
    The Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable version of the Duratec V -6 engine family uses a unique reinforced aluminum engine block with extra ribbing added for strength and lower operating noise, as well as a structural aluminum oil pan and a crankshaft girdle. It uses an 89 mm bore dimension, compared to the 82 mm bore of the 2.5-liter, with a common stroke of 79.5 mm. 
    The intake valve size is increased from 32 to 35 mm in diameter for an increase of 20 percent in valve area and the exhaust valve is increased from 26 to 30 mm in diameter, for a 33 percent increase in valve area and greatly increased overall system airflow. Camshaft events and profiles for the two engines are common. The intake manifold for the electronically fuel-injected V -6 is similar to the design used on the 2.5-liter version of the engine. It uses the same port-throttle intake design as the 2.5-liter, and the same lengths for both primary and secondary intake runners. Secondary port throttles are opened electrically at engine speeds above 4000 rpm to increase airflow into the engine, and closed under 4000 rpm for good low-end response and power.
    To package the 3.0-liter V-6 engine into the engine bay of the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable, the front-end accessory drive has been modified extensively from the 2.5-liter design. The accessory drive has been extended forward from the block four inches, and the water pump has been relocated from the rear to the front of the engine, so that all engine-driven accessories are located on one end of the engine. An extra bearing has been added to the accessory drive pulley to counteract additional
crankshaft bending loads.
    The Duratec 3.0-liter V -6 uses a Ford Electronic Distributorless Ignition System (EDIS) controlled by the Ford EEC- V electronic engine control system that also controls the fuel injection system. EEC- V capacity has been expanded from 56 to 112 Kb of memory, using a new 104-pin connector, compared to the 60-pin connector used on EEC-IV systems. High-silicon molybdenum cast iron exhaust manifolds, which heat up quickly on engine start-up, are used on the 3.0-liter V -6, eliminating the need for light-off catalytic converters. Emission controls on the 3.0-liter V-6 engine include Electric Thermactor Air (ETA) and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). The 3.0-liter Duratec V -6 engine for Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable will be built at Cleveland Engine Plant #2 in Cleveland, Ohio.

3.0 Liter Taurus Vulcan Pushrod V-6

A substantially improved and upgraded 3.G-liter 6G-degree V -6 engine, the Vulcan V-6, has been chosen as the standard workhorse of the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable. The Vulcan V -6, which debuted in the original Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable in 1985, also has been used in the Ford Aerostar minivan, the Ford Windstar minivan, the Ford Ranger compact pickup truck, the Ford Probe GT sporty subcompact, and the Ford Tempo and Mercury Topaz. It is manufactured at the Ford Lima Engine Plant in Lima, Ohio.
    The Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable team set new noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) targets for the 3.G-liter Vulcan, which necessitated a thorough redesign of the engine, including changes to every major system. Using finite element analysis and computer-aided design, the engine's cast iron block was redesigned to be substantially stiffer in critical areas than older Vulcan designs by adding weight in the block walls and main bearing areas and removing weight where it was not required for strength. A number of unused bosses were removed from the block exterior to save weight and complexity. The package of revisions included changes to make the block casting process more efficient. The cylinder-bore honing process for the Vulcan block has been made more precise to provide customers with the best possible oil economy.

Crankshaft Counterweights Repositioned
A new nodular cast iron crankshaft design, which uses relocated counterweights is at the heart of the 3.0-liter Vulcan. The crankshaft counterweights have been relocated from their former outboard positions to the center of the crankshaft for a more rigid, quieter-running assembly. A new casting process has been developed for the crankshaft, which formerly had been a green sand-casting process. For 1996, the more precise shell-moulding process will be used.
    The Vulcan 3.0-liter cast-aluminum pistons are a new design as well, incorporating a more exaggerated barrel shape to the skirt area for lower friction, with reduced crevice volumes above the top ring and below the piston crown. As a result, hydrocarbon emissions are expected to be reduced by 10-20 percent. New low-tension piston rings yield greater oil economy.
    Changes to the Vulcan valve train assembly provide greater durability, lower noise production and lighter weight. The engine's valley-mounted single steel camshaft is drilled longitudinally to save weight. New roller-tipped camshaft followers are used to reduce friction. Lightweight, hollow intake valves, drilled through the length of the stem for weight reduction, lightweight valve springs and retainers are used to help control engine noise at elevated rpm ranges. The drilled intake valves, though larger in size than the smaller exhaust valves, are the same weight, so the same valve springs are used for both intake and exhaust valves. The valves are fitted with new, tighter-sealing valve stem seals to control oil flow into the combustion chambers. 
    To increase long-term durability for the engine's cooling system, the water pump shaft bearing and seal, built as a unit, have been increased in size to 12 mm, and the seal design has been improved for longer life. A new Electronic Digital Ignition System (EDIS), controlled by the Ford EEC- V fifth-generation electronic engine control system, uses an ignition coil for each cylinder. Fired by the EEC-V microprocessor, it, in turn, is signaled by a crankshaft-mounted position sensor that monitors the exact position of each piston relative to the top dead center position.

Vehicle Design Influences Engine
Both the upper and lower sections of the two-piece Vulcan engine intake manifold are new to accommodate the space restrictions of the engine compartment and the increased slope of the vehicle's hood line. The throttle body and upper intake manifold, formerly made as one piece, have been separated, and the throttle linkage relocated from the cowl side of the engine to the front side for easier manufacturing and servicing.
    The lower intake manifold segment has been changed from an evaporative casting to a sand casting, and the thermostat housing has been relocated to provide more accurate temperature readings. Exhaust manifolds reflect subtle design changes
to package the engine in the vehicle, but are functionally the same. The 3.0-liter Vulcan V-6 uses a degassed, pressurized cooling system bottle that more easily removes entrapped air from the cooling system fluid as it circulates. 
    The fuel injection system uses mass airflow metering instead of speed-density metering. A new fuel distribution rail for the fuel injection system is used on the intake manifold to package the engine in the car, and the fuel pressure regulator is made from non-corroding stainless steel. The air intake and filtration system has been revised to fit the engine into the vehicle, although the filtration medium is the same as that used in previous Vulcan V -6 engines.
    The 1996 Vulcan 3.0-liter V-6 engine is rated at 145 h.p. at 5250 rpm, developing 170 foot-pounds of torque at 3250 rpm.

