These days, three-row crossovers are all the rage for families looking to haul themselves around. They’re so prevalent, it’s hard to believe this entire segment just didn’t exist 25 years ago, and that Detroit didn’t fully latch onto it until the late 2000s. Perhaps as a result, there was some early installment weirdness as this segment found its footing, and one of the weirder offerings was the Ford Freestyle.
The Ford what? The Ford Freestyle. Don’t be ashamed if you don’t remember it. Not only was the name a bit too close to that of the maligned Freestar minivan, an evolution of the Windstar that felt thoroughly outdated next to the Japanese competition of the time, but this thing only ran from model years 2005 to 2007 — barely a blip on the radar as far as longevity goes.
Still, the concept of the Freestyle was sound — a full-sized-sedan-based three-row crossover that fulfills the consumer’s desire to lord over sedan drivers by way of an elevated hip point without offering the topsy-turvy handling of body-on-frame SUV construction, particularly in the hands of under-experienced drivers who think higher equals safer. Sure, an old GMC Yukon can turn Bambi into a pink mist, but it’s not the first choice for evasive handling maneuvers. In short, Ford set out to create a minivan for those too insecure to be seen in minivans. Sound familiar?
To start, Ford took Volvo’s P2 platform and molded it to fit a cheaper price point, with substantial changes, to the point where the Haldex all-wheel-drive system was pretty much the only shared part. We’re talking more steel suspension parts replacing aluminum, a longer wheelbase, and enough cost-cutting to take a premium platform from 1998 and use the concept of it underneath mainstream American family cars. For the 2005 model year, the D3 platform, as it was dubbed, was ready to rock, and in addition to underpinning the entirely forgettable Ford Five Hundred and Mercury Montego, it also came underneath the Freestyle.
Slide behind the wheel of the Freestyle and prepare to be whelmed, with a grab handle being the rare bright spot on a staid dashboard of various grained plastics, corporate stereo and climate controls, and middle-of-the-road styling. However, you didn’t buy a Freestyle for the experience up front, you bought one for the space in the back. Every trim level got a tumble-back flat-folding third row elevated far enough off the floor that passengers wouldn’t be knees-to-ears, while the middle row offered the choice of a bench or captain’s chairs. We’re talking genuine seating for six or seven and plenty of cargo space with everything folded away — up to ten feet in length thanks to a fold-flat front passenger seat. The Freestyle was a mainstream three-row crossover with three usable rows, so it should’ve been a hit, right?
So what’s under the hood? Well, every Freestyle came equipped with a three-liter quad-cam V6 cranking out 203 horsepower and 207 lb.ft. of torque. That’s a bit disappointing when you consider that the 2005 Chrysler Pacifica offered a 3.5-liter V6 with 250 horsepower and 250 lb.-ft. of torque, the Honda Pilot’s J35 3.5-liter V6 cranked out 255 horsepower and 250 lb.-ft. of torque, and even the Toyota Highlander’s 3.3-liter V6 made 230 horsepower and 242 lb.-ft. of torque. However, the Freestyle’s transmission was unlike those used in competitors, because it was a continuously variable transmission.
Developed in conjunction with ZF, the Freestyle’s CVT offered a ratio spread of 2.47:1 to 0.41:1, and was Ford’s trick of making a 4,190-pound crossover with a three-liter V6 seem less underpowered compared to competitors’ larger units. Did it work? As Car And Driver found out, sort-of.
This is the first use of a CVT in something as large as the Freestyle, but its operation will be familiar if you’ve ever sampled one of these novel transmissions in a smaller car. Driven gently, the engine revs stay unobtrusively and quietly at low rpm, much as they do in a conventional automatic. But if you floor it, the engine will rev to 5800 rpm and stay there until you back off, whereas a conventional transmission would change to the next gear. Keep the pedal mashed, and the Freestyle continues to accelerate uninterrupted with the engine crying out at 5800 rpm as the CVT goes through its spread of ratios seamlessly to keep the engine at its power peak. This takes a bit of getting used to, but if you never floor the Freestyle for the extended periods that we do, you’ll never notice its unusual behavior.
The end result? Zero-to-60 mph in a magazine-tested 8.2 seconds, and, uh, a habit of blowing up. Perusing NHTSA complaints, there’s no shortage of Freestyle drivers reporting transmission failure, such as this complaint with an incident date of June 30, 2006. Considering the complainant stated they “have been advised the vehicle needs a transmission and catalytic converter” with a reported 62,000 miles on the clock, that’s not great.
