The 2009 Ford Flex seats seven, has a profile that turns heads, and a boxy look that gives it, its secret weapon to achieve fuel economy equal to and better than all vehicles in its class. Wayne Koester(Kehs-ter), Ford's aerodynamic product design engineer says the vehicles boxy shape allows the Ford Flex to move through the air with surprising ease, giving it a one-mile-per-gallon improvement in fuel economy over many of its competitors. Koester says the aerodynamics team worked hand-in-hand with the design team to accomplish outstanding fuel economy, without compromising its unique head-turning design, starting with its wide low-riding stance.
Click on 
to hear audio. Use right mouse click to download.
| Cut #1: |
The low stance is a very big contributor to that, the squareness of the front end, the fact that its not very rounded actually helps reducing the drag and also the back corners, the radius's around the backend around the tail lights, all those were tuned to specifically reduce d rag to the minimum." :16 sec.
|
| |
Koester says one of the easiest ways to understand the impact "drag" can have on gas mileage is to just stick your hand out the window while driving down the highway. |
| Cut #2: |
"You can kind of think of drag as when you stick your hand out the window you have your palm facing the air it's pushing back real
hard, you put it down sideways and there is very little force on it, it's really the force of the air holding the car back." :12 sec. |
| |
Koester then had his aerodynamic team cranked-up the wind tunnel, simulating winds of 30 to 50mph demonstrating their sophisticated equipment on the Ford Flex, so it could achieve the best possible miles per gallon. This is what it sounded like. |
| Cut #3: |
"The sound of Wind at 30mph-50mph" :08 sec. |
| |
Wind tunnel testing resulted in slight changes to the shape of the front air dam, the back of the vehicle, and the sides of the car with the doors flowing into the flair you see along the sides of the Flex. Koester says that design is not just to make it look cool, even though it does, Koester says it optimizes less drag, resulting in better fuel economy. |
| Cut #4: |
It keeps the air as it's going along side of the car from curling down trying to go underneath the car, the under part of the car is very rough with all its suspension components and engine compontents, exhaust as the air flows over that it increases drag, relative to the top part ,so you try to minimize how much air flow goes underneath there."
|
| |
Koester says the more airflow that goes over the top of the car the better, because it creates less drag. The Ford Flex's unique shape actually helps improve fuel economy giving the vehicle 24 m.p.g. on the highway and 17 in the city. The price, including destination and delivery, starts at $28,995. |