Taurus Electronic 4-Speed Floor Shift

The most advanced transaxle Ford Motor Company has ever built for passenger car use has been chosen for the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable family of engines. The AX4N (for automatic transaxle four-speed nonsynchronous) automatic transaxle's design uses the basic architecture of the AX4S, a four-speed automatic overdrive synchronous-shifting transaxle with full electronic control, but it has been redesigned to incorporate nonsynchronous shifting, the independent movement of two gear sets at a time.
    The incorporation of the nonsynchronous shifting feature into the AX4N transaxle will result in a significant improvement in torque demand and coasting downshifts in urban driving situations. The aluminum case of the AX4N has been reinforced for additional strength and quietness of operation. 
    The AX4N also includes upgrades for high output engine applications. AX4N quality and durability are expected to be among the leaders in 1996. Ratios are: 2.77 in first gear, 1.54 in second, 1.00 in third and 0.69:1 in overdrive fourth, 2.26:1 in reverse.
    The key design features include a higher basic torque capacity, a higher speed capability, improved noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) and functional features, and weight reduction/simplification actions. The higher basic torque capacity is required to cope with the new V-6 engine's maximum torque output and significantly higher operating rpm range. An added friction plate has been installed in the forward, direct and intermediate clutches, along with near-net-shape differential gears, a final drive sun gear with increased wall thickness. A new high-capacity converter clutch with an increased capacity friction element to reduce energy density.
    The AX4N transaxle has a substantially higher speed capability, necessary for heavy-duty use and export sales, with an added plate in the direct and intermediate clutches, a balanced piston added to the intermediate clutch, a new Grob spline joint on the overdrive drum and shell, and a set of high-strength pins in the drive chain. NVH and functional features have been improved, including nonsynchronous 3-2/3-1 downshifts, and nonsynchronous 2-3 upshifts. The transaxle / engine interface has been strengthened and modified to improve powertrain bending resonances, and additional ribs are cast onto the transaxle case for stiffening and quieter operation.
    The AX4N's high capacity converter clutch includes a new long-travel, high-capacity damper to improve NVH isolation when the transaxle is fully locked. There is an additional accumulator for reverse engagements, an additional accumulator for the 2-3 shift, and a clutch for drive engagements, replacing a double-wrap band. The precise, low-effort transaxle shifters, both console- and column-mounted for five- and six-passenger versions, complement the precision and ease of the AX4N transaxle itself. The AX4N provides some weight reductions, with a change in the rear support material from steel to aluminum.

AX4N and EEC-V: A Dynamic Combination
The AX4N is mated to the new Ford Electronics EEC-V engine controller. All of the AX4N transaxle's upshifting, downshifting and torque converter lockup activities are controlled by the new Ford Electronics EEC- V fifth-generation electronic engine control system. With a 104-pin connector, the EEC-V unit has 44 pins more input/output than before. The EEC-V's memory, at 112K, is twice as large as the memory in the EEC-IV module. The EEC- V module controls AX4N shifting, lockup and diagnosis through the full vehicle multiplex wiring system and the dash-mounted OBD-II diagnostics connector.
    Communication is via a standard communications protocol through control modules on the EEC- V communications network. The engine and transaxle are both electronically interfaced with the optional anti-lock brake system to maintain excellent braking, steering, upshifting and downshifting during emergency maneuvers.
    The AX4N transaxle will be built for the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable at the newly refitted Ford Van Dyke Transaxle Plant in Sterling Heights, Mich., near Detroit, and is included in the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable's 36-month/36,OOO-mile limited warranty.

1996 Ford Taurus LX Fully-Independent Suspension

The 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable feature completely redesigned suspension systems that offer greater steering precision, smoother operation and better noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) performance than previous models. A new MacPherson front suspension, based on Ford's first-time use of cold-wound steel front and rear coil springs, allows higher stress levels and longer spring life in a smaller package. The front shock absorber towers have been lowered 40 mm compared to the previous mounting location for lower cowl and hood heights. 
    Both Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable have modified cowls to accommodate larger windshields and cross-car reinforcing beams. The front lateral subframe's stiffness has been increased, and the rear subframe mounts have been equipped with rate plates to improve steering precision. 
    The front suspension geometry has greatly improved toe variation for increased tire wear performance. The system uses a new double-isolated strut mount and a slightly larger strut bearing for improved noise performance, as well as rebound springs. There is a new aluminum front knuckle and a new ball joint, with bolt-on brake, hub and bearing assemblies. A redesigned solid steel front stabilizer bar improves bump steer. Stabilizer bar geometry has been optimized for reduced steering effort during parking maneuvers.
    The system features a new, stamped steel one-piece control arm that replaces both the lower control arm and tension strut of the previous design. Front suspension bushings have been changed to a vertical orientation to increase overall stiffness of the
subframe and to enhance powertrain isolation.
    There is a unique pancake-mounted bushing on the subframe attachment at the front and a new mini-bushing on the inner pivot at the rear of the arm. Resistance to dive has been increased from 13 percent to 36 percent for more stable braking. Lift resistance has been increased from 2 percent to 25 percent. Ouadralink Chosen for Rear Suspension Rear suspension for Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable is based on the MacPherson strut Quadralink lower control arm suspension system first used on the 1995 Lincoln Continental. Wagon models use a unique one-piece lower control arm and a new upper control arm. The rear spindle is carryover and rear struts also use rebound springs. New lower A-arms have been designed to improve stiffness, to lower unsprung weight, and to reduce toe-angle compliance for improved steering feel and nibble sensitivity.
    A new, low-friction steering gear assembly has been designed to improve steering feel and to increase steering precision. The steering system's intermediate shaft has a new high-rate flex coupling and a low-lash, spline-type slip-joint, and incorporates new stamped low-friction universal joints. The steering column is manufactured with new bearings that reduce friction and improve steering feel and precision with improved finishes on its shaft, rack, pinion teeth, and seals for smooth, low-friction operation. The system uses two sets of seals: pressure chamber seals and valve sleeve seals. An electronic module controls the variable-assist power steering feature.
    The Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable steering rack is the same used in the Lincoln Continental, with the same basic steering ratio, 16: 1. Tie rods are of the same design, but are longer overall, with thinner walls. A new non-contact steering system boot is incorporated to reduce steering system friction. 
    Cars equipped with the standard 3.0-liter Vulcan engine use a Ford C-2 power steering pump. The 3.0-liter Duratec engine option uses a higher-capacity Ford C-3 power steering pump. All-new hoses and a new finned power steering fluid cooler are standard equipment. The system includes a 10-micron filter in the return line, a 40-micron screen on the inlet, and a 210-micron filter screen in the reservoir to extend the life of power steering fluid.
    Right-hand-drive export versions of the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable will use a premium ZF power steering system with a Zuha power steering pump. The ZF system is spring-loaded and uses a detent ball to preserve on-center feel. Export left-hand-drive models bound for the Persian Gulf area will have slightly modified power steering systems with restricted travel to clear the larger tires and brakes used on Gulf Coast Cooperative export versions. Flexible-fuel versions will use the same base steering system, with a slightly different actuator due to the presence of a lightoff catalyst in the flexible-fuel exhaust system.
    General Tire is the supplier for Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable sedan and wagon models, including left-hand and right-hand-drive export models. All models will use P225/60R-16 tire sizes. Cast aluminum wheels in a wide range of designs including a chrome-plated wheel, are optional. The standard wheel is a steel disc wheel with bolt-on wheel covers.

