Ford Taurus 2000-2002 a good car?

[cartechguy]

My cousin wants to buy used Ford Taurus 2000 - 2002 model and asks me to find one for her. I don't have much experience with Ford (always worked on imports). Question for Ford guys: what should I look for? what are the common problems? Which engine is better? Are they more or less reliable? How is the transmission on this model? How is the ABS? Any maintenance tips?
Thanks!

[Chevy4life1985]

My company uses all Ford Taurus'. They all have the 24V DOHC V6. Let me tell you something my car is at 143xxx without a single problem besides from routine maintenace. I also got into an accident with one and totaled it. (head-on with a 2006 Toyota Tundra) I walked away with a few scratches and bruises. Meaning they are safe also. Tell you the truth im a Chevy guy but those cars are not bad at all. When my company finally closes ill be picking one up at the company auction.

[drdisque]

There's 2 engines in the Taurus and they're incredibly different

the 3.0 Pushrod vulcan motor is incredibly dependable but weak. If anything breaks, its cheap to fix. However, it comes with the AX4S transmission which is a giant piece of monkey poo and rarely makes it past 120k miles.

The 3.0 DOHC is powerful for its price and also rather reliable, however, when it breaks you almost always have to pull the motor to have anything fixed, which gets expensive. It comes with the AX4N transmission which is one of the better modern FWD automatic transmissions.