Are you serious? Those are such a bizarre SUV/stationwagon frankenstein. Kinda looks like a modern day hearse. Ford had nothing that even appealed to me when we where looking for this new SUV.

 

lol thats what i drove all winter when i was fixing the dodge..... and i hated it but it was good in the snow

 

.......

 

lol man i worked out of a chevy astro for along time, still do sometimes depending on what i need on the job. But i dont really think of that as a mini van honestly lol it's got a steel cage between me and the back. Although im sure some parents including my self would love to be able to have a cage between me an the kids in the back seat

 

shoot yeah, i like em, now theyre gonna have a 355 hp ecoboost in em, heres one of the features of it, not sure if id trust it tho

Active Park Assist
Offered on the Flex is Ford's Active Park Assist system, which finds and measures a suitable parking space, then operates the steering wheel to accomplish the parallel parking task. This feature uses software control of the Electric Power Steering (EPS) system in response to inputs provided by ultrasonic sensors. A competing camera-based system from Lexus takes three times as long. [9]

 

Could you give us the back story on your purchase Silver? eBay purchase or otherwise how did you find the car in the different state, how did you inspect it and verify condition, etc. I'm thinking of going national with my next auto purchase.

 

Well originally, we had been using a broker to help us find what we wanted. He was going to try to buy us something from auction so we would have to only pay the same as what the dealerships pay when they by them, plus the brokers fee of $500. Still cheaper then the markup that the dealerships put on them after they buy them from auction. He uses his "buyers" across the country to verify the condition when they come to auction, and will not even show you anything that doesn't meet your requirements for ammenities and condition. My brother and several friends have all used this broker, and bought excellent condition vehicles from him with exactly what they wanted for $2-3k less then the same on a dealer lot. So I was hopeful that he was going to be able to do the same for us.

However, we quickly learned that what we wanted was kinda a hard combination to get, namely because we wanted the Hemi, and we wanted the 2nd row bench seat. In the Durango, almost all the Hemi models came in the Limited, and most of those came with the J package upgrade that had second row buckets seats (only seats two instead of 3). He said it was going to be a needle in a haystack to find exactly what we wanted. He searched the database, and found that in the last 6 months, there had only been 6 that came through the system that would have been what we wanted, and not all of those would have been under the mileage we would have been looking for. So it was going to be a long time till we might find something at auction. So, I started looking myself at dealerships, and expanded the search to the Aspen. I came across the one in Utah on my own. We decided that it was close enough that if it all checked out, we would consider driving to see it. Any further out of state then this one was, and I probably would have passed. As it was, 10 hours was a lot, but it was still doable. I contacted the dealer and spoke extensively with him about it first. He sent me the CarFax and an Auto Check and a detailed vehicle description with pictures. It turns out that they were the ones who sold it to the original owner in 2008 when it was brand new. The owner brought it back in last week to trade in for something else. So they knew the complete history of it. Plus, it was still under factory warranty, which is a big plus too.

In retrospect, I should have contacted my broker first instead of the dealership. he might have been able to buy it from them wholesale instead. But since I contacted them, they knew they potentially had a retail customer on the hook, so they would never had sold it wholesale at that point.

Anyway, after seeing all the paperwork that came with it showing that it was clean, no accidents, no repairs, and seeing the detailed pics of it the dealer sent me, and leaning the back story on it (single owner, all the service records, etc...), I had enough confidence that it was at least good enough to warrant the 10 hour drive to see it. I had to put $500 down to hold it. I drove to Provo and checked it out in person. We were totally willing to pass on it if it didn't meet my standards. We would have been out the $500 and the time and money it took to drive to Provo. But I was confident like I said that it was going to be good. It was, and we bought it.

If we hadn't needed to trade in our Jeep as part of the purchase, looking at it ahead of time and buying it would have been even easier since I probably could have just bought a cheap ticket and flown to Salt Lake or Provo. But since I had to trade in, it made it a little more complicated. It was a gamble, don't get me wrong. But it was worth it in the end.

In the future, i'd probably try to use the broker again. This was a little unusual way to buy somehthing, escpecially for me being very concervative and ver picky, but it turned out to work great for us.

 

so what your saying is, when your wife leaves town you're going to jