Ford Flex

So now that I have two totally useless vehicles, I need something that I can tow one of the useless vehicles to the track with (the Miata) and drive to work instead of the other useless vehicle (the Dodge). I think the Ford Flex is Captain Cool, but they're just so darned expensive when new. Kelly Blue Book has proven to be a shakey place to get vehicle pricing and I'm pretty sure NADA is in collusion with states so they can collect higher excise taxes. (I mean, NADA are at least 50% high-no kidding!)

My question to you, GRM forum friends, is what are these things actually worth on the used market? If any of you has one, what is it like to own? I know there were at least two threads about this on the forum, but they are from 3 and 4 years ago.

I know several people who have them, including my mom, and they all love them. If you like the styling, they seem to be great. Tons of room, very quiet and solid, decent mileage considering the space and capacity. I think the max towing is something like 4500lbs.

As for the value, I don't pay much attention to places like KBB. I make a spreadsheet then spend a couple hours on CL, Autotrader, Cars.com and the like looking up what people are actually asking for them. Once you have a good enough sample size, you can get a pretty good idea of what they are really worth.

I have one, a 2009 Limited, FWD. We bought is last November with 44,xxx on it for about $18,000. It had everything except nav and AWD. We got the captain's chairs in the second row without a console, which was pretty tough to find. If you are looking for a second row bench, you shouldn't have a problem. We also found that a mid-spec new one was ridiculously expensive, and the radio/air con touch screen thingy didn't impress me at all. Being in Detroit might have helped with finding an acceptable used one. I couldn't swing a dead cat on any used car lot around here without hitting two or three Flexes.

We get about 18mpg in mostly city driving. It's quiet on the highway, rides pretty smooth and the seats are nice-sofa comfy. It's boring as hell to drive, but I think that's the point. It's pretty slow around town, but feels amply-powered once it's rolling. I haven't tried towing with mine, so I can't help you there.

The only problem area I've heard of is the brakes. Some rear calipers bind causing the inner pads to wear quickly. Supposedly there is a new part to cure some of that. Our makes some intermittent crunching noises from the front end, but nothing bad enough to warrant rolling around under it in the snow. Now that it's warming up, I won't have an excuse to ignore it.

I've been very pleased with ours. I would absolutely recommend one.

OK, G8Mike. That's exactly what I was looking for. The gas mileage is better than I expected. I imagine highway driving bumps it up a bit.

I bought a used 2013 SEL Fwd in September and love it. We looked for a few months at the used 09-12 ones local, but had a hard time finding one with the sunroof, and SWMBO fell in love with the '13 updates. Found the one we bought with 28k on it for 17k less than it stickered new. According to the dash I got about 28mpg on the drive back home from Pittsburgh.

In reply to confuZion3:

Don't have info on the normally aspirated ones, but I was getting 24-25 pretty easily driving cars home and back during the Ecoboost program.... That's mostly highway.

Kicking myself because SWMBO wants one but we were waiting until her Kia was paid off. We had them in our fleet at work and I could get a 2011 or 2012 coming off fleet duty with around 60,000 miles for $13k. Of course now that we are ready to buy the fleet switched to Explorers and all the Flex's are sold already...sigh

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/wife-wants-a-flex/77396/page1/

I hated them when they came out, but they are growing on me.