2005 Ford Freestyle Review
DEARBORN, MI: It may just be me, but it seems that right now there's a tide in the affairs of the auto industry (as Shakespeare might have said if he'd my job) that is taking the sedan out and bringing the crossover in.
Whenever I see a new sedan, I am pretty much devoid of emotion, unless it's another goofy-looking BMW to tickle the gag reflex.
It's got to the point now that a new design doesn't do a thing for me unless it has four pillars, with the windshield being the first or A-pillar, as the auto business likes to call it.
This is why I warmed to the Ford Freestyle right away, since it had the correct number of pillars to arouse me. It also looks useful and safe and competent and an early ride suggests that it feels the same way, too.
Whatever you call this body configuration (crossover seems to be the popular choice over wagon), it feels like the right kind of shape for today. I would call this feeling a personal prerogative if vast numbers of consumers weren't already making the same kind of choice.
Ford will hate me for lumping the Freestyle in with all the other crossovers, since it's the stated position of their group vice-president of product creation, Phil Martens, that this is ''the crossover done right.''
In Martens' view, that means ''we didn't try to adapt an existing minivan or sport-utility vehicle. Freestyle is built from the ground up as a crossover with class-leading spaciousness, seven-passenger comfort, versatility and all-wheel-drive capability.''
You could correctly point out that there are a bunch of those vehicles around, including the Cadillac SRX and the XC90 from Ford's own Volvo brand, at which point Martens would reply that ''Freestyle will deliver the value that defines it as a Ford.''
There's no denying he's on to something there, since the other enlarged wagons built on sedan architectures are currently all more expensive than the Freestyle will be. It's impossible to say specifically what its pricing will be, but an informed guesstimate is that it will start in the high $20,000s in Canada and quickly crossover into the $30,000s.
DEARBORN, MI: It may just be me, but it seems that right now there's a tide in the affairs of the auto industry (as Shakespeare might have said if he'd my job) that is taking the sedan out and bringing the crossover in.
Whenever I see a new sedan, I am pretty much devoid of emotion, unless it's another goofy-looking BMW to tickle the gag reflex.
It's got to the point now that a new design doesn't do a thing for me unless it has four pillars, with the windshield being the first or A-pillar, as the auto business likes to call it.
This is why I warmed to the Ford Freestyle right away, since it had the correct number of pillars to arouse me. It also looks useful and safe and competent and an early ride suggests that it feels the same way, too.Whatever you call this body configuration (crossover seems to be the popular choice over wagon), it feels like the right kind of shape for today. I would call this feeling a personal prerogative if vast numbers of consumers weren't already making the same kind of choice.
Ford will hate me for lumping the Freestyle in with all the other crossovers, since it's the stated position of their group vice-president of product creation, Phil Martens, that this is ''the crossover done right.''
In Martens' view, that means ''we didn't try to adapt an existing minivan or sport-utility vehicle. Freestyle is built from the ground up as a crossover with class-leading spaciousness, seven-passenger comfort, versatility and all-wheel-drive capability.''
You could correctly point out that there are a bunch of those vehicles around, including the Cadillac SRX and the XC90 from Ford's own Volvo brand, at which point Martens would reply that ''Freestyle will deliver the value that defines it as a Ford.''
There's no denying he's on to something there, since the other enlarged wagons built on sedan architectures are currently all more expensive than the Freestyle will be. It's impossible to say specifically what its pricing will be, but an informed guesstimate is that it will start in the high $20,000s in Canada and quickly crossover into the $30,000s.