I bought a 2001 ford taurus as a beater car until my truck(2014 gmc sierra) is fixed by insurance. it got t-boned at the beginning of july and did 8 grand worth of damage and fucked the rear differential as the other guy hit the box and rear axle. its basically undriveable, thus bought a little beater taurus.
my original plan was to drive it for a few months or however long it takes my insurance, then dump it. but the more i drive it and look at it, the more i realize its actually a little decent little car. interior is mint in it. not a single tear in the seat, dashboard doesn't even have so much as a blemish in it, all the panels are in similar condition, everything works in it. so far i only put a new belt, spark plugs, and a new windshield in it. after plugs(it had a misfire when i first got it. new plugs ficed it), it runs super smooth, and the plug were surprisingly much easier to do in it than in my truck. mind you, if a water pump or something blows, it looks like it may be a pain in the dick to get to, but everything else is just right there. pretty much a mostly super easy car to work on. the only mechanical thing it needs are sway bar links, and those are super cheap and easy to do. the steering is even still nice and tight with little-to-no play. it onlt has 140 000 kms on it. apparently of of the owner was a little old lady, then it sat for 5 years, then the lady i bought it from was a young lady, so i have some deferrred maitenence i gotta catch up on it that i'm slowly doing. the previous owner claims plugs were done a year prior, but i think they either lied about that or the "mechanic" that did it scammed them hard, because those plufs were no way in hell a year old. they lok closer to 10-15 years old. possible even the original plugs(they were motorcraft plugs), and certainly the gap was way off. i measured each one with my gap tool out of curiosity, smallest gap was .063 inch with the biggest being .072 or something like that. the gap is supposed to be .045 inches roughly. the belt had metal showing in it, and also an old-as-shit motorcraft one. that one i am sure is the original 25 year old one just by how worn it was.
So i joined a subreddit on reddit called r/fordtaurus. i posted a total of two threads. one asking about a Service bulletin fix for the transmission vent, and a second about the melted headlight socket because the previous owner shoved a cheap chinese lightbulb in there and fucked the low beam pin. No fights, not so much of an argument with anybody anywhere on the subreddit, everything i posted was well within the rules, but the mod that i never (knowingly) had any contact with banned then muted simultaneously so i couldn't even ask what rule i allegedly broke. aside from the moderator being a gigantic fag, i've noticed a lot of the people posting were either older people themselves or some younger person who got it from an old person. it seems like these taurus are a grandma or grandpa car or some teenager's first car or a hand-me-down.