The Taurus certainly was a popular and influential car, but I'll only give it credit for saving Ford from bankruptcy, and helping them to convince our government to change the headlight regulations. I agree with Leonidae; it's not a good car. Ford just managed to copy foreign manufacturers well enough for the Taurus to stand head and shoulders above everything else coming out of Detroit at the time.
Ford really moved the everyman's car interior game up by about ten years with the Taurus. They took a few things from the European brands, like the center console tilted towards the driver. But you need to realize two things here: one, this was the first EVER non-European car with that feature, and two, European cars were nowhere NEAR as pervasive in 1986 as they are now. You can say Ford stole that from BMW, but the reality is that it wasn't like a major manufacturer stealing something that was clearly going to be in most cars in the next few years; it was a major manufacturer stealing from what was essentially viewed as an upstart. I mean, here's a time when BMW sells a FEW cars, Mercedes sells a ton, Audi practically doesn't exist, Japan has yet to sell a single luxury car, and Volvo and Saab make mainstream cars. It's not like now. If Ford stole BMW's ridiculously idiotic "inoperable turn signal" that makes decisions of its own, people would call them on it. Back then, it was more like them adapting something being used on cars for an extremely small segment of the population to be used on mainstream cars -- sort of like everyone stealing paddle shifters from Ferrari. It's easy to judge them now, since BMW is a runaway success and they had that design feature first, but it wasn't like that back then. Historical perspective is really important here.
There's other stuff though. Putting small indentations on controls so you could feel what they were without diverting your eyes from the road was seriously -- as unbelievable as it sounds -- major innovation in 1986. For some functions, Ford was the first to have done this. Front buckets coupled with a full center console was unbelievably a FIRST for American midsize sedans at the time.
If you want to see how it was truly innovative, though, check out the exterior -- not relative to today's cars, but relative to its competition. The second-generation Camry came out the same year as the original Taurus. Compare their styles. The Camry is so clearly the old-as-dirt three-box boring as hell sedan that marked the 1970s and 1980s. The Taurus really represented a new design direction, which Toyota only started to get with the next Camry. The Accord -- which, incredibly, ALSO debuted in 1986 -- is even worse, though its next model ('90) is much improved. The Taurus marked the first time the grille was really thought of as a stylistic element. That tradition is really continued today. The whole "style in midsize" tradition is continued today.
I think the reality is that if we want to say that anyone who says the car was nothing special has an angle. Either someone ignorant (previous posters) or a Euro car nut who's not going to concede much to a car that, admittedly, did steal some thing from the Europeans. You've got to realize it's bigger than that though -- it was the catalyst that moved the midsize sedan segment into the 90s and ultimately even the 2000s. We didn't get a similarly important midsize sedan until the '02 Altima, and while that car was significant for similar reasons, even it didn't reach the significance of the 86 Taurus. No car will.
The only car that I can think that's likely as significant as the 86 Taurus is the 91 Explorer (though still not nearly as significant), though we can have that discussion at a later time.
Your posting history indicates you don't know much about cars. If I were you, I'd look up the impact that the 1986 Ford Taurus had on the auto industry before hurling insults like an 11-year-old boy. I'll accept your apology publically or privately.
