Ford Flex EcoBoost

When I was a kid, my parents didn’t give any thought to what car was best for our road trips. They just took the car we had. But now, parents have lots of options, and if you are a regular road tripping family like ours, you probably consider road trip friendliness when you purchase a vehicle. I talked to Ford executive and mom, Amy Marentic, about the 2010 line of cars from Ford, and their great features for road trippers. And, everyday family drivers. Because the best road trip car should really be a great everyday car as well.

The feature you’ll probably use most often, says Marentic, is the Next Generation Navigation System, which debuted on select 2009 models. It’s being offered on 2010 Taurus and Flex models (as well as several other models). Aside from the obvious use of getting you from point A to point B, Next Generation Navigation can do what you might not be able to otherwise without access to a laptop and internet.

Here’s a real life example that actually happened to Marentic and her family: Say you arrive at the hotel you reserved and there’s been a catastrophe. Your room is unavailable or unsuitable. It’s a big weekend in town and rooms are all full. Using the nav, you can pull up the closest hotels and their phone numbers and call around to find a vacancy. Increase the distance from the starting point until you find one that has a room. Then, because you’re hungry, you need to find a restaurant, so do the same search until you find an eating place that serves your kids’ favorite — mac and cheese. You can also find fuel prices, movie theaters as well as times and listings, and of course, the route to the restaurant, gas station or movie theater. The system also incorporates the SIRIUS Travel Link, so you also get real time weather, real time traffic, construction alerts and radar. All of which can help you plan whether to reroute your trip before you spend time sitting through a delay with three cranky kids.

The Flex also comes with a refrigerator that holds up to seven 12-ounce cans, four half-liter bottles or two 20-ounce bottles and takes them from room temperature to 41 degrees in just over 2 1/2 hours (40 percent faster than a home refrigerator). One caveat, the refrigerator only works when the car is turned on, so you can’t leave leftovers in the car all night, but it does keep stops for cold beverages to a minimum.

2010 Ford Taurus

The 2010 Taurus, available in your local dealership late this summer, also has several features to make driving safer. Ford has moved into active safety features, which aim to prevent collisions, not just keep you safer in the event of a collision. The first is Adaptive Cruise Control. You set your cruising speed and the car’s radar monitors the traffic traveling up to 600 feet ahead, automatically adjusting your speed to help maintain a safe distance between vehicles.

A new active safety feature, Collision Warning with Brake Support also uses the radar sensor to detect following distance, and provides a heads-up warning signal and audible alert when slower moving traffic is detected ahead. This is a fantastic feature if you have any teen drivers in your family. Recognizing when to brake and preventing having to slam on the brakes takes time and experience, but this system can help train good following distance driving.  If you do have to slam on the brakes, the system also pre-charges the brakes to give you extra support as you brake.

2010 Ford Taurus MyKey Technology

Additional active safety features include:
     Cross Traffic Alert — looks right and left within three car lengths and alerts you to oncoming traffic as you back out of a parking spot. It is only activated in reverse. 
     Blind Spot Information System — a light in the side mirrors is illuminated if someone is driving in your blind spot.
     MyKey — Allows parents to set an alert that keeps the radio on mute until all seat belts are buckled. You will also receive an earlier low-fuel warning and consistently engaged AdvanceTrac stability control, Blind Spot monitoring, Cross Traffic Alert and Forward Collision Warning. You can also set restrictions on audio volume and limit the top speed of the car to 80 mph with chime warnings at 45, 55 or 65 mph. It’s not as good as being in the car with your teen driver, but this is a great feature for new drivers.

I think of Ford’s SYNC as the iPhone for your car. Ford officially explains SYNC as “the fully integrated, in-vehicle voice-activated communications and entertainment system.” Included in this communications and entertainment system are 911 Assist (calls 911 if your air bags deploy, no extra charge for this service), Vehicle Health Report, free turn-by turn navigation (not as full-featured as Next Generation, but still includes traffic and information) and the kids will have one more thing to fight over — the ability to voice operate your iPod, MP3 player, memory stick or PDA. Marentic says her kids vie to activate the iPod first and therefore control whose playlist is being played for the day.

2010 Taurus Seat

To make road trips more comfortable, the 2010 Taurus features Multi-Contour Seats with Active Motion. Exclusive to Taurus, these seats give both driver and passenger six-way lumbar support and subtle rolling pattern massage. The bottom cushion features Active Motion technology that provides minute but continous movement, which stimulates your muscles to move ever so slightly. All together, these reduce pressure points in the legs and back and help to reduce back pain.

Our family is going to attempt to rent a Flex on our upcoming road trip to Michigan, and I’m anxious to test the seats on the new Taurus. Marentic says both cars will be available from all major rental car companies if you want to do an extended test to see which your family prefers.

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