Ford’s biggest marketing mistake was to not sell them with wood panel sides like the old Country Squires.  The Family Truckster nostalgia feels would’ve sold a bunch of them. 

I would’ve loved to get one (used of course), but the fuel economy is terrible. It really should’ve been available with the hybrid and/or PHEV drivetrain of the contemporary Escape/Fusion/C-Max.

I thought the Ford D4 was an evolution of the C/D3 which itself was based on the 98-16 Volvo P2 architecture (hence the transverse V6 FWD/AWD layout.) So the following were all platform mates:
Flex
Freestyle
Explorer
Taurus
Lincoln MKS
Lincoln MKT
Mercury Sable
Mercury Montego
Volvo S60
Volvo S80
Volvo V70
Volvo XC70
Volvo XC90

BMW’s have diagrams in the back on how to best fit the dead bodies. For legal reasons, they use golf bags in the diagram.

You can give it any label you want, but at its core, the Flex was a *station wagon*. A Country Squire for the new millennium, if you will.

Enthusiasts know that station wagons are good. The general population thinks otherwise, and thus, the failure of the Flex.

Man I missed this QOTD. My kid was on a cross country trip from Delaware in her 2013 X1 and broke down in Utah. Tough to diagnose remotely so I contact a mobile mechanic. He was out of his depth and very cool about it, I overnighted a alternator from FCPEuro and that did not fix it. Oh well, he barely charged anything…

In January, 2021, my girlfriends Toyota Matrix threw a rod, totaling it. So we did some shopping around for a cheap alternative to get her through a year until she could afford to buy something worth having. After a couple of used car lots we found a 2010 Chevy HHR that KBB said was worth $5500, but the dealership was…

The thing that disgusts/terrifies me is that as enthusiasts we’re a group of people savvy enough to catch this stuff and know what’s right, what’s suspect, and what’s outright BS. How many single women, elderly, and otherwise non-automotive types are getting scammed by these guys each and every day? It’s freaking…

Gotta be 3. The fact that she had him pay money into her *own* account, and accepted the payment without verifying that it actually went through or providing a receipt (which she would have had to do if it were a real fee), is a pretty serious tell.

if you are late then you pay the late fee.

Right, because the source of that info is soooo trustworthy.

Only now?

There is no such thing as a late fee to reopen the gate after the mandated cutoff time, and if there were it certainly would not be paid directly to the gate agent via a cash app! 

If he was actually late, the gate agent would not be allowed to reopen the gate and let him in. There are certain rules and timelines they have to follow. If she was able to let him on, he wasn’t actually late. 

Well, he was obviously late

You realize pilots and gate agents aren’t the same people, right?

Obviously? Since we’re all making assumptions, I assume you were present for the interaction?

I don’t think there’s actually a late fee.  This situation is all kinds of shady.

Given that he recorded the incident, scenario 1 seems unlikely.

Thank you for your service.*