It would be difficult to conceive of a vehicle better-suited to demonstrating TTAC’s diversity of automotive reviewers than the massive and massively outrageous Ford Raptor. Robert Farago would have eviscerated it with a zero-star diatribe on the inadvisability of building three-ton boutique trucks with borrowed funds. Sajeev Mehta would rhapsodize about the graphics but demonize the chunky controls. Daniel Stern might be found quivering with indignation over the shoulder-height headlights and Prius-crushing road presence. As fate would have it, however, I’m the fellow who got the Raptor to review. So I took it mudding.

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At the risk of sounding older and crankier than I feel, it can be hell trying to find a car with a unique identity anymore. As our four-wheeled friends have become more refined, they’ve also become more homogeneous. Especially when sampling mass-market sedans, the distinctions are often subtle to the point of solipsism, and a sense of automotive deja vu is almost inescapable. Which is why there’s a surprisingly warm place in my heart for hybrids: they may not be fun or even practical in the traditional senses, but they are undeniably different. Unless, of course, they aren’t.
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There ain’t nothing stock about a stock car. Nowadays, there ain’t nothing standard about a “standard” transmission. How long has it been since you’ve heard that quaint sobriquet for a clutch-and-stick setup? More than ninety percent of new cars sold in the United States are self-shifters. Our oh-so-superior friends in Europe and Japan aren’t as far behind in the trend towards PRNDL hegemony as they would have us believe. Combine the weight of marketplace preference with the increasing difficulty involved in making a stick-shift meet emissions regulations, and it becomes easy to understand why manufacturers are making automatic transmissions the only choice for everything besides specialty cars. A clutch pedal is perilously close to becoming an actual luxury item in today’s market. Does that turn this twenty-two-grand base-ish Fusion into a luxury car? Hell no.

Down on the showroom floor, the guys talk about the “Needs-Payoff:” trying to turn a customer’s perceived need into a coveted sale. This marketing concept finds its Ford translation in the highly anticipated solution, the Transit Connect. The Blue Oval Boyz see gold in them there panel vans—assuming gas prices go north of the three dollar mark as their number crunchers and street-walking doom preachers predict. Gas prices be damned; the Transit Connect screams success for many self-made citizens, provided they don’t carry more than 1600lbs or tow anything to bring home the bacon.

The Ford Flex rides like a luxury car. It possesses a decent interior, with Ford’s surprise and delight SYNC 2.0 system. The Flex is also socially unimpeachable, tracing its roots back to the wagons synonymous with East Coast gentry for nearly half a century (Ralph Lauren has one). Six months ago, I purchased a new 2009 Flex Limited AWD, complete with the amusing second-row refrigerator. So far, I have been pleased as punch. It does everything from cradling my infant son to towing my race car with perfect aplomb. Not everybody likes the way the Flex looks. And? And it’s a little slow.

Not everything needs to come with a warning label. A bag of peanuts shouldn’t have “Warning: contains nuts” on it. You know what I’m talking about here. But when I shyly asked the infamous “Agent 001” of Autospies to be my co-driver for the next day’s 2010 Taurus SHO twisty-road press preview, perhaps I should have had excerpts from my “Maximum Street Speed” editorials stapled to the functional sleeves of my Gulf-blue Kiton linen jacket. Kind of a warning label, you see. It would have saved him more than a little worry the next day . . . To say nothing of the dry heaves. But don’t worry: Ford’s latest SHOmobile isn’t nausea-inducing. Unless, that is, you are sensitive to the odor of disc brakes when their pads catch on fire.

Don’t believe the hype. The 1986 Taurus was not “the car that saved Ford.” Trucks saved Ford in the late Eighties and early Nineties, as consumer tastes moved away from the one-sedan-fits-nearly-all market in favor of the newly popular SUV. Nor can the 2010 Taurus save a Ford beset by problems on all sides. There are no longer enough potential mid-sized car buyers to make a huge impact on the company’s bottom line, and most of those buyers are really better candidates for the smaller, more affordable Fusion.

TTAC writer Samir Syed was on the lamb last night, cooked by yours truly. To honor the dead sheep’s spirit, Sam brought by a rented Ford Mustang GT. For some reason, I never got ’round to driving Ford’s latest Pony Car, what with the world’s largest bankruptcy looming on the editorial horizon and my step-daughter’s after-school activities ending for the term. Anyway, the car in which I was about to go roaming in the gloaming embodied its designers’ desire to re-infuse the ’Stang with some understated classicism—while attempting to add a bit of visual drama (swage much?). Other than a hideously overwrought rear, there’s nothing particularly wrong with the result. Not to put fine a point on it (so to speak), the new Mustang doesn’t give me wood. Still, personal fertility and automotive blue pill issues aside, there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful.

Conceived in a desperate search of EPA credits, the Ford Escape has walked in the shadows of its bigger brothers, Explorer and Expedition. Despite the Escape’s loveless upbringing, it prevailed, providing easy cream on Ford’s SUV gravy [train]. In the last fuel surge, the Escape found favor: a future president escaped his Chrysler 300C for a gas/electric version of the venerable Fordette. In the ongoing clamor for right-sized, fuel efficient vehicles, one would think the Escape’s inner virtue would shine through. Instead, Ford stifled its middle child by birthing a clusterf*ck of overweight CUVs (Edge and Flex). For 2009, the Escape, again, eats from the scraps.

Many years ago, in the pages of CAR, the inimitable LJK Setright considered this question: Presented with the last gallon of fossil fuel on earth, how would you burn it? The elaborately justified answer: he would spend it flying a “motor glider,” flying from thermal to thermal across the majestic open sky until the last drop was spent. Setright, regrettably, was not an American. Had he been, he would have understood that the proper way to burn the last gallon of fossil fuel would be to dump it into a Ford Super Duty.