1996 Ford Taurus Front Wheel Disc with ABS

Better pedal feel, shorter stopping distances, and long-wearing friction surfaces are among the braking system improvements made for the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable.
    Brake pedal function has undergone a number of changes. They include stiffened pedal-to-cowl mounting brackets for improved brake pedal bracket stiffness and brake pedal feel, and a new brake pedal coil return spring to enhance brake pedal feel. The Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable braking system incorporates a new brake hose material with a lower expansion rate than the material previously used, resulting in less pedal travel and less perceptible pedal pulsation. Front and rear suspension systems also have been retuned to provide improved stability and substantially less front-end dive during braking.
    All models will feature new hub and bearing units, which have greatly reduced radial runout to improve balance and provide for improved rotor life. During assembly, a match-marking process will be used. The low spot on each rotor will be matched to the high spot on the hub to further improve runout and balance. The front brakes use a bolt-on caliper design with ventilated cast-iron
rotors.
    Large-diameter ventilated brake rotors, 276 mm in diameter, and 26 mm thick, are used on all models except the high-performance Ford Taurus SHO model, which will use 294 mm diameter, 38 mm thick ventilated front rotors. The Ford Taurus GL and the Mercury Sable GS sedans will feature a combination of front disc and rear drum brakes, with 225 mm diameter drums with 38 mm wide rear brake linings. Rear disc brakes are included with the optional anti-lock braking system CABS) on sedans.
Because passenger and cargo loads are typically higher with wagons, all Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable wagon models will offer a four-wheel disc brake system, with the rear discs measuring 256 mm in diameter and 14 mm in thickness. 

Integrated ABS  Allows Improved Cycling
The ABS on the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable models is a Bosch ABS- V fifth-generation electronic anti-lock braking system. ABS will be available as an option on all models. The Ford/Bosch ABS is an integrated system replacing a larger, heavier two-piece system that used separate hydraulic and electronic controllers. It features an integrated electronic module and hydraulic actuator mounted on the left inner fender panel. The integration of the two systems reduces electrical connections from 81 to 26. The brakes can be cycled on and off up to 15 times per second during a stopping maneuver. 
    Ford's fifth-generation engine electronic control system, known as EEC-V, controls the ABS. It is a part of the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable multiplex electronic control system. The multiplex electronic system uses small electronic modules at various locations around the vehicle that communicate with each other electronically via the ISO 9141 electronic protocol. A single pair of twisted wires connects each module onto the network. Even if one of the two wires is disconnected, the system continues to communicate. 
    The ABS can be electronically diagnosed at Ford or Lincoln-Mercury dealerships using newly enhanced Star diagnosis equipment. Direct readouts inform the service technician what type of problem exists and on which wheel position. All Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable models use environmentally responsible non-asbestos friction materials for both disc and drum brakes.

  
1996 Taurus Instrument Panel with Floor Shift (left) and column shift (right)

Following is a text of an interview with David C. Hoffmeister of the human factors engineering organization at Ford Design, the group responsible for the interior ergonomics of the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable. Hoffmeister has spent his entire 22-year career at Ford in the study of ergonomics, or human factors engineering. He has worked at the Cleveland Casting Plant in industrial engineering, in the Automotive Safety Office on federal safety standards compliance, and at the Design Center in Dearborn, where he worked on the ergonomics aspects of the original Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable. He holds a degree in industrial engineering and ergonomics from Ohio State University .

