Ford 500
 

Has anyone here bought a Ford 500?

I went and drove one yesterday, really need to replace my non-pcar (1995 Volvo 850 with 130K miles)

Really nice car, drove great, large sized without being a Crown Vic (I'm 6-4, 200 lbs). Good to haul the kids and my "team members" to client meetings etc.

Can get an all-in limited version which comes with 18" wheels, upgraded leather, AWD, new CVT trannie, upgraded amenities, etc with my X-Plan for around $28K. Seems like a great deal for a lot of car

Anyone else look or buy one lately?

I saw an article about that and the Freestar (the wagon-suv crossover) like two years ago. They designed these with these specific "people" in mind (ie. the soccer mom, the mid level manager with no responsibility or authority... :) ) I thought it was an interesting concept and was looking forward to these cars.

When I saw this Five Hundred the coolest things about it was the name. It's so non-descript and dull. Looks like it will fill in the rental car fleets nicely. Detroit is doing a lot of cool stuff lately like teh Freestar, it's a shame this thing is so dull.

My $.02 of course...

I agree that the mid-level 500 in "gold" is definitely a rental fleet car...but the limited with 18s' and the chrome accenting definitely has a looks advantage.

That and it drove great....AWD, full size for less the $30K doesn't hurt either....

I would worry about first year car problems. Ford seems to like to let their customers continue the R&D and testing for them on the first few years of a new car model...

Also, if this 500 does make it to fleet sales, I would expect greater than average depreciation during the first few years of ownership. If you keep cars a long time, this probably doesn't matter much.

We just got my wife a Freestyle and she really likes it. Plenty of room for the kids, my grandfather, etc... and the monthly lease payment is very reasonable. Not a bad vehicle at all (so far)...

To follow up.... I drove the Freestyle over the last weekend. The one I drove had the CVT transmission (one sales guy told me I could get an auto, but it doesn't appear to be the case).

My impression: The layout is good, lots of space for passengers and stuff. The fold down seats are cool and it appeared very vesatile. I couldn't get a great seating position, but I found one that was OK, sits a little lower than my Cherokee. It was a little bigger on the outside (at least felt it) than my Cherokee.

Performance: Lousy. The CVT is dog slow. I really stomped it to the floor to see what it would do. With the CVT you never feel any shifts like a normal automatic so you never can instinctively know when you're at 60 mph. When you really step on the gas, the engine was really noisy.

I'm not really in the market, so I will keep an eye on this for a few years to see if they sub in a real auto trans. Until then, I would skip it.

I think there is going to be a "learning curve" to these CVT's. People are very used to the input you get from the automatic changing gears (along with the drop in rev's when the next gear is selected). The CVT will take a bit of getting used to...

I bet in 10 years when the CVT is the standard of the industry, people will wonder why we put up with such jerky torque converter automatic transmissions for so long...

Just my $.02.

Jay
90 964

The semi-retired architect a few doors down from my office just picked up his 500 a couple of weeks ago. He loves it, and also praised the 2002 Focus they gave up on the return lease.

it looks like fleet-vehicle rent-a-trash.

FYI, as the thread starter....after looking around at other cars I decided not to purchase a Ford 500....

That's not fair...why?

Well bottom line I need a full sized sedan. I'm in a situation commute wise where I could lease, I only put about 7500 miles a year on a car and the number of years I would finance a car, I'd be long sick of it and it would be worth nothing by the time it was paid off.

The 500 is leasing horribly, $450 per month for a 28K car (and that's with my X-plan deal), when I held that up against the cost of some nice imported sedans, Volvo S-80, Saab 95 that have a decided nicer, real import feel for the same $$ I just couldn't keep the Ford in the same ballpark.

Plus when my wife went to take a look she summed it up perfectly...Ford just seemed to be trying too hard, the gauges are cheesy, the "wood" inlay looks cheap, it just 'aint an import...if in the spring the finances of the car normalize, they set a decent residual I may reconsider it. The whole car purchase has been backburnered anyway for a few months to get us through a house closing and new baby...we'll see in the spring/summer...

I think a headline I saw on Yahoo the other day summed it up;
"2004 record year for US auto recalls"

IMO, you ain't seen nothin yet ...

I saw my first Five Hundred just yesterday. It would get lost in a sea of blandness in any parking lot.

Zzzzzzzzz................

didn't do that. Never leave the window open. Lesson learned.

The Five Hundred looks nice.

On the SUV topic, check out the 4.0 (242bhp) Australian alternative to the Freestyle.

http://www.ford.com.au/territory/images/1/gallery_1.jpg

http://www.ford.com.au/territory/images/1/gallery_9.jpg