DadCentric Review: The 2009 Ford Flex Limited

DISCLAIMER: The folks at the Ford Motor Company lent me a Ford Flex for a period of three days. The car was a standard model given out to reviewers and thus did not come with a nondescript aluminum briefcase stuffed with $5,000 in unmarked, non-sequential bills. The opinions - key word! OPINIONS! - here are the author's own and do not necessarily represent the views of DadCentric. Although they kind of do, since the author owns the site. Also, that picture to the left is of the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, which, face it, is the first thing you thought of when you first laid eyes on the Ford Flex.

A few weeks ago, the nice people from the Ford Motor Company dropped off a shiny new 2009 Ford Flex in my driveway. As part of a massive campaign targeting High Profile Bloggers, I would be driving the thing around, to see if it was worthy of a coveted DadCentric endorsement. 

A couple of things about me and cars: I am not a Car Person. I know very little about how they work, and terms like "oversteer" and "limited slip differential" are lost on me. I generally think sports cars are for guys who are trying to compensate for lack of hair/penile size; that said, I do own a 2006 Audi A4 2.0T Quattro (which is a "sports sedan", meaning that with some axle grease and a massive shoehorn you can barely fit two kids and their carseats in back). I prefer functionality over flash, which is why my other car is a 2002 Nissan Xterra - it hauls kids, dog, and surfboards with ease. Finally, minivans suck - they are a shining example of the fact that nearly all parenting products are created with only one half of the parenting equation - Mom - in mind. For that reason alone I refuse to buy one. (Example: the sliding doors. This is a Mom Thing. Moms think they're amazingly helpful, because it makes it easy to get the kids in the car, especially in the tight confines of packed school/mall parking lots. Dads think that the Duke boys did just fine going through the General Lee's windows and our kids should be able to do the same. The only van any self-respecting dad should want is this one.)

Which brings me to the Ford Flex. The Flex looks like a Mini Cooper that had accidentally driven into Bruce Banner's Gamma Ray Chamber, gotten zapped with the Hulkafying Gamma Rays, and then got pissed off when the people at the McDonald's drive-through forgot to supersize its McRib Value Meal. (Photo comparison: Mini. Flex. White roofs kick ass.) It's a beast of a car, with room for six people and their dog, or at least two 6 to 9 foot long surfboards (I eyeballed this - I don't think the good people at Ford would have wanted their Flex returned smelling of surf wax.) I suspected that the Flex might be the Holy Grail of Dadmobiles - a family car designed with BOTH parents in mind; functional, and not a complete embarrassment to drive. To test this hypothesis, Beth and I put the Flex through a grueling series of road tests.

GRUELING TEST NUMBER ONE: THE HIGH PERFORMANCE TRIP TO TRADER JOE'S

To see how well the Flex handled challenging road conditions, as well as acceleration/deceleration and braking, I took it on an emergency Trader Joe's run - we were out of coffee, and produce, and cheap but surprisingly good wine. To get to TJ's, I take the back road leading to Leucadia Blvd. This is a twisty, narrow street, with plenty of tight turns and the occasional pedestrian/stray dog to dodge. The Flex's all-wheel drive enabled it to handle turns with ease; I wouldn't say it was "nimble", but it certainly didn't feel as big as it looked (at least while driving). Parking, on the other hand, was a challenge. The Flex Limited comes with a back-up camera, which helps tremendously. Pulling into the always-crowded Trader Joe's lot, I felt like Sulu steering the Enterprise into Spacedock for the first time. The car is long AND wide, and parking it does take some getting used to. (I drew some disapproving stares from the usual Trader Joe's gang of upper middle class vegan hippies, who were concerned that I would scratch their Priuses.)

GRUELING TEST NUMBER TWO: THE CARGO HAUL

Of course I spent too much money at Trader Joe's. I mean, c'mon - Lemon Pepper Fettucine! Garlic Chipotle Salsa! Two Buck Chuck at $10 a case! We stuffed the cargo space (the third row seats were stowed) of the Flex with six full Environmental Friendly Reusable Trader Joe's Grocery Bags, and still had room for a Shetland pony. I'm exaggerating. But there is a lot of room in back - more, it appeared, than in my Xterra. (Numbers for interior cargo volume were not provided by Ford. I will say that there's quite a bit of storage space with the third row seats packed away; not as much when they're unfolded. Damn, I should write for Car and Driver.) 

GRUELING TEST NUMBER THREE: USING THE NAVIGATION SYSTEM TO GET TO LUCAS' PRESCHOOL

The Flex Limited comes with a navigation system. I have limited experience with those; like most dads, I refuse to ask anyone for directions when lost, opting instead for a combination of celestial navigation (admittedly difficult during the daytime), holistic driving (I look for signs AND portents), and simple logic (the airport is probably not located in that gated community). The Ford people did not provide instructions on how to actually use the nav system, but it was fairly instinctive, and I typed in the location of Lucas' preschool, which is about five miles or so from our house. The car got us there using the same route I normally take.  Lucas was pretty impressed with this, and also dug the Voice Command feature; he asked me if the car was smarter than me. Ha ha ha, so funny, that one. 

THE VERDICT

I didn't mention the bells and whistles (Microsoft Sync, the temperature controlled cooler in the second row, the panoramic sunroofs); this car has a lot of 'em, and the price tag reflects it: $43K for the tricked-out Flex Limited Edition. That might be a deciding factor, especially in this economy. And the Flex is not exactly eco-friendly; gas mileage is comparable to a mid-sized SUV (16/23 for the AWD model, per this review; Ford did not provide me with that info). It's not cheap, and while I really did enjoy the car - it's definitely a family-friendly ride - I wouldn't buy the Limited model, at least not at that price. The Flex does come in cheaper versions; the base model starts at $28,550.