Q. Tell us about the earliest stages of your ergonomics work with the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable team.
A. We worked hand in hand with Chris Clements, the interior designer on the program under chief designer John Doughty. More and more of our designers and managers are understanding human factors. It's really a mixture of industrial design and psychology -- how people perceive and understand signs, signals and symbols.
Q. Are the automotive ISO symbols used in car interiors still changing?
A. Yes. We constantly research ISO symbols, how well people can read and understand them. We have found that while symbols are well understood by Europeans, who have to have them in cars because of language differences in Europe, they still are not well understood by many Americans, who are used to words. Anything we export to Europe must have symbols. The desire within Ford is to have whatever labels we have in Europe also in the U.S. products, but many symbol labels in Europe are not recognized or understood in the U.S. People will push buttons by trial and error until they get something to work. For example, the snowflake symbol for air conditioning is not well understood in North America. There are many similar engine fluid symbols with small variations, such as oil level, oil pressure and oil temperature. We continue to work on ISO symbols as new features come onstream. But many Americans still prefer words. So we try to do both, but sometimes there isn't enough real estate. On the Integrated Control Panel, we have used symbols for the climate control system, symbols which have become fairly well understood. But there is a danger of over-labeling, of too much text, which can make things worse.
Q. What factors were considered before designing the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable Integrated Control Panel (ICP)?
A. Some of the things we were concerned about were three separate controls going into a single control unit, which could make things more difficult to find and use, instead of three different, individual control units. This unit has a clock, and a radio, and climate control, so we had to make sure it would be very easy for people to find those things, even though it's all packaged in one unit. 
Q. What was the view of Ford ergonomics based on history?
A. It was based on what we know from the past, the way humans usually perceive and look for things. People look for, and expect, a separate clock, a separate radio, and separate climate control. We know that when the clock is incorporated into the radio, it's not as easy to use, find, or operate, as it is when we have a stand-alone clock that's separate from the radio. With a clock in the radio, where you have to push a button to bring up the clock face, that's another time you have to take your hand off the wheel and look down from the road. That's just one example of our feelings about separating controls from each other, so you're not going through the complexity of sorting out which ones you're using when you need them. Another of the principles that we applied to all of these designs is to make things look different, yet similar all at the same time.
Q. The Ford interior designers came up with the Integrated Control Panel design first and then turned it over to your group for evaluation?
A. Yes, the designers and electronics people came up with the ICP. This is a very big break with traditional automotive ergonomics practice -- a major change. It was such a big change that we felt strongly that we had to do extensive ergonomics testing on it. The testing has to be within the automotive context, in a car, in position, with the driver driving or pretending he's driving, so we could see how he's using this thing when he's driving. Then we can come up with a decision or a recommendation based on what we learn, on how to improve the product, or whether it should even exist. The basic parameters we use when we do that kind of testing include the number of glances required to look down at the control to use it, the time the eyes are away from the road, whether errors are committed reaching for the control, whether the driver uses the wrong control because he/she couldn't understand it or couldn't find the one he/she wanted to use, and also, poor performance while driving such as wobbling in the lane or driving outside of the lane.
Q. How and what did you measure during the testing?
A. We did it fairly crudely at first, using stopwatches, but now the computer does it for us. The timing starts when the command stops and either the eyes look down or the driver's hand leaves the steering wheel rim, depending on the specific task at hand. We count all of the elapsed time while the subject is searching for and using the control, until the hands are returned to the steering wheel rim or the eyes return to the road simulator screen. That's what we call the total task time. We also watch the total number of times a driver would look down, and when possible, the length of the glances in seconds. Then we look at the data and compare it to the criteria we have developed to determine the average time for all drivers, time for specific drivers, how many glances it took and of what duration. We also note errors -- wrong button, couldn't find it at all, started to move their hand and hesitated or made a correction of movement. 

1996 Taurus ICP with EATC

Q. How did the design come about, and how did it mature?
A. Integrated Control Panel was designed in Mimi Vandermolen's component design studio, rather than in the main Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable design studio. Nevenka Schumacher was the lead designer. Our standard climate control is triple rotary dials. When we have automatic climate control, we usually recommend that the radio be located above the climate control, so that was one of our going-in positions. We usually go after the most complex design first, figuring that everything else will fallout of that. The best way we could break away the climate controls and the radio controls was with color-coding, and this is what we were able to convince the designers to do. They labeled the radio controls in white and the climate controls in amber. We also wanted the clock to be as free-standing as possible, so we placed as large a gap as we could between the clock and the other two systems. And we wanted to have the final clock contain its own controls in the lens instead of separate buttons. In production, the clock face and the radio dial are of the same digital typography, but the clock has slightly smaller numerals, about one or two millimeters smaller, so that the user can discern the difference between the two. 
Q. Tell us about the return of round knobs on the ICP.
A. The volume control is a large, round knob at the top left of its group. On an oval object like the ICP, there is no home base from which to start. The eye scans erratically. So we made this volume control big, bold and prominent, so it would then become home base. We put the AM/FM buttons close to the round knob, and then followed standard practice, arraying the rest across and down, with the most frequently used buttons closest to the driver's hand, and the least frequently used to the right, which is why bass, treble, balance and fade are located there. Customer input about too-small buttons and too-small controls, combined with our urging, led the way toward a whole new generation of larger controls. We're aware that our population is aging, and that older people need larger controls and larger labels, so we are making them larger. But we also know from our research that younger people, those who buy our specialty cars and sporty cars, prefer small controls because they believe they have a high-tech look. Perhaps not all human factors professionals agree with that, and some believe that we should design for the entire population in every car, but we can listen to the customer, provide him with what he wants and still have good ergonomics at the same time. I believe that's possible. On the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable, all the graphics are quite large, the control buttons are quite large, and they are all well coded. Our studies show that the layout can be learned fairly quickly. The feedback from our study group, when we asked them about complexity and layout, showed that they believed they could learn it and use it fairly quickly.
Q. What are the pass/fail measurements you use when evaluating a new concept such as the Integrnted Control Panel?
A. We use two seconds or less as a task performance time. In terms of glances, we allow 1.5 seconds. Errors must be zero, and no lane violations. If a control allows that kind of performance, it's a no-problem control. We give it a green dot. An item gets a red dot if the task time goes beyond five seconds, if there are more than three glances, more than three errors, or three lane violations, or a combination of any two of these. This way we are able to map the efficiency of a control panel with an array of colored dots, and we can see immediately where the trouble spots are. For this study, we used a group of 42 non-technical Ford employees and tracked their individual and the group's mean performances. We also took into account the frequency of use of each control. Generally speaking, the red dots ended up on the far right side of the ICP, and/or on the smaller controls. We purposely made small and large buttons so that things would look different to the user, and he would know after doing some learning what each was for.
Q. What was changed after the study was completed?
A. We made the buttons and graphics as large as we could. In some cases, where the graphics took two lines, such as "MAX A/C," we put one word above, on the panel, and the second on the button itself, so that both could be large. The red dots that occurred on the left side of the ICP were there not because the control was bad, but because the steering wheel rim was blocking the control. So we made sure that, in the final design, all of the controls were out of the rim-block zone. The whole left side of the ICP was designed with rim-block in mind. We use a composite. of all drivers, tall and short, close-sitting and back-sitting, when figuring steering wheel rim-block, and the composite is done by a computer for both the left and right eye. With the cooperation of the studios, the designers and the engineers, we can design everything so that it gets away from the rim-block. That's one of the success stories of the ICP. 

