The front driver space sucks and the steering wheel doesn’t have telescoping abilities.

Buying a Flex is like buying a poor man’s Range Rover.

The Edge is cooler, but its too damned small.

Sliding doors aren’t the real problem here. The real problem is that driving a Flex must be the automotive equivalent to arriving at work dressed as Ronald McDonald.

Can you imagine having this rolling clown suit parked in front of your house for the next few years?

A few years ago there were rumors of a joint Ford/Mazda minivan project to replace the MPV/Freestar/Monterey. That got shelved, and Mazda took their CD3 platform minivan project and turned it into the CX-9, which hit the market 1 1/2 years ago.

The latest Consumer Reports arrived yesterday. They liked the Flex, ranking it above most other CUV’s, but they liked the Taurus X, too and the 2 point difference isn’t much. The Flex got 17mpg on their test route, the Taurus X 16mpg, but the taller and lighter Honda Pilot w/VCM got 18mpg. (So much for those breakthrough aerodynamics.) Scores:

Toyota Highlander: 81/100
Ford Flex: 77
Mazda CX-9: 76
GM Lambda triplets: 75
Ford Taurus X: 75
Honda Pilot: 74

The funny part is that here in northern New England, I see a few Freestar/Taurus X models on the road, and have never seen one Flex sans dealer plates.

I’ve always suspected that Ford’s management meetings are similar to discussions with the members of Spinal Tap.

Ford had/has a perfectly capable, feature laden, NEW, and attractive station wagon with the Taurus X. WHY DESIGN ANOTHER ONE? Why burn through all of that cash…when you don’t have it? Ford didn’t give the Taurus X a chance.

I truly think there is a bunch of baboons running FMC. How anyone could justify spending that much money on designing a vehicle they already sell s beyond me…and then, all they can come up with is the “must have been designed with a T-square” Flex. Are you kidding me?

I hope beyond hope that the Flex bombs just like the Taurus X. Maybe then Ford will realize how stupid they were burning all of that cash on it’s development.

As for the name…yes it is horrible. There is nothing “flexible” about the Flex. Ford’s so called “minivan replacement” has the cargo room of an Explorer…not a minivan. Why would anyone reasonable buyer that is looking for a family vehicle settle for the Flex and it’s 83 cubic feet of cargo space when they can get a real minivan that has 140 cubic feet of cargo space?

The Flex should have never made it past the concept stage…because Ford already had a seven seat station wagon.

The Flex is [proving to be yet another D3 failure from Ford. Why Ford is in bed with the D3 I’ll never know. It is a platform that spawns failures.

If they wanted to vehicle to be ‘flexible’ then they needed the sliding doors. You just can’t put as large an object in a standard door opening. The baggage room is not ‘there’. And the price is too high and the mileage is too low. The styling is very controversial. Basically I think ford has their new ‘edsel’. A good vehicle but designed for the wrong century.

Flex/Fairlane would have been a solid success as the direct replacement to the Windstar.

haha, what a great name choice.

It has the retro look, why not the name. There are still people who grew up with those name of Fairlane… there is some brand equity there.

Oh, that would mean it’s a station wagon and not a CUV/SUV?

They are really trying hard to get SUV buyers. Yet as was pointed out, SUV buyers can’t trade in since their cars are worth crap now…

Note, people are wondering about the overlap of models. The Taurus X just doesn’t have towing capacity rating as the Flex [er, *cough* Fairlane] does.

Oh and the Taurus X doesn’t have arm rests for the second row… Just who the hell is getting paid for these ideas?

There are dealers selling them for $21,989 with a ($4000 trade in for any post 1995 car). If they sold all those base models at that price, well they might move a lot more metal.

You have to design the frame to accomodate the tracks, and since you want a bigger opening, use more material to strengthen the frame. You also have to design it so that the seals, tracks, and runners last the life of the vehicle.

Too many GM products had problems with dirt getting into the tracks on the sliding doors and making them impossible to open and close. No amount of cleaning or lube would fix the problem. Customers don’t like cars with doors that can’t open.

The hinge system of a regular door has been around for a hundred years and is simple. There is no engineering that has to go into it.

