'90 Taurus 3.8. Not only the gasket disaster, but the motor mounts weren't strong enough for the engine torque. Broke three mounts, plus collateral damage of two a/c manifolds while I owned it.
A 40,000 mile car at best. Nissan and Hyundai ever since for our family.
Ah, but it's unfair to judge Ford based on a car they built 17 years ago. Hmmm, OK, let's try just 10 years ago. '97? No, most of them were still crap then (certainly the Taureses and Windstars were, anyway, although a friend's Explorer did OK). 5 years ago? No, they were still building Windstars with dodgy head gaskets. The annoying thing about Ford is that they seem absolutely incapable, or unwilling, to identify and fix design errors, instead continuing to produce the same failure-prone crap for years after they become aware of the problem. That's no way to keep customers. GM, while not as bad, is still prone to having decent designs crippled by poor quality parts specified by the bean counters. Chrysler? Let's not even go there.
My brother and I rented a Taurus in the early 90's at the airport at Ft. Lauderdale. The car broke down driving out of the rental lot. They replaced it with another Taurus which caught on fire while leaving the rental lot (no one hurt, luckily)! The third time we insisted on something other than a Taurus. Of course, as a former Escort owner you'd think my brother would have learned his lesson already.
You couldn't get me into a Ford dealership at gunpoint.