1996 Taurus Instrument Panel

Q. We've noticed that the ICP is not canted at all, but rather faces the interior squarely. Why?
A. Orienting toward the driver in a cockpit environment like the Mark VIII is helpful to ergonomics, but it also creates an image that Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable may not have wanted to have. This is a family car that needs to be more open, and there is also a six-passenger version, and that would take away legroom from the front middle passenger. For those reasons, the ICP faces straight into the interior. 
Q. Within the oval-shaped ICP, there are, for the first time, oval buttons?
A. Yes, the designers decided to go with oval buttons. Shape sometimes will enter into the ergonomics, and sometimes it won't. With a small oval button, you might be restricted to one line of graphics. With a square or rectangular button, flat, rather than crowned as these are for the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable, you could get more graphics on it. That is not always a primary consideration to designers. Shapes come first, then we fit the graphics in later. All of the buttons on this control panel are crowned, with the exception of a few rocker switches, which have depressions so that they will function better as rocker switches.
Q. How do you determine how much effort should be required to operate a given switch?
A. We studied about eight or 10 types of switches in our cars and selected those that most frequently occur, such as push buttons and rocker switches. We evaluated them against competitive switches, taking subjective readings on efforts, surface feel, crispness, feedback, and smoothness of operations. Along with the subjective aspects, we also did physical measurements. We then lined up the two batches of data and were able to get a good idea of the preferred feel for various switches. We got sign-off throughout the company and got that into the corporate standards so we now know what the efforts should be on all of these various controls. We measure them in pounds or grams of applied pressure. A range of 180 to 400 grams of effort for the radios is a sizable range. Above 400 is too difficult, and much below 180, the switch doesn't feel like anything is changing.
Q. What about ergonomics as it relates to things that don't move?
A. Part of the reason we request larger graphics is that they are easier to resolve in low contrast -- that is, the little difference between light letters and dark backgrounds. As you get smaller graphics, they are more difficult to resolve with lower contrast. Contrast is a function of both the background brightness and the brightness of the graphic. It becomes an issue when you get reflections off the background that become the same color as the graphics. Lenses, too, reflect a lot of light, and the graphics can't punch through that light without contrast. You can use anti-reflective materials, but then you have to increase the brightness of the displays behind the lenses. What we've done with the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable ICP IS to curve the lens surfaces themselves to minimize the glaring portion of the lens and still have quite a bit of the display show through, rather than have the whole lens reflect. The new radios will have curved lenses on them as well.
Q. The ICP bezel surface itself is curved. Why?
A. It's a complex curve done very purposely to give the ICP segmentation, to have one surface for the radio and sound system controls above, a curvature, and then the climate control system below. We originally looked at differentiating the background colors, black for one and grey for the other, for example. But using one color and sculpting a rib or spine into the surface was the way they chose to really break up the two major areas. We wanted the separation, and the designers did, too. It's much easier for the user to distinguish the manual climate control system, with its triple rotary controls, because we've used triple rotaries for so long in so many cars. The bigger problem was the Electronic Automatic Temperature Control system, which has multiple buttons rather than three rotary switches. But we insisted on, and got, both the amber graphics and the spine. 

1999 6-Passenger Interior Configuration

Q. What about the rest of the car's ergonomics away from the ICP?
A. The 1995 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable have the radios quite low, so we've fixed that with the ICP. Our requirement is that the majority of controls be no more than 30 degrees down from the driver's line of sight through the windshield. You have to move your head a great deal to be able to see down that low. The bottom edge of the ICP is at 35 degrees. On the doors, we have a number of reach zones for things like the power window switches, the power mirrors, the door latches and lock buttons. Everything needs to be within the maximum reach zone. If it's outside that maximum reach zone, then you can't reach when comfortably and properly seated in the car. Within the zone, all drivers between the fifth and 95th percentile can reach with only two inches of forward lean while wearing seat belts and shoulder harnesses. We started using a minimum-reach zone in the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable we feel everything should be forward of, so that you don't have awkward rearward arm movements, which we call "chicken-winging." The window switches are easily reached beside you, not behind you, so that you1re not driving your elbow into the seat or beside the seat, between the seat and the door. That's very difficult to do, because there's not a lot of room on the doors to package all that we need to package that far forward. We also need to package the sound system tweeters on the doors for good sound. 
Q. Where do computers come into the equation in human factors engineering?
A. It is in terms of the speed with which we can analyze data. We can rapid-prototype many things, including an automotive entertainment system, on the Macintosh computer using HyperCard and SuperCard, in 2-D, without ever going to hardware. You can scan in or design a control on screen, and activate the button so that you change the display when you press the button, according to the way you write the logic. We have a touch screen in our Macintosh that helps us do that. We can then conduct usability, findability and other studies well before the logic is written in its final form.

  
1996 Console: Left, console closed, armrest up; Middle, console closed, armrest down, Right, Console open, armrest down.

The 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable will offer an interior design scheme built around a three-way convertible console seat system, which quickly converts from a front center seating position with its own safety belt, to an armrest, or into a multifunctional central console with storage space for audiocassette boxes, coffee mugs, beverage cups, coins and other items. 
    The patented convertible console seat system has been under development for several years as part of an effort to make the all-new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable even more user-friendly inside for the broad range of buyers they attract. Two sets of customer receptivity studies were done on the concept -- in October 1991 and December 1992 -- to confirm that the design, function, features, and construction of the convertible console were correct. 
    The current Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable use 60/40 proportional front seating with armrests. But few passengers, less than one percent, use the central area for seating, according to Ford research. The receptivity studies showed that many drivers prefer a single-plane seat where they can place packages, briefcases and purses.
    When Ford showed the convertible console concept to potential owners, response was virtually 100 percent positive. Many of those surveyed believed that the six-passenger low series interior with the convertible console seat system was the high series model because of the spaciousness provided by the design. 