One other thing. Unless Ford was going to recycle old parts from their last craptastic minivans for the sliding doors, any new part costs ~$1,000,000. That isn’t just the door, that’s any new part in the door.

I can see why ditching dual power sliders freed up enough money to upgrade the interior.

The funny thing is that not all sliding doors are made equal. Some sliding doors have windows that can roll down… some don’t. Dual power sliding doors have many varying mechanisms to facilitate that option; obviously some cost more than others. And with all this focus on safety, you know that door has to be one robust piece of kit so there are zero incidents of that door flying open in rollover accidents.

Personally, I think your $30M figure understates the cost. But it’s obvious that most customers really don’t care. So maybe there’s an ancillary benefit for the shrinking of the minivan segment?

Oh, and I hate the names. “Flex” and “Edge” sound like exercise machines being sold through infomercials, or the stage names of washed up guitar players. But as names for a family vehicle? Not.

“Ok hon, I will back take the Edge to go pick up the kids from practice.”

“Sure dear, let’s get a Flex, it will be great for the weekly Costco trip and our antiquing adventures.”

Doesn’t sound right, does it?

If they’d expected this to be their next big seller, the tooling costs on the sliding doors would have made sense. What I’m guessing happened is that midway through the development, they saw the SUV market take a nosedive, and decided that if this was destined to be a niche product, it makes more sense to pimp it out with a nice interior for far cheaper than the sliding doors would have cost.

You won’t convince the armchair pundit unless you whip out a internal memo showing the cost build-up. Same thing goes for the expected millions you have to spend to develop the door and the extra costs incurred with reinforcing the unibody to have the requisite crash ratings in spite of a big hole in the side of the car.

Also, don’t forget that sliding doors in general have a higher material cost and warranty to execute on a variable basis. Opting for regular doors means you have bucket loads of money to spend on other things, but you’ll never be able to convince them of the indirect consequences. For most people, a door is just a door.

But in the end, the problem for the automaker is that it needs to have the right answer planned out years in advance. If they cannot figure out a way to deliver what the customer wants – it’s just a big case of “coulda-shoulda.” In the case of the Flex, they went so far into the mindset of up-contenting that they delivered a car few could afford even if they felt compelled to purchase it. I think the Japanese are much more in tune with the slow progress and steady commitments necessary to develop their products. They don’t overcompensate or strive for home runs. Instead, they focus on saving a few bucks in all venues to build their vehicle programs.

That is what sliding doors have to do with extra-cost DVD players.

50merc,
Again, it’s not Research & Development, it’s Facilities and Tooling. If the plant where the Flex is built was not set up to accommodate sliding doors, then that would need to be changed. That costs money. Sometimes lots of money. That’s not something that can be mitigated by experience or good engineering . . . unless you planned for that flexibility the last time you changed the plant, you’re stuck spending the money.

Farley mentioned on the July or August sales call that Flex was enjoying Ford’s highest customer satisfaction at launch ever (even higher than the Edge that rolled on to become the best selling midsize CUV last year). This month, Farley talked about conquest rates in this market and noted that Flex had the highest conquest among Ford vehicles – and while I’m sure that could mean anywhere from 30-50%, what was more significant is the skew in the profile of customers trading in: luxury owners, particularly import luxury owners.

Why? Ford’s original demographic was the SUV owner who was trading down to something more fuel-efficent; from the Expedition/Tahoe or Explorer/4Runner to the Flex. The pricing in the Flex was set up to raise the price point for Fords to Honda/Toyota levels at equal equipment but still fall below that of, say, an Expedition. So, why is it skewing differently? The inability to trade-in your SUV without taking a bath in depreciated, unwanted, junk-status SUV-ness. No one *can* trade-in their SUVs! So, who does that leave shopping at that price point? Some CUV drivers, a few minivan drivers, and luxury nameplate owners.

Now, let’s look at the two complaints levied at the Flex: is gas mileage the problem? Yes and no. Yes in that a huge number of people just aren’t shopping the segment because they don’t see at least city mileage around 20. The retail mid-size/large CUV market was down around 40% last month. Ford may have moved 3,000-3,500 units in September if the markets were trending like they were last year. But, the answer is no, in that it is competitive with anything in its vague class (let’s say seating, size and non-hybrid – it’s even better than the less powerful, smaller Pilot) and gets much better gas mileage than BOF truck-based utility vehicles.

