New Fuel Vehicles

What do you think of when you hear a vehicled named Flex? Several years ago we all would of thought ”muscle” or “horsepower”, however today we are most likely to think of ”Flex” in terms of “Fuel”.

When I first saw the commercial for the new 2009 Ford Flex I got pretty excited. The styling reminded my of a cross between the boxy looking Honda Element and the latest concoction of the Range Rover Sport. It has the squared but sleek modern look to it, with some cool chrome highlights and trendy color schemes.  Here is an SUV’esk (not a word) vehicle with 3 rows of bucket seats, DVD system, NAV, rear camera, roomy interior, 3 row of seats that folds flat, very cool sunroofs with a large, what they call “Vista Roof”, and much more. Everything that I, an SUV loving customer, would really dig.  But something huge is missing!

You would think that with the current state of the economy, the huge decline in sales of SUV’s, the ridiculous climb in gas prices, and the inability for dealerships to keep hybrid vehicles in stock and with a name like the Ford Flex, you would hear “Hybrid”, or some other fuel technology. I did too. I kept waiting and waiting, through all of the cool features, specs, details, photos, etc…..but it was never mentioned. Everything that I was so excited about, was gone.

What were they thinking?

What a missed opportunity.  C’mon, Flex? Really? Flex what? Not many people are caring too much about the fact that you just released another huge vehicle that seats 7. What people want to hear is the word “Hybrid” and if you put the word SUV in there…even better. Look at what Chevy did with the Hybrid Tahoe. They got rave reviews and all kinds of awards for developing an SUV with Hybrid technology that gets a measley 23 mpg. Now if you took this new, cool looking, feature loaded SUV called “Flex” and added the Hybrid technology to it…look out!

Bottom line is people are starting to shutter when they hear the term SUV unless you add the term Hybrid. Even though the Flex gets approx 22 mpg, adding hybrid technology would have sealed the deal. I guess I’ll keep waiting for someone, somewhere to wise up.