March 22, 2011
AS CLOSE AS YOU CAN GET TO A COUNTRY SQUIRE:
Ford Flex Limited (Jay Leno, 1/04/09, Times of London)
At first the Ford Flex made me laugh. It looks like the designers thought, “Hey, the Mini Clubman’s a pretty cool-looking car so we’re going to build our own version” — except it’s twice as big. Sort of like a Maxi Clubman.It makes a lot of sense, and in many ways the Flex is the 21st-century answer to that all-American staple, the station wagon. When I was a kid the most popular car in America was the Ford Country Squire. It had the wood on the side and a rear-facing seat so the kids could sit in the back and be scared to death by cars and trucks that would barrel down on the back of the car at 60mph.
Then the station wagon became uncool. It was replaced by the MPV in the 1980s, before that became uncool too. So you couldn’t have a mini-van and you couldn’t have a station wagon, which is why Ford has said, “Hey, let’s get something that’s a little bit of both.” And that’s what the Ford Flex is.
It seats seven people and features some very clever engineering and very clever design. The way the seats fold down individually, it’s almost like one of those Transformers — you can make it into whatever you want it to be.
You can even sync a $15 (at K-Mart) Tracfone to the Bluetooth hands-free phone system.
Posted by oj at March 22, 2011 5:31 AM
Tweet