If you’re not the kind to necessarily tune in to auto racing, let me start by explaining that Le Mans is nothing like the cookie-cutter sameness of NASCAR, the Indy 500, or F1. I totally get that to an outsider, all those cars look the same, drive the same, and the races tend to be uneventful multi-hour speeches from the announcers about how epic it would be if X would happen, yet X never happens. Not to fear, because endurance racing and Le Mans in particular are nothing like that.

The FIA World Endurance Championship series, of which the Le Mans race is the crown jewel, is a fantastic race series made of up several different classes of cars. Long story short, this means you’ll see a Corvette battling a Ferrari battling a space-age “prototype” car bred for racing. What these mixed classes mean is that not all the cars are moving at the same pace, yet they are all on the same track at the same time. This pace discrepancy inevitably leads to the ultra-fast prototypes having to work their way through the slower field, and the everyday cars having to race in their class while also dodging faster cars. This traffic-factor makes for some incredible moves and racing in general.

Even when zoomed into a single class, the racing the last few years has been incredibly close and exciting. Check out this crazy finish from a very similar 24 hour race from last month at the Nurburgring. Those last 20 minutes were epic racing and full of drama. Or how about one of the all-time great battles a few year ago at Sebring. These clips are classic endurance car racing, and Le Mans is the big daddy of them all.

Now that I’ve got you amped up, I have to bring you back down with the realization that watching an European 24hr auto race is no easy feat in every country. If you’re in an racing junky country like the UK or Germany, it should be a breeze to catch the action. If, like us, you are in the United States of Freedom, watching Le Mans is an exercise in internet sleuthing and patching together different streams of online feeds.FOX Sports Go will be streaming the race if you qualify to view it in your area, and there’s always a smattering of online streams you can find the day of. One of the best ways is also the most old school. Radio Le Mans consistently has the best commentary on endurance racing, and streaming them on your phone allows you to continue with your normal Saturday and Sunday while staying up to date on the race.

However you do it, make sure you tune in to this race. Ford is back after 50 years to eat Ferrari’s lunch. Porsche is defending last year’s title against an always-hungry Audi. And you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen night racing on a 200mph track…

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And by classic, I of course mean thoroughly tuned, tweaked, and stanced to become something wholly new. In person, the first thing you notice about the all-wheel drive “Hoonicorn” ‘stang is just how damn low it is. You never see classic American muscle scraping like that. Next you notice the double-wide body kit and almost comical intake. If you’re lucky enough to see it in person, or most likely just watching the video below, all that means nothing as soon as you hear this mythical beast. Like hell has opened up, and it is coming for you.

We know what to expect from these videos, and god do we love them for that. They are fun, educational (physics!), and thoroughly shaming to all of us who think we are driving gods. I’m not entirely sure why you are still reading this and haven’t clicked through to watch the video… Well, what are you waiting for?

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I know what you’re thinking. It’s a boring front-wheel drive jellybean from (and for) middle-America. It looks like every other boring, front-wheel drive sedan. It hardly stands out. It could just as easily wear a Chevy badge, or the Chrysler Pentastar. Or even a badge from Japan.

However, that sentiment ignores that the Taurus got there first.  It dared to stand apart from the 80’s crowd of anonymous boxes. It had curves.  It had no traditional grille – it fed air into the engine bay primarily from the bottom of the front bumper. The front and rear bumpers stuck close to the body – rather than posing as chrome beams hung from either end of the car. The headlights were flush with the body, and even the interior took a radical step towards modern ergonomic standards. Rather than scattering controls across the dashboard, everything was placed in a way that would be quickly reachable to the driver – and easily identifiable.

Look at the Taurus’ domestic competition at its launch in 1985. Over in the Chrysler stable you had the K-car derived Dodge 600. Its sole nod to modernity was front-wheel drive. It was still a box on the outside – four square headlights in their boxy little holes flanking a rectilinear grille that was more mechanical tradition than actual function. It wasn’t until the release of the Intrepid  in 1993 that Chrysler finally started buying what Ford designs were selling to consumers by the truckload.

General Motors was not much better. In the midsize category you had the A-body cars such as the Chevrolet Celebrity and Pontiac 6000. They also dared to be front-wheel drive. That’s the only thing you could call daring in the GM designs. My grandmother had a Celebrity wagon. I distinctly remember knowing it was a bit sad even before I could count to ten on all my fingers.

Even the Japanese – who would come to be known for brutally aerodynamic anon-O-boxes in the 90’s – were peddling boxes. They were just better built ones. A 1980’s Camry or Accord is a study in straight lines and crisp angles. They look starched.

Needless to say, when the Taurus came along, feathers were ruffled. Consumers seemed to see what Ford was getting at, though. They bought them in droves. It was this very success that sealed the Taurus’ long slide into anonymity though. Even on their heels, the competition weren’t going to let Ford run away with the Taurus like they had with the original Mustang. Within five years the boxes were gone, and aerodynamic jellybeans were in. GM unleashed the Lumina, and Chrysler was working on the cab-forward wedge that was to become the Intrepid. By 1989, Honda had sanded the edges off the Accord, and Toyota was giving the Camry a Taurus-like form-fitting skin.

Within a decade, the Taurus was just another jellybean in the mid-size sedan candy jar. Ford would wait until 1996 for another dramatic Taurus, but lightning was not to strike twice, and Ford has so far shied away from the sort of daring Taurus design that distinguished the original. Perhaps they were too busy looking into their crystal ball and coming up with the Explorer. That’s a story for another time.

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