 These cars are probably one of the better cars made by Ford in terms of reliability. I have had this car for 2 years now after my grandmother who owned it for about 5 years. Overall I think this car is great in terms of being an affordable low maintenance car. Over the 2 years I owned it the only things I've had to get fixed was a couple of belts and that's not bad at all. Yes I have gotten new tires, changed the oil myself, put fuel treatment in monthly, and checked the transmission fluid monthly as well. I am no mechanic at all, but my brother is and if there's one thing I learned from him is that if you take care of things they will last. Now is it one of the best cars ever? No, the ford taurus to me is a car for college kids and people who are on a tight budget. Since I got this car I have yet to have the check engine light come on and it has never broken down on the side of the road, and for that I give this car a lot of credit for it's reliability.  There were only two cons I have found with this car and they are both either minor or very much avoidable. Note that the car was given to me with 130,000 miles on it. This past spring I noticed that the car actually got a total of three holes in the floor paneling of the car. For all I know I had driven the entire winter with those holes present. I did have a neighbor help me out and patch the holes and while doing so we found that one hole had caused a lot of rust to build up on the frame. It was a good amount of rust but the strength of the frame is still present. She passed her recent inspection and my mechanic noted that this will probably be the last year before it becomes unsafe which is a shame for a car that is so reliable and has never really had any issues. This is easily avoidable just by simply applying undercoat spray under the car every year before winter, after finding out about the holes I did research and found out that the undersides of these cars tend to rust out if not undercoated enough. The only other thing I got annoyed with on this car was the radio. I have subwoofers and the radio is actually located in the trunk of the car which mean that I had to route the entire wire harness for the radio all through the car. That's a lot of wires to hide just saying. Other than the issue with the rust underneath, I would highly recommend this car to anybody who's trying to find a good reliable budget car.