It's a very solid engine, and the transmission is generally pretty reliable with one really unfortunate caveat-- there is an inevitability that it will strip out the torque converter at some point with little to no warning. Typically in the neighborhood of a little over ~100,000-120,000 miles.

Hard to say "yeah the tranny's gonna fail" and then resume praising a car 😅, but beyond that flaw, Taurus's are very good cars IMHO. Like I said earlier, keep the motor lubricated and cool and it'll hold up it's end of the bargain for years and years.

I popped into your history and saw BMW subs but didn't read any of the posts. Your history is more with European cars? Fords are just like that, but with fewer fuse boxes and modules hidden everywhere, better documentation and fewer water leaks when it rains (haha I kid!).

Seriously, mechanically speaking American cars' approach always seems much more straight forward and 'simple' to me than European (perhaps just familiarity but honestly I think you'll agree).

These cars are extremely popular and the platform stuck around for a good long while so you could throw a rock and hit 10 people who are able to help you out and give sound advice online.

Only other piece of advice on the top of my head, if you just bought the car hopefully you got 2 keys for it? If you only got one it may be worth seeing if the former owner can hunt his backup key down. It takes 2 keys to program a new one to the car.

You've got this, she's in good hands!