Alright, so fears over the transmission, combined with the slightly underpowered nature of the Freestyle and the fact that it could only tow 2,000 pounds didn’t work in its favor, but who says do-overs aren’t possible? In 2007, then-Ford CEO Alan Mullaly decreed that the Ford Five Hundred would become the Taurus because it was a bad idea to throw away that brand equity in the first place, and the Freestyle would get a restyling and a name change to follow suit. More than that, it got a 3.5-liter V6 engine and a conventional six-speed automatic transmission to become the Taurus X. Alright, so the name change was confusing, but for the 2008 model year, the sins of the original Freestyle were atoned for.
We’re talking 263 horsepower, 248 lb.-ft. of torque, a normal gearbox, and all the practicality and car-like handling the Freestyle was known for. The Taurus X should’ve done well, but it didn’t quite live up to its potential because it emerged into a huge shadow. See, on June 3, 2008, the Ford Flex went into production, and it promised the same thing the Taurus X did, only better. Riding on a beefed-up version of the same platform, called D4, it could out-tow the Taurus X, felt nicer than a Taurus X, had a heavier-duty transmission than the Taurus X, and was far more stylish than the Taurus X. The rest, as they say, was history.
The Ford Freestyle was an early proof-of-concept of what everyone would end up wanting, but it was too early and it had a few flaws. It’s safe to say that this thing was a miss, but failures are opportunities for learning. The Ford Freestyle walked so the Ford Flex could run, and chances are that one of the most distinctive American family vehicles of the 21st century wouldn’t have been as good as it was without lessons from the Freestyle.
(Photo credits: Ford)
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
-
The Opel Speedster And Vauxhall VX220 Are Featherweight Sports Cars Worth Waiting Another Year For: GM Hit Or Miss
-
How GM Beat Everyone To The Punch With A Hybrid Pickup Truck And Then Completely Fell Off The Tracks
-
This Chevy Camaro Trim May Be One Of The Most Underrated And Forgotten Sports Cars Of All Time
-
The Front-Wheel-Drive Lotus Elan Was Technically A GM Product, As Weird As That Sounds
-
Why The Pontiac Solstice Deserves Its Flowers: GM Hit Or Miss
Please send tips about cool car things to tips@theautopian.com. You could even win a prize!
Can we consider this a wagon?
I consider the Ford Flex a wagon, my wife would not let me buy it as her car sadly.
The Freestyle was a nice car. But then, Ford Australia had the Territory. It was based on the Aussie-market Falcon, with available AWD and V-8 power. Rumor at the time was, the Freestyle team was not impressed with the way better Territory, then threatened to go into a meltdown when Ford’s top brass discussed importing it to the US as a Lincoln or Mercury.
Too bad. I wanted to buy one..
Our family vehicle journey went from the Windstar to the Freestyle to the Flex. The Windstar was trashed by smaller children and finally blew a headgasket at 160k after a few safely traversed cross-country trips. Wife swore off minivans so enters the Freestyle… good size, met the family needs, also trashed by 8-10 year olds; felt cheapish and I could never get used to the CVT but my wife loved it.
When my wife went back to work, with a 50 mile round trip commute, we got a hot little 500 Abarth and any thought of the family vehicle went out the window. Still needing a family vehicle (and me a winter car) I ditched the Freestyle with 150k miles on it for a gingerale metallic AWD non-EB Flex and the best thing I can say is that it’s like driving a couch, amazing room for 6 adults and a vehicle that I actually enjoyed driving.
That Flex is still in the driveway, wife drives it from time to time (she still has the Abarth) and I don’t need it for much anymore but at 268k miles, I just can’t get rid of it, it’s been bulletproof.
One could argue that the current Explorer is more a descendant of this than of the 90s truck-based model.
I am pretty sure just the third row glass was tinted. It looked weird.
This was essentially an Explorer-lite. The Explorer was a Taurus X.
The cvt was the worst. 200hp and the cvt made this thing feel like crap. Pretty sure Ford was the only company who made a cvt worse than Nissan at the time.
-Late comment, but we had a 07 Freestyle for over 11yrs (bought in 07 w/ 50k miles) that we loved and would still have if it wasn’t for the CVT ‘glitching’ at 190k. It started randomly ‘throw a wrench’ code and go into ‘limp home mode’. So wife/kids had to pull off road, turn off car and restart then all was good for a bit. No code would show up in memory. The CVT was supposedly a Volvo based design, modified by Ford, so only made for 3yrs, so replacement was $$$$$ if you could even get one. Traded in on a 2017 Escape since older kids were driving their own cars at that point.
