Ford Bares Flex Crossovers Particulars
The Flex is the first crossover vehicle to provide seats for up to seven persons. The full-size crossover SUV will be part of Fords formidable lineup in the summer of 2008 when the Flex will begin appearing in showrooms across the United States. Mark Fields, Fords president of The Americas, has this to say during the unveiling of the vehicle at the New York Auto Show: ‘The new Ford Flex crossover is a game-changer. Its the first vehicle of its kind that combines seating for seven, interior spaciousness and surprising features with a striking design that looks great on the road and at home for todays modern American families. The Flex builds on Fords leadership in crossover vehicles, which is the fastest-growing part of the auto market today.’ A crossover vehicle is essentially a large vehicle built around a platform of a small car. The advent of crossover is mainly due to the increased prices of gasoline. The public, fearing further increase of gas prices, have turned their backs on gas guzzling SUVs. While there are car buyers content with small cars, there are a huge number of motorists who wants the versatility of large vehicles like SUVs on their vehicles. To address that demand, car manufacturers started developing vehicles with the versatility of a large car and the fuel economy of a small car. Last year, the crossover market outperformed the SUV market for the first time which shows a strong inclination of car buyers towards crossover vehicles. This has lead car manufacturers to increase their lineup of crossover vehicles just like what Ford has done with the Ford Flex. The Ford Flex is characterized by a bold styling which is, of course, common on most large vehicles from Ford. Amenities include an interior refrigerator, second row footrests, an in-car communications and an entertainment system called the Ford Sync™. The entertainment system features a 2,300-song personal juke box. Lighting inside the vehicle can be programmed to suit the needs or desire of the passengers. The Flex provides adequate space with its seven seats. Ford has not only taken care of the exterior and interior styling of the Flex but also integrated safety features both active and passive. Consumers have an option of a rear back-up camera which aids drivers when backing down. This feature comes in handy when parking in a tight parking space. Aside from that, the Flex is also equipped with front and side seat mounted air bags. Its safety features also include the AdvanceTrac® technology with RSC or Roll Stability Control®. The anti-lock braking system is also a standard feature and can be further enhanced with the use of EBC brake pads. These features are a great plus for buyers since the Ford Flex is aimed for families and those in that bracket are looking for cars loaded with safety features. The power of the Flex comes from an award-winning 3.5-liter V6 engine capable of producing 260 horsepower and a torque of 245 lb-ft. The engine is coupled to a six-speed transmission. The combination of the engine and the gear box allows the Flex to have a respectable fuel economy for its size.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:00 am
By the nineteen twenties Henry Ford had built a organization that was the ‘model’ for the rest of the capitalist world. His factories produced half the cars that were sold on the planet and he was reported to be the ‘world’s richest man’. He had done all of this without an engineering education (or any college) and through his own ‘common sense’. He ran his factories in such a way that he was able to reduce the amount of time needed to produce a car would allow him to cut the price down to where just about any working man could afford a Model T.
But Ford liked to control everything down to the smallest detail and for years refused to stop the ‘assembly line’ at Dearborn Michigan to make any changes to the way the Model T was built or to improve it. He also controlled the manufacture of almost every part that went into his cars, from the iron ore to the smelters to the forests and sawmills that supplied the wood for frames. The only thing he didn’t control was the rubber for his car tires. So Ford bought himself 2.5 million acres of Amazon jungle and started to build his own rubber tree forest.
The problem that Ford had was that no one could or would tell him he was wrong. When he sent men down to start the plantation, no one of them was a botanist or agronomist or had any experience in growing rubber trees. How hard could it be, you plant the tree and five years later you begin ‘tapping’ it for rubber sap. The building of the ‘plantation’ is what needed to be done by people who knew the “Ford” way of doing things.
He pored millions of dollars into the project over twenty years and never produced one tire. Just as every great athlete isn’t a business man, every great manufacturer isn’t necessarily a great judge of his own choices. Ford listened to no one but Ford and suffered the consequences after the crash of 1929 when he insisted that the Model T didn’t need to be modified; and he ‘knew’ that Fordlandia was a good idea.
What makes this a poor book is that there wasn’t enough material for Grandin to make a book and so there’s a lot of fluff and tangents that have nothing to do with the story in the Amazon.
Zeb Kantrowitz