My Weekend with the 2010 Ford Taurus

My weekend with the 2010 Ford Taurus began on Thursday evening – I left work early to go meet up with a guy named Dan.  Dan lives in Chillicothe, MO, warehouses cars for Ford and when a media person (or some blogger like me) needs a car, he handles delivery/pickup.   Lots of driving, but a fun job for an older, semi-retired guy like Dan.  Honestly, I was pretty disappointed initially after seeing that I’d be driving a Taurus SEL, which is the lower end of the three models (SEL, Limited, SHO).  I’d seen a couple other guys already do their Game Day Experiences and get SHOs, so that’s what I was hoping for…mostly because SHO means I’d have a 365 horsepower EcoBoost V6 engine to play with.

Once I got into the car, however, and started seeing everything this car had on it, I wasn’t so disappointed anymore – the SEL is the base model but it’s anything but a stripped-down version. Dan showed me the basic controls and left me to explore the rest of the car’s features myself, but I had to run inside and finish up some work before putting on my suit and heading for the Business Marketing Association of Kansas City’s Fountain Awards at Boulevard Brewery – a fabulous, fun place to have an event in KC.  Before setting off, I managed to get my Palm Pre and my iPod both hooked up with Sync (Ford & Microsoft’s in-car system that lets you hook up just about any MP3 player/phone and control it via voice control).  They’ve always touted it as plug & play, incredibly easy to use.  And it was – within five minutes, I was on my way and picking songs I wanted to play just by speaking the artist’s name to the car.  Very cool technology.

The Taurus at the Brewery - looks pretty darn good

The event honors the best B2B marketing in Kansas City, and ER Marketing (my company) took home eight awards, including the Best of Show award, which was pretty darn cool.

Friday morning, I drove the Taurus to work to show it off to my co-workers.  Everyone was pretty darn impressed with the Intelligent Access (no key, just a button to start/stop, car senses when you are near) and Sync.  Four of us got in and took it to one of Kansas City’s great hidden restaurant gems – the Woodswether Cafe in the West Bottoms.  It’s one of those classic truck stop-type places, with massive burgers, chicken fried steak and big slices of pie for dessert.

The Taurus Meets Woodswether Cafe

Saturday morning, I was up early and headed to Lawrence, Kansas for the KU vs. Southern Mississippi football game.  Game was at 11, so that means early-morning tailgating with eggs, biscuits & gravy, donuts and more.  KU let the game stay closer than it should, but they pulled out a 35-28 win and I was quickly headed back to the Taurus to begin the almost-300 mile journey from Lawrence to St. Louis.

I picked up my friend Corey back in KC and headed East.  I quickly fell in love with the massaging seats, which massage your thighs/butt as you drive, helping to prevent your legs from feeling tired.  I was a little disappointed, however, that they don’t massage your lower back, which is the part that ends up sore when driving a long way, at least for me.  Still wearing my KU polo shirt, we completed a fearful-for-my-life gas stop in Columbia, MO and I realized what awesome mileage I’d gotten so far.

Renaissance Hotel - Downtown St. Louis

Thanks to Ford, we were staying at the Renaissance St. Louis Downtown – a pretty sweet hotel.  It was right downtown near Washington Avenue, which is where a lot of the bars are in St. Louis, and only a few blocks from the Edward Jones Dome, where the game would be on Sunday.

We headed out to Soulard, one of St. Louis’s historic neighborhoods, for some fun with Corey’s cousin before finishing the evening off on Wash Avenue, where I ran into a client from work at around 2:00 AM.  Those kind of moments are always fun especially when your client buys you an Irish Car Bomb.

Sunday morning, we awoke to a gorgous day and headed out to see what football pre-game is like in St. Louis.  Having grown up in Wisconsin (the capital of tailgating) and living in Kansas City (a darn good tailgating town too), I know a good tailgate…and St. Louis does well, considering their lack of parking space for it.  It’s awesome that their stadium is downtown, but that sort of kills the possibility of a big parking lot, so they make do with smaller lots and plenty of parties at the bars on Washington Avenue.

We finally headed into the Edward Jones Dome – what a weird experience it is to be going inside for a football game.  It felt like we were walking into a concert or basketball game instead, especially with the lights turned down low for pregame ceremonies.

Me (on the left) and Corey at the Dome

Our tickets were up high but near the 50 yard lines, so the view was actually pretty good and let us really see the action well.  Plus, we were right in the middle of a huge section of Packers fans.  Sadly, the stadium was probably only 80% full for the Rams home opener; it’s amazing how a town that’s so crazy about the Cardinals can be so lackadaisical about it’s football team. The game turned into one of those ugly, drag-it-out battles that good teams like the Packers (I hope) have to fight through sometimes and they ended up winning handily.

I left amazed, as always, with how well Packers fans travel.  At least 15-20% of the fans were Packer fans, which is just how it was in 2007 when Green Bay came to Kansas City.  I was also amazed at the random jerseys from past Packers I saw.  Names like: Ken Ruettgers, Mark Tauscher, Gilbert Brown, Antonio Freeman, Robert Brooks, Desmond Howard and a fabulous anti-Brett Favre one.  I’m so mad I didn’t get a picture of this, but the guy was walking down Wash Ave with a #4 Packers jersey.  The 4 had an X over it in duct tape, with more tape over the name ‘Favre.’  He’d written “Trader” there instead…I’ll give you non-English majors a second to catch up.

After a miserable 60 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic, we headed back onto I-70 for the trip back across Missouri.  It’s a long trip but man, that car made it comfy.  What a fabulous long-distance cruising car – I only wish Ford would let me do another Game Day Experience the last weekend in October, when I’m going to Lubbock, Texas with my best friend and our girlfriends for KU vs. Texas Tech.  It’s about an 800 mile trip…Ford, it’d be a perfect chance for me to do further evaluation of the car.  Call me!

Check out the rest of my Game Day Experience pictures by clicking HERE.