Now for another episode of Hoarders: Buried Behind the Wheel!

Hobo Hooptie

Well here we have an otherwise unremarkable 1st generation Ford Taurus. Not to diminish the fact that this car single-handedly saved the Ford Motor Company from bankruptcy in the '80s, or to discredit the fact that this design ushered in a new era of aerodynamic automobiles that instantly made the other cars on the road look out of date, it's just that this particular Taurus looks to have saved someone from the indignity of sleeping on a park bench.

In my imagination the people living behind that chain-link fence hung those blue tarps so they wouldn't have to look at this frumpy beater. It is sporting a matching set of original Taurus alloy rims though!

Besides the horror within, this car did save Ford from probable bankruptcy. When images of the car were leaked before it's release the executives at Chrysler laughed it off as too futuristic and assumed it would be the second coming of the Edsel. The joke was on them as the Taurus went on to be named Motor Trend Car of the Year in 1986, selling 200,000 of them in that debut year. Momentum continued at a fevered pace with 2 million Tauruses produced by the end of 1991. They were also chosen as the official Police car in the movie Robocop! 

This particular Taurus is in retrograde though, with bills, coffee cups, nail scissors & a ladies razor all resting on the destroyed dash.

Just piles of bags and tarps filling it up. 

I know it's a little voyeuristic and condescending of me to post pictures like this, but the thing is parked on the street near my house, and its got a coffee cup on the back deck! How and why do you ever get to the point where there's a coffee cup all the way back here in the designated sunglasses area?

Taurus reamins faithful and loyal through all of this abuse and seems all too happy to serve its master. Again; big shout-out to those mechanics big-hearted enough to throw fresh inspection stickers on these rides, as someone overly scrutinizing this car would probably come up with a list of needed repairs beyond the financial abilities of the owner. I wrote that last sentence without sarcasm; this car might be all this person's got, no matter how much I poke fun at their coffee cup collection!