CarComplaints.com Notes: Most people need a car that shifts gears & coil springs that don't shred tires. The Taurus fails in that respect.
The 2003 Ford Taurus has major issues with the transmission failing. Typically the 2003 Taurus transmission failure costs $2,000 to fix by about 90k-100k miles. Not good.
Adding insult to injury, the 1999-2003 Taurus also has a huge problem with coil springs breaking which can puncture or even shred tires while driving.
The US government spent THREE YEARS (2008-2011) investigating the 2002-2003 Taurus coil springs. Although Taurus/Sable from earlier years were recalled, ultimately the NHTSA did not force a recall. They determined that because there had been no deaths & very few bad crashes & injuries, the broken coil springs defect was no big deal & not a safety defect. Tell that to all the owners who had close calls...
3.0
hardly worth mentioning
Crashes / Fires:
0 / 0
Injuries / Deaths:
0 / 0
Average Mileage:
46,797 miles
About These NHTSA Complaints:
This data is from the NHTSA — the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints are spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem.
So how do you find out what problems are occurring? For this NHTSA complaint data, the only way is to read through the comments below. Any duplicates or errors? It's not us.
Vehicle speed control: Linkage 2003 Ford Taurus station wagon; 3.0L DOHC a black plastic connector along the throttle cable under the hood became disconnected from a gray plastic piece. The black plastic piece became stuck against the edge of the gray piece, causing the throttle to stay wide open & undesired acceleration & some panic. It appears that this could be repaired by simply inserting 2 screws to secure the 2 plastic pieces together.
On my 2003 Ford Taurus sel the throttle body sticks causing an unusually high amount of gas pedal pressure to release it and once it releases the high pedal pressure applied causes a rapid, dangerous acceleration of the vehicle. This is the 2nd time this problem has occurred with this vehicle the first repair was done by the Ford dealer on January 15, 2005 and now it is occurring again. This appears to be a common problem with Ford vehicles and there are websites devoted to discussing this. In every occurrence the throttle body must be replaced.
Throttle sticks at the top of the pedal. The 'barrel' going from the air cleaner to the carburetor has a butterfly in it, when the butterfly returns, it gets stuck, there appears to be some kind of seal material. To throttle up sometimes means excessive pressure on the throttle, when the butterfly breaks loose, the car will lunge forward.
- Denison, TX, USA
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- Camarillo, CA, USA