Is it price? Again, yes and no. No, because if you price a Flex with similar content to an Odyssey or Sienna or Highlander or GM Lambda, you’ll find that the Flex is equivalently priced for size/features, etc. But, it’s also yes, because the actual transaction price (due to lower discounts than what you’ll find on SUVs) is higher than what Ford has charged for comparably equipped/sized vehicles recently, and with the market as it is, people are more sensitive to price than style. It’s true that the SUV crowd is used to paying more so could probably understand the price, but they can’t trade-in their SUV to save their life. Someone moving up from, say, a Freestyle, probably saw a sticker of $32000 and paid $24000. But the Flex prices higher (and it is, in fact, far superior to the Taurus X) and still has low discounts, comparably. So, that leaves basically luxury buyers. But most luxury buyers are people with good credit, some sense of financial responsibility. And few in that group are going to be swinging for a big ticket item unless they need to.

It’s been sort of the perfect storm. I’m sure I could oversimplify the debate and focus on what Ford might have done (because obviously if the Flex is only seeing a 30k/year sales rate, it has to be Ford’s fault and not the market at all). But in reality, Ford’s target audience is stuck because of low residuals and the industry as a whole is in the crapper. I suppose that means Ford failed. Not that the Flex is a bad vehicle. Frankly, if you like its exterior, the Flex is probably the best vehicle in its class and certainly the best that has come from the Blue Oval in a very long time. But failed in that they set our expectations within the context of different market conditions and launched a product that, while stellar, is not what people can buy right now either by choice or by financial restrictions. And as a result, instead of focusing on what Ford got *right* – and they got a lot right – we’re asking what Ford may have got wrong.

If you believe the research, a feature like sliding doors would have been a hard sell. If they didn’t hurt Flex sales, they likely would not have budged them much. The cost of engineering the platform for sliders was in the tens of millions because of the safety ratings Ford was shooting for. The variable costs of manufacturing to support a feature that likely would have appeared on maybe 10-20% of vehicles was not insignificant either. At the end of the day, I don’t think Ford made the wrong decision. If they went that way and traded off some of the interior refinement, they would have been skewered even more deeply by the editors and perusers of this board.

I think Ford’s biggest mistake was talking up the Flex too much, placing our expectations where they could never match the reality of what the industry now faces. As to whether or not the Flex can succeed in the long-run, that depends on both what the industry and Ford do next.

The downside was the disparity between the second and third row. The bucket seat second row was comfortable while the third sucked. Kids wouldn’t shut up. Not to mention with the third row up, 6 people and bags meant putting next to nothing in the bags. There was very little room behind the third row.

I guess the majority of people do not bother getting a trailer or external hitch mounted trunk baggage holder.

“As John McEnroe used to say, YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS. Do you have any idea how many millions of dollars Ford put into naming the Flex? “

It doesn’t matter. Flex is a bad name, Fairlane is a good name. Flex doesn’t mean a thing, where Fairlane has connotations of heritage and history. Don’t forget that “Fairlane” also was the name of the Fords family estate. A rose by any other name? It doesn’t matter how many millions are buried in the branding and naming circus, if the name they finally chose are as dead as a dodo. Ford should have learnt that lessons with the Edsel disaster.

How could he own the copyright? It’s a car.

The comedian’s a car?”

RF, if you ever get tired of the auto biz, Hollywood is in desperate need of sitcom script doctors. ROTFL…

(OK, now I’ve recovered) I don’t buy the connection between dropping the sliding doors idea and “suddenly there was money in the product program freed up magically.” R&D means Research and Development. Jeez, how much R&D is needed for sliding doors, which Detroit has been doing for decades? Incremental production costs can’t be all that much either.

The thing is, when people first saw the Flex they also saw $40K Monroney stickers. Ford forgot what an instant smash hit the Mustang was. When it came out the ads made a big deal of the low price (about $2,300 IIRC–menno would know) on this stylish coupe. With the Flex, Ford repeated their pricing mistake with the revived Thunderbird, which wasn’t hobbled by a no-heritage name.

Maybe the Flex should have been a Lincoln, with a name like “Capri” or “Premiere.” No cryptographic letters, please.