-I religiously had the CVT fluid changes at recommended 60k intervals by good Ford dealer…didnt matter evidently.
-We bought the Freestyle since it had a 3 row seat that you could actually sit in (3 kids+random friends), but wasn’t a full size SUV. Previously had a Windstar minivan that the transmission was going out at around 200k.
-The front passenger seat back would fold down, so you could put 8′ lumber in it and shut hatch & 10′ trim pcs on top of dash.
-Great road trip car. Seats were very comfortable and the car handled very tightly for a ‘larger vehicle’. Still miss the ‘bread crumbs’ function on the Navigation system.
-Haldex AWD did great in snow…you had to on purpose overpower it to get tires to spin and slide car. Ford ditched the Haldex system when updated to TaurusX.
-Think Ford was too early to market on this ‘CUV’ when everyone else was still doing full size SUVs/minivans. There was not a ‘cheap’ Freestyle model, only mid/prem. models.
-The TaurusX model had a lot of ‘value engineering’ done to it vs Freestyle, although it got a better engine and a real transmission.
-I occasionally see Freestyles at the local pull a part completely unblemished/unwrecked…sadly a bad CVT doomed it to scrap.
-I had to ‘clean’ the throttle body to fix the ‘unexpected’ engine surge at idle/low speed. It was drive by wire, so if throttle plate stuck due to carbon ridge, it added more juice and then would pop loose, over-acceleration. No problem after cleaning.
-Can’t recall having to make any other repairs other than regular maintenance (oil/tires/brakes/trans fluid). Great car till CVT went south.
-Mileage was bit better than Windstar, but still only got 20mpg, always, no matter what. Do live in the hills of East TN. It was advertised mid 20’s…maybe if lived where it was flat.
So now each of the domestics had a swing-and-a-miss moment with the crossover phase.
Chrysler Pacifica
Pontiac Aztek/Buick Rendezvous
Ford Freestyle/Taurus X
Each of these are exactly what’s selling in droves now, just executed poorly(maybe not in the Pacifica’s case) and too early.
Hindsight, as they say…….
Rendezous was a success, at least, in both sales and bringing younger buyers into the brand. Even though it was physically smaller than the Ford or Chrysler, it still had a tall/upright look that was favored then, so that surely helped it. GM managed to really crack the code for larger crossovers too with the Lambdas then.
Pacifica was pricey, at a time when Chrysler was moving both up and downmarket after Plymouth’s demise, and packaging was iffy, 2nd row buckets with IIRC a center console were standard that first year so that limited access to the way back. A 7-seat, 2+3+2 option like everyone else offered might’ve helped but they only added a 5-seater the next year and that was that for seating.
Your username is my favorite VW color. Nothing else to say beyond that. Thank you.
I had a weird appreciation for the first round of D3 cars when these were new but it wasn’t really a surprise they didn’t sell.
For one the LX cars the same year got all the thunder for larger domestic cars. For the Fords, 203 hp got around fine but it was apathetic for a brand new car, being about the same as the Duratec debuted with nearly a decade prior, and a couple years after Honda had already gotten 240 out of the same displacement.
CVT is more of a fault in hindsight than at the time when it was new and in – like the Nissan Murano. The biggest knock was drivability, not yet reliability, the only really obvious failure to that point had been the GM VTi.
Freestyle kind of looked like a blander Outback+ without Subaru quirks (which actually Subaru should have done for the Tribeca). Ford had basically burned off minivan buyers already so they couldn’t flip any of those. If you were going to Ford showrooms and wanted an SUV, 3 rows, or both, you were probably already open to an Explorer which, while more expensive, usually had cash on the hood especially at the end of the 3rd gen’s run. And Ford wasn’t going to sacrifice Explorer sales either while they were still good.
The Edge seemed to be the final nail in the coffin, overshadowing any Taurus X hype a year early and an immediate sales success. Despite being the same price and 2-rows only which was a bit risky for a new midsize SUV at that point.
Freestyle crawled so Ecoboost Flex could burnout
A Flex with the Ecoboost makes me wet.
I drove a livernois tuned MKT once, had something like 600 at the wheels or 700ish at the crank and it was absolute insanity. I’m convinced the MKT is the correct D4 platform car.