Convertible Console Is a Seat First
Chris Clements, the British interior manager working under Australian design manager John Doughty, headed the interior design team, which had been working on the convertible console seat. Once a clay model of the complete convertible console seat system was completed and approved, Lear Seating Corporation took over to finish the design in cooperation with the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable interior team.
    Lear Seating was given design and manufacturing responsibility for all of the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable seating systems, including the five/six-passenger convertible console seat arrangement and the integrated child safety seat option for the rear seats of Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable wagons. Structural prototype testing for durability and hostile environments was completed at Ford test tracks in Dearborn and Romeo, Mich., and Kingman, Ariz., in the summer of 1993 by Ford and Lear Seating. Structural prototype vehicles were made with existing Ford Taurus seats mounted in their new positions, with the standard rear fold-down seats mounted 2.5 inches further rearward in the car. Strain gauges were mounted at various positions on the seats and convertible console seats.
    Shabbir Kathiria, project interior manager, and his team were responsible for Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable interiors rearward from the instrument panel. This includes front and rear seating, restraint, adjustment, upholstery and trim systems. "We knew going in that this was an important surprise-and-delight feature for the new Taurus and Sable," Kathiria said. "We went through all the work necessary to make sure that the convertible console seat system was first of all a seat, a comfortable and safe seat, with a proper restraint system. Only then did we convert the seat into a console and an armrest."

Customer Convenience Key to Design
To determine which features to incorporate into the convertible console seat system, Kathiria's team assembled a large survey fleet of vehicles and looked at individual interior features on small, intermediate, full-size and luxury passenger cars, sport utility vehicles, light trucks and wagons. Customer convenience items such as cupholders, ashtrays, armrests, coin holders and telephone mounts were studied and arranged on a number of prototype convertible console seats. Ford designers put together an ergonomically efficient, three-tiered arrangement of mug and cup holders designed to accommodate a number of popular sizes and shapes of beverage containers based on survey data.
    There is also space for storage of up to six audiocassette boxes in the convertible console, with compact disc storage in the glovebox. Compact disc changer systems are mounted in the trunks of the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable. The easily removable ashtray within the convertible console seat unit is gimbaled, closes automatically, and is mounted so that when the console is converted back to a seat or into an armrest, contents cannot spill from it.
    Ford's optional voice-activated, hands-free cellular telephone system occupies the space in the convertible console seat system closest to the driver's right hand. Lear Seating will manufacture the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable seating system in two new just-in-time manufacturing plants, one near Ford's Atlanta Assembly Plant, the second near the Chicago Assembly Plant. The decision for a just-in-time manufacturing and delivery scheme was made in early 1993. (The alternative would have been to keep the existing Ford seat manufacturing and inventory system in each of the two Ford plants.)
    Quality and economic considerations influenced the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable team to go with a full-service supplier scheme, Kathiria said. Assembly Considerations Studied "This way, we just take the completed seat system and install it in the car, rather than have to piece it together ourselves. It used to be that engineering did engineering and didn't worry about cost or materials or construction. Now, we are also business people, and we must ask ourselves, 'How would I do this, on this fixed budget, if this were my own business?' It's exciting, and it gives you full control."
    Ford and Lear Seating used computer-aided design (CAD) techniques to produce the designs for the convertible console seat system, a system that allowed progress from three-dimensional computer models on a computer monitor directly to manufacturing masters. The 20-pound convertible console seat system is made up of three metal assemblies, using welded 1010 sheet steel for the base frame assembly, which is bolted to the floor pan by four bolts. The steel frame is combined with plastic parts supplied by Lear Plastics in Mendon, Mich. A low-gloss plastic developed by General Electric Plastics is used for black and color-keyed parts.
    The friction detent washers, which hold the assembly in place and guard against squeaks and rattles, are made of DuPont Delrin. The ashtray receiver is made of heat-resistant phenolic, and its flameproof cap is a painted self-extinguishing poly carbonate component taking the place of a heavier steel heat shield. The armrest assembly has it own tubular steel frame and is constructed using foam-in-place techniques.
    The upholstered sections of the armrest use the same upholstery materials as the seats, and the convertible console seat system will be available with every upholstery design in the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable catalog with the exception of leather.

Taurus ICPs: Left, EATC with CD controls, Middle, manual A/C with CD controls, Right, manual A/C with tape only.

A fully Integrated Control Panel (ICP) designed to house all environmental and entertainment controls on the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable required a multidiscipline approach to include diverse responsibilities. One of the traditional constraints of instrument panel design was removed with the development of the Lincoln Marque X, a concept vehicle first displayed in 1992. Its instrument panel featured an integrated control panel, freeing the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable design team from using carryover parts, specifically radio chassis.
    The original shape of the ICP was trapezoidal, but over time, it became larger to accommodate space requirements, and gradually became oval in shape. Nevenka Schumaker in the Ford Design components studio designed the ICP under the direction
of design executive Mimi Vandermolen.
    The wide range of audio systems offered in the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable required four unique but similar ICP fascias to accommodate radio and manual air conditioning, AM/FM/cassette, AM/FM/cassette/ compact disc (CD) changer. The diversification was widened by adding Electronic Automatic Temperature Control (EATC) air conditioning and the Ford JBL Premium Sound System.
    The Vehicle Systems group designs and engineers electrical systems -- how they integrate and how they "talk" to each other whenever the vehicle is running. Vehicle Systems sought simplification, multiplexing of wiring harnesses, connectors, hiding wires, combining parts modules, and relocation of some components from behind the instrument panel into the trunk for the most efficient use of available space. 
    The group came up with the term IUI for integrated user interface. In automotive terms, an integrated user interface is anything that a driver or passenger touches or sees, integrated so that it performs a number of functions. 

