Ford Flex Pricing to Start at Nearly $29,000

Ford Flex Pricing to Start at Nearly $29,000

By Dale Buss

Ford is promoting its new 2009 Flex as a “white-space vehicle” that will be delightfully difficult to categorize. For the privilege of purchasing the flat-topped, three-row vehicle, consumers will have to pay a suggested starting price of $28,995, including shipping charges — a beginning price point that will put Flex atop the automaker’s growing lineup of crossovers.

When it is introduced this summer, the Flex will be offered in three trim series, and in front-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive versions. Flex SE is the base model, a front-wheel-drive version. Prices for the all-wheel-drive Flex Limited will start at $37,255, including shipping, but options could make the top price much higher.

Flex will occupy the spot in Ford’s CUV lineup immediately above the Taurus X, which Ford initially named the Freestyle; its current suggested retail prices start at $27,605, including shipping. Ford’s entry-level crossover, essentially, is Edge, whose prices range from about $25,500 to about $32,300, according to Edmunds.com data.

Among other differences between Edge and Flex is Flex is larger, and Edge is styled more closely to what already has become a conventional shape for crossovers, noted Jessica Caldwell, sales analyst for Edmunds.com.

Caldwell observed Flex’s initial pricing puts it a bit higher than Honda Pilot, whose current prices begin at about $27,500. Honda plans to continue Pilot’s very boxy look — though it’s not as extremely squarish as Flex — with the 2009 model that is due out later this year. But Flex’s pricing comes in underneath the nearly $30,000 starting point of suggested prices for General Motors’ popular larger crossovers: Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, and Saturn Outlook.

Flex will be assembled on Ford’s D-car platform at its Oakville, Ontario, plant, where the company made its Freestar minivan. But Flex isn’t being produced and won’t be marketed as a replacement for a minivan, nor as an SUV per se. On the strength of Flex’s extremely boxy styling and features such as larger-than-conventional second-row doors, Ford is positioning Flex as what spokesman Said Deep called “a white-space vehicle that will create its own, unique niche.”

“What Flex does, is it goes all-in,” said Kate Pearce, brand-plans manager for Flex. “We’ve gone all-in with the new two-tone roof, the box-on-box design, and certainly technology that is above and beyond anything else that we’ve done. It will cement Ford’s turnaround with a commitment to great design and great technology.”

Consumers who see the vehicle are reacting positively to the car-like characteristics of Flex, Pearce said. “In photos, it looks taller than it actually is — more SUV-like,” she said. “But it’s very much a lower vehicle, with a more car-like stance that surprises people.”

Deep noted Flex’s pricing also reflects the fact that Ford is including a significant number of desirable features as standard in the vehicle, including second-row climate controls, a leather-wrapped steering wheel and shift lever, and an MP3-audio jack.

Photos by Ford
1- 2009 Ford Flex
2 - 2009 Ford Flex interior

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.