What's in a name? Well, if you're Ford it could be a lot.

After the company announced that last year's Five Hundred would be this year's Taurus, a name hearkening back to what they undoubtedly thought were better days of the 1980's and 1990's, I had to chuckle.

"Yeah, that'll fool 'em!" I never drove a Five Hundred, but I thought it was a nice-looking vehicle. I drove a Taurus once, a rental, many years ago and thought it made an okay rental. But it was Ford's bread and butter for a number of years and, since everything else seems to be going retro these days (checked out that great-looking current Mustang lately?), why not come up with a retro name?

If it had been me, I'd have kept the Five Hundred connection and gone back to real glory days -- calling it the Galaxie or Fairlane, with 500 indicating the upper trim levels. But nobody asked me.

So it's the Taurus, a well-loaded Limited All Wheel Drive version of which I got to drive around the freeways and backroads of southern Ontario for a week. And I liked it very much, except for the ultra soft suspension to which North American carmakers seem addicted.

Ford says there have been more than 500 changes made to the Taurus (not including the name, I guess), to make it "more distinctive, quieter, faster and safer." Highlights include "new exterior styling, a new powertrain, a new all-wheel-drive system, more standard safety features and structural upgrades to further enhance crash protection."

That new exterior styling seems to these eyes mostly limited to a new razor-like grille such as you find on Ford's Fusion (it's nicer than the Five Hundred's grille, too) and new taillights that also seem quite Fusion-like.

Taurus is moved on down the road by Ford's 3.5-liter Duratec V6 that cranks out a competitive 263 horsepower (up nearly a third from the previous engine, the company says) and 245 pound-feet of torque. This isn't as much as you can get from an increasing number of V6's these days, but it works fine. Power is smooth and more than adequate, whether you're tooling through the boonies or speeding up for an on ramp.

The engine gets its power to either the front or all four wheels through a smooth shifting, 6-speed automatic transmission that's shared with the Ford Edge. It's a nice tranny; it didn't have a pretend manual setting, but this isn't a sporty car and I didn't miss it.

To sweeten the deal, the company says the 2008 Taurus delivers "nearly a 10-percent fuel economy improvement (compared to) the outgoing Five Hundred and an increase of approximately 2 mpg on the highway."

The car handles well for something as large as a container ship (my tester's all wheel drive and AdvanceTrac electronic stability control system undoubtedly didn't hurt), as I discovered on a particularly juicy piece of twisty secondary road through the Rideau Lakes. The speed limit on Ontario highways is normally a measly 50 mph, but here the road was so tight and twitchy it was a putterin' along-like 30 mph that cried out for a Porsche or such vehicle. It was a very entertaining drive and the Taurus acquitted itself much better than I had anticipated.

But, jeez, that soft springing's enough to put you to sleep. This is obviously more of a cruiser than an apex carver, and it doesn't pretend to be anything else. That's fine.

Other than the yawn-inducing ride, I couldn't find anything that really bothered me beyond the usual niggling nits that come from me not having built the car myself....

One of the first things I noticed upon getting into the Taurus was its well thought out interior, from outside mirror controls mounted helpfully on the A pillar (the same way Porsche does it), well-placed buttons and switches, instruments and gadgets and very comfortable seats.

The attractive and uncluttered dashboard includes a pair of big, round gauges (the speedo and odo meters) with the car's digital display between them and fuel and temperate gauges above. A classy-looking analog clock sits atop the center stack, below a pop up storage compartment and above the audio system and LCD screen. Below that are the dual zone, automatic HVAC controls, seat heater buttons, etc.

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