That mix of modern with a nod to the classic applies to the Ford Flex as well. True, the Flex is a brand-new model, with detailing and equipment that are thoroughly up-to-date. Yet there is a classic quality to the car's proportions, which steer clear of the pseudo-ruggedness of SUVs and the banal practicality of mini-vans. Instead, the Flex echoes the classic, upright design of wood-bodied wagons, picking up their thread some sixty years later.
If the Ford Explorer launched the SUV as America's family car back in 1990, the Flex is the SUV rationalized. It uses a car platform (the Taurus's) rather than a pickup base; it's not jacked up to straddle boulders it will never encounter; there are no push bars, no rear-mounted spare tire, no off-road tires for the African safari it will never take. It's as if the SUV, now entering adulthood, is finally ready to shed its macho pretensions.
Fatherhood does the same thing for guys. Just ask Automobile Magazine's design director, the tattooed, Harley-riding Nathan Schroeder, who had his squirming two-year-old son, Levi, on his lap at the Doubleday Cafe. Schroeder managed to entertain his son during the wait for our dinner, kept him from stabbing himself or anyone else with his silverware, and even got him to eat a few chicken nuggets.
Levi was a little antsy, but anyone would be at the end of our long day. The 500-plus-mile drive from Detroit was exacerbated by an hour wait to cross the border from Ontario into New York. When we finally got to the booth, the young customs guy dismissed the Flex as "too Scion xB-ish" (and he didn't even see the interior's multicolor lighting, which can be changed from red, to yellow, to blue, to green, to purple). ...next page >>