Sometimes, in a particular company's lineup of cars, there's one standout car that, whether appreciated or not, carries within it more potential than its parent company can see. It can even get to the point where you could actually see how it could spin-off into its own brand. Like Rhoda from the Mary Tyler Moore show, but with cars.
I'm very curious to see what you come up with, and in some ways my example here took me by surprise, but when I looked back at things I'd written before, I realized I'd already started to imagine this car as a full line. The car? The Ford Flex.
The Flex is sort of the wildcard in Ford's lineup as it is, as it has a distinct and bolder design language than the rest of the ford fleet. I feel like the basic design language, vocabulary, and theme of the car could be scaled up and down with ease, lending itself to forming a full brand.
I've already sketched a Flex-based van and a shortened Flex-based, Mini-fighting compact city car. A Flex-based truck would be quite easy to picture, and even a three-box, Chrysler 300-proportioned full-sized Flex sedan. I can picture a half-door'd, open-topped wrangler-fighting Flex like a modernized Bronco, as well as a more conventional convertible.
Hell, Ford already uses the FLEX name on the nose instead of FORD — they're halfway there.
A full Flex brand could be innovative and premium in an unexpected, forward-thinking, experimental way, and, hell, I think I wouldn't mind seeing a fully-realized Flex brand taking over the old Mercury role and could even give Lincoln a run for their money.
So what about you? I'm really curious to see these.