Eliminating Redundancies a Complex Task
The human factors group within Ford Design studied synergies between appearance and electrical architecture, ergonomics and human factors engineering. Its goal was to increase ease of use, provide short reaches to all controls, build in outstanding crash performance and extend some of the redundant entertainment system controls from the previous generation cars. The human factors group was championing the trend toward larger buttons, and easier, friendlier controls. 
    The Ford Automotive Components Group (ACG) unit that engineers and manufactures vehicle control systems and in-car entertainment systems and components, pulled together the idea for a fully integrated control panel with support from Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable program manager Dick Landgraff. ACG's Climate Control Division worked on its own requirements for both manual and electronic automatic air-conditioning systems and their controls in concert with the electronics group.
    The size of the Ford auto reverse Dolby cassette deck controls the size of the ICP because it is the largest single component housed within it. This resulted in easier instrument panel packaging and signaled the end of the previous system, which was a
struggle between designers and engineers for the available space in a complete instrument panel.
    Ideas, concepts and fragments found each other in the ICP. When the radio went into the rear of the car, the antenna went with it to shorten the cable, and as a by-product, cut down on wind noise. Mast antenna systems were chosen over a glass-embedded antenna.
    A single-disc CD player in the instrument panel was ruled out because of a lack of space. Over/under CD/tape systems were not considered. The CD player evolved into a six-disc changer early in the design phase and was moved to the trunk to be
operated by its own communications link.
    The Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable entertainment systems use a new "distributed systems" approach for security reasons. The ICP contains the power, volume, tone and tuning controls only. Both the radio chassis and CD changer are wired into the multiplex system and relocated into the trunk. Either end of the radio, tape, or CD system cannot be used if it is stolen by itself, and the placement protects the radio chassis from easy access.
    A new Audio Communications Protocol communicates through the multiplex wiring system between the operator, radio controls and radio, heater controls and heater. The 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable have a higher level of electronic integration, including true multiplexing, in the electrical layout, than any midsize passenger sedan in Ford history.
    JBL Silver, Gold and Platinum systems are available in Ford and Mercury luxury models, with successively higher equipment levels, more power, subwoofers, higher-capacity speakers and neodymium speakers. Non-adjustable Digital Signal Processing is available on high-end systems for equalization to the package of the car. A full logic cassette system replaces mechanical tape deck systems in all applications. All models have a digital clock and a heated rear window switch because it is part of the HV AC system Ideal harmony and craftsmanship issues were considered early. Matched buttons were chosen for appearance, feel and illumination intensities. The designers extended the position of the ICP into the interior cavity for easier radio location and operation. Though the system was optimized toward the driver, it was not turned to exclude use by the front seat passengers.

New Design Manufacturing Processes
A new design approach, Product Development Process II, was instituted to support World Class Timing. The entire ICP was designed on computers, resulting in the development of quick prototypes. The ICP uses a new manufacturing process called in-mold decorating to accommodate its shapes and compound curvatures. The complex shape required a new manufacturing technology derived from supplier search efforts. All of the ICP's graphics and textures go onto the plastic when it is injection molded, so no further printing or handling is required.
    An ICP design goal was to avoid overwhelming the customer with too many switches per square inch. The bezel houses the tape deck, display electronics and electroluminescent lighting for tuner and bezel. The radio tuner and amplifier are mounted in the trunk of sedans, or the side panel of wagons, and there is a communication link between the two. The Ford EATC climate control system uses a remote climate control module to communicate with motors, compressor and the air doors of the HV/ AC system. A Generic Electronic Module (GEM) controls the heated backlite and other items for integration.
    The ICP's electronics and rear control unit will be made by Ford in Altec, Mexico. The finished fascia will be sent by SMC Moldings in Anaheim, Calif. The system's Audio Communications Protocol (ACP) is the communication link, the multiplex network that will link the front end with the rear end of each system.
    Multiplex first appeared on the 1995 Lincoln Continental, which has a network between instrument cluster and the engine controller. The network communicates requests for changes to features. Audio information (the music signal) travels on a separate circuit to the speakers. Ford's optional voice-activated, hands-free cellular telephone uses a separate circuit and is located in the convertible console.

 
New technologies include optional air particulate filter and solar tinted glass.

With the arrival of the all-new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable family of midsize sedans and wagons, Ford Motor Company introduces a new level of technology in both the standard and optional electronic heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HV AC) systems.
    Controls for both systems are located in the new Integrated Control Panel (ICP), the oval-shaped panel at the center of the dashboard. Systems come in two configurations. Vehicles with bucket seats have four dashboard air outlets and a split outlet at the rear of the floor console to serve the rear seat area. On bench-seat models, the dashboard is fitted with five air outlets, with the center outlet designed to supply heating or cooling to rear seat passengers.
    The controls for all heating, defrosting, ventilation and air-conditioning functions are the familiar triple rotary switches, one for blower speed, one for temperature selection, and one for air direction. For the first time in these car lines, a dealer-installed replaceable particulate filter will be optional. The cowl-mounted filter, located beneath the leaf screen at the base of the windshield, prevents the intrusion of pollens, dust and other contaminants as small as 0.3 microns.
    For the 3.0-liter Vulcan, Vulcan Flexible Fuel and 3.0-liter Duratec V-6 engines, a conventional Ford FS-IO piston air-conditioning compressor is used. The compressor is a durable, high-quality unit with forged, rather than cast, pistons. It uses an 83 mm, instead of the longer 93 mm, compressor mounting boss to hug the engine package more closely. The compressor system operates with a quieter "soft" starting and stopping mode. It uses environment-friendly R134a refrigerant, which contains no chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) compounds, which are considered harmful to the atmosphere.

