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Can J Mays' hip station wagon design make SUVs go away?

By Rain Noe - June 17, 2008

in Object Culture

Ford designer J Mays sums up the recent evolution of large automobiles:

Since 1990...there has been an explosion of SUV sales. That entire decade was the decade of the SUVs. Then every manufacturer did their version of post-SUV, whether you call them CUVs or crossovers or people movers or whatever. But they all looked, tasted and smelled like SUVs or minivans.

The Flex holds seven people comfortably, but there's not a hint of minivan.... There's no sloping front screen, no sliding side door.... It's not an SUV. SUV has come to be shorthand for high emissions and low gas mileage.

He refers to Ford's new Flex station wagon, a seven-seater which looks rather like a Scion that drank more milk growing up. AutoWeek's full interview with Mays can be read here.

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hohum

16 years ago

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Ugh! And also, ly! Seriously, it just looks like somebody took a woody and turned it into a bunch of mismatched colors and materials. The interview says "oh, we '[worked] with [â€¦] color and materials.'" I don't see much "working with" there, I see mostly "had their way with and snuck out before morning." It basically looks like a van with an ugly truck hood. To say that SUVs are associated with low gas mileage, and then not say what the mileage on this vehicle is projected to beâ€¦ I'm betting it's going to dance around the 20 mark just like all these other attempts to de-SUV the SUV. I sense an epic fail.
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Jay

16 years ago

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Range Rover + Mini + Xb + Pacifica = This.
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Rob the SVX guy

16 years ago

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Haha. Whatever. That's still an SUV. It's NOT a station wagon. It's too big, too tall, and too truck like. If you want to know why SUVs came to be, read this:

http://fc08.deviantart.com/fs27/f/2008/101/1/d/SUV_Research_Paper_by_cash68.pdf
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