Had to take a trip this weekend to attend Grandma’s funeral, my immediate family now consists of 8 adults, including my brother in law and my wife, so the logical thing to do was rent 2 full size cars. My dad and myself swapped cars over the weekend and spent some time behind the wheel of both cars so here are my brief impressions..
I think the 2 models we had may have been 2011 models, as some of the options and features appear to look a little different on each manufacturers websites now. Here is the current MSRP pricing for similarly spec’d models to what we had rented.
2012 BUICK REGAL TURBO PREMIUM I GROUP FWD +SUNROOF $32,145 2012 FORD TAURUS LIMITED FWD 302A PKG $36,050
2011? Ford Taurus, 4.5k miles – This is a big, comfortable car. The trunk is huge, I would not hesitate to say it rivals a Crown Vic. Its not as deep, but it is longer, and the seats do fold down too (we didn’t fold them down though…4 passengers) The seats were leather and super comfortable. The car rode nice and smooth in all conditions, and quite frankly, handles its weight well. I never felt that the car felt too big or too heavy (more on that later). I thought it looked great in its metallic gray and color matched front grill, and LED taillights. The 3.5L V6 (I think) moves it along nicely, and does sound pretty good too.
The 302A package listed above was the only way to add the touchscreen system to the car, which is what we had, but we did not have push button start and I don’t know about the other options listed in 302A. This was our first extended play time with Ford’s new touchscreen system (we decided NOT to get it on our 2012 Focus last year). It takes some getting used to. At first I found it very distracting, you have to look over to see what button you are pushing, if the system doesn’t recognize your touch, you get to do it again. It’s a busy interface to deal with while driving. This is exactly why we opted for some real buttons in our Focus. My mom, riding as a passenger, did like it and quickly found a station she liked on satellite radio.
2011? Buick Regal Turbo, 30k miles – It’s a smaller car than the Taurus. I would say it has a firmer, sportier ride than the Taurus, it rode noticeably harsher in all conditions. The interior, in pretty much all aspects, seemed cheaper and less comfortable than the Taurus. As far as I could tell, it only had a 5 speed transmission, 2012 apparently has a 6 speed. The turbo engine gets up and goes pretty well, you can hear the turbo spool up when you stomp on it. We did know a remote, straight road where I was able to get a rolling start in 2nd gear and run it up to 100 with the pedal stuffed into the carpet. The car seemed quicker than the Taurus, it’s probably lighter (I think). My dad said he got the Taurus up to 80 on that road but I didn’t get to drive that one myself in those conditions. I am pretty sure the Regal is quicker though.
My dad is a slow/cautious driver and when he was in the Regal, he was always pulling away from me in the Taurus when taking off from a stop. Any time I did force downshifts in the Taurus, like when merging, that’s when you felt the weight of the car, it took a second for the engine to wind up and move the car. It wasn’t slow but it wasn’t fast either. Also, I put it in 2nd punched it from a low speed once, definitely some torque steer.
It should be noted……without the 302A package, the Taurus Limited was priced about the same as the Regal. Both cars had dual zone climate control. I can’t remember, I think both had heated seats.
Overall, as a comfortable family car, Hands down everyone in my family preferred the Taurus, even me. The Regal was smaller, sportier, and faster, but the interior felt cheaper.