DUDE!!!! I know!!! I worked at a Ford/Lincoln franchise the very first Lincoln I sold was a factory ordered MKT. I’ve been in love with them since and am always on the hunt for a clean EcoBoost model. Easily the best riding car I’ve been in.
Only press car I have ever had that someone felt compelled to leave a note on. “This is the ugliest car I have ever seen.” I agree. The MKT is just ghastly.
Some friends of mine bought one for their young family back in the day, and they really liked it. Ultimately they went full minivan, and traded it for a Sienna (good call there). They didn’t keep the Freestyle long long enough to have transmission problems, so they may have dodged a bullet there.
Unpopular opinion:
I actually liked these. And the Pacifica. And the dodge journey (owned one for 5 years)
They served a purpose and filled a niche that is woefully underrepresented. Cheap family moving appliance for anyone with more than 2 kids. They came in at the time when station wagons with rear facing third rows were disappearing. And as much as I liked our odyssey we had after the journey, it was still way bigger and not necessarily needed for a family of 4-5.
The closest I think on the market now is the Sorento, Tiguan, and Santa Fe (or is it the Tuscan? They blend together). None of them are particularly cheap and they don’t do the job any better than the journey did. Kinda need someone to go back to the “build a 3 row for people with bad credit” and spit out another family appliance like this.
Mitsubishi called. They’d like you to notice their base Outlander for “3 row vehicle with bad credit” please.
Oh yea touché I forgot about Mitsubishi. I like the outlander as well, but its starting price is $400 off the Tiguan. Still not quite to the cheap 3 row need. I really think something sub $25k is needed for a lot of families for a car with a warranty and modernish safety
On that note, the 2020 journey still had 4 stars. I imagine they wouldn’t be that far behind now.
Totally agree. Bare bones, no frills, cheap. Working in a dealership, I can’t tell you the amount of people I meet that actually want that style car.
But base models have zero margin, so I guess corporate earnings are worth more than satisfactory customers?
Wait…..are the capitalism police coming for me??? Oh no!!!! (insert punching here)
BTW: The Journey WAS the Outlander. Same-same. GS platform. They’re STILL making vehicles on it – the Eclipse Cross and Outlander Sport. Neither are 3 rows, however. The full-boat Outlander is, but that’s because it’s a Rogue. Honestly, I really liked the current generation Rogue when I had it as a press vehicle back when it was new. Nissan and/or Mitsu would be happy to make a sale, I bet.
The GS platform itself is probably not a bad ownership experience, btw. Cheaply made, but also simple and serviceable. They do drive ok. Ish.
Yes this is a good point! I really liked my journey. It was a great appliance that did everything it could ok with minimal fuss.
Oh I got a good chuckle at that
The first gen Pacifica was ahead of it’s time. My father bought one brand new back in the day and I think it was amazing inside and out (for the time). I just don’t think it was marketed right and since it was during the DCX era, people would say it was a cheap R Class. If DCX hadn’t cheaped out on the interior and had better and more powerful engines, I think it would have done really well. However, there’s not a whole lot you can do with a truncated minivan platform.
Yea I remember a family friend buying one and thinking it was surprisingly comfortable. It was a good foot in the door
My big thing with it was how generic it looked. Ford’s design language during that era didn’t do much for many of their vehicles (the 500/Taurus of that period was so forgettable), but the Freestyle took it to a new level, ironically looking like the designers were given no agency to “freestyle” the design.
I worked at a Ford store when these cars came out and J. Mays had just come over from Volkswagen to design these things. Ford declared 2005 the Year of the Car as this, the Five Hundred, Mustang and facelifted Focus were all debuting that year. It’s safe to say that all but the Mustang landed with a deafening thud.
I guess I’m weird…owned both a 07 Freestyle and 07 Focus. Loved both of them including the nice clean styling. Still have the 07 Focus (5spd, daughter drives, but I’d like to get it back one day, fun to drive).
I’m definitely not shaming the cars. I enjoyed them myself however the buying public decided otherwise.
I sold the hell out of the Freestyle because I liked it as a transportation pod but most people went with the inferior Explorer because tOuGh.
Yeah, the Freestyle was much better than an Explorer for normal driving duties. It drove/handled like more like a European car, but you could still put a lot of people/stuff in it. Basically a nice station wagon w/ AWD.
(isn’t that what we all need)