Communication Link Permits Accurate Temperature
An Electronic Automatic Temperature Control system is optional on all 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable models. It has been upgraded to include a bi-level position that will circulate air through both the panel registers and the floor ducts and is operated by an additional button on the control panel. 
    The temperature control system is controlled electronically by simple push buttons in the integrated control panel. Unlike previous HV/AC control systems, the panel's control buttons do not act directly on the system. Instead, they communicate remotely via a multiplex wiring system to the evaporator/blower assembly under the hood, which saves weight, space and complexity in the behind-dash area. 
    A communications link allows the HV/AC system to receive more accurate temperature messages from the engine control module to provide more accurate temperature control. Occupants can view both interior and exterior temperatures on the control screen by toggling back and forth between them. The temperature control system has "fuzzy logic," which gives engineers more flexibility in calibrating the system functions.
    The functional targets for the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable HV/AC system were higher than those developed for either the original DN5 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable, or the 1992 redesigns. Ford's Climate Control Division team members assigned to the project determined that the 1995 model, in the air-conditioning mode, had an airflow capacity of 200 cubic feet per minute (cfm) versus a Best-in-Class figure of 250-300 cfm, and that the new system would have to be re-engineered to achieve similar capacity. DNI0l Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable prototypes were measured at 275 cfm.
    Discharge air temperatures in the air-conditioning mode were measured, along with the airflow in the heating mode (100 cfm versus 160 cfm for the new car). The systems are measured in two ways. Air conditioning is measured using the maximum capacity settings and recirculated or inside air. Heating is measured using outside air with the system set up to test temperature (if inside air is used, side effects such as window fogging can develop).

Weather, Road Testing Check System Sensitivity
Road testing and environmental wind tunnel testing results helped to perfect the HV/AC system for the new Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable, using both structural prototypes and later-generation confirmation prototypes. Environmental wind tunnel testing was carried out at Ford's Dearborn Proving Grounds. Weather's impact on the system was tested in New Orleans (hot, high
humidity); Lake Havasu, Ariz., (summer temperatures above 120 degrees and near-zero humidity); Albuquerque, N.M., and Flagstaff, Ariz., (low 30s morning temperatures, rising to 1 DO-plus degrees by midday); the Canadian province of Manitoba (extreme low temperatures, high sun load and humidity in winter); and Denver (mile-high altitude and warm conditions).
    In Texas, the sensitivity of the system's sun load sensors in cloudy conditions was tested to ensure that the system does not overreact to brief changes in sun load -- when a thick cloud blocks the summer sun for 30-60 seconds in high ambient temperatures, for example. During testing, the prototypes were instrumented with sensors, transducers and transmitters capable of tracking 100 channels of data, including instrument panel settings, elapsed time, compressor on/off performance, inlet and outlet refrigerant temperatures at the evaporator core, coolant temperatures in and out of the heater core, system line pressures, temperatures and airflows at each vent, floor duct and defroster outlet, and at various points throughout the vehicle, including the rear seat area.

1996 Ford Premium Sound package could be had with Dolby cassette and 6-disc rear-mounted CD changer.

With the introduction of the 1996 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable, Ford introduces a new line of in-car entertainment systems built around the distributed audio system (DAS) pioneered in the 1995 Lincoln Continental. With DAS, the controls for the radio are located in the vehicle's Integrated Control Panel, along with the environmental controls. But the radio chassis, the rear control unit, is in the trunk of the sedan or in the cargo area side panel of the wagon. 
    Besides offering theft-proof advantages, distributed audio allows the vehicle interior designers greater design latitude because of the small size of the control unit. It also allows body engineers to use large-diameter cross-car beams for strengthening and stiffening the body inside the instrument panel that would interfere with conventional radio designs.
    Distributed audio results in better radio performance because the radio chassis is located away from the engine and transmission electronics, which could cause electromagnetic interference. It also allows for shorter, more direct routing of antenna
cables for better signal strength. 
    As with all Ford and Mercury vehicles, there is a wide range of in-car entertainment systems available to Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable buyers. The standard Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable entertainment system is an AM/FM stereo four-speaker system with two 5-1/2 x 7-1/2-inch oval speakers mounted in the front doors, and two 5-1/2 x 7-1/2-inch oval speakers mounted in the rear package tray (or the liftgate in wagons). It is a four-channel system with six watts per channel for a total of 24 watts.
    A Ford AM/FM stereo system with full logic cassette player and six speakers is an optional Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable system. There are two, 2-inch round speakers located in the door sail area, two 5-1/2 x 7-1/2-inch oval speakers mounted in the front doors, and two 5-1/2 x 7-1/2-inch oval speakers mounted in the rear package tray (or the liftgate in wagons). It is a four-channel system with six watts per channel for a total of 24 watts.
    The optional Ford JBL system, which is packaged with the Electronic Automatic Temperature Control (EATC) air-conditioning system option, has a unique oval-shaped Integrated Control Panel faceplate and controls for both systems. It is available only on sedan versions of the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable and also is available to customers either with or without a trunk-mounted six-CD changer system. 
    The Ford JBL system places larger, 2-3/8-inch round speakers, which use neodymium rare-earth magnets, in the door sail area speaker locations. The system's door-mounted 5-1/2 x 7-1/2-inch speakers also use neodymium magnets, and the rear speakers are 5-1/2 x 7-1/2-inch oval units. 
    The Ford JBL system has an additional 6 x 9-inch subwoofer speaker mounted in the package tray between the two smaller speakers. The system uses a parametrically equalized amplifier in the rear control unit and is rated at 75 watts total system power: 4 x 15 watts for the main speakers and 15 watts for the subwoofer. A Premium Sound System option for wagons is packaged with the EATC. It is a six-speaker system using two premium 2-inch round speakers in the door sail area, one set of premium 5-1/2 x 7-1/2-inch oval speakers in the front doors, and a set of 5-1/2 x 7-1/2 oval speakers in the liftgate, for a total of 4 x 20 or 80 watts of power. It is available with or without a six-CD changer system located in the rear passenger-side panel, which is an industry first in wagon models.

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1996 Wagon: Click on above to enlarge.

1996 Wagon: Click on above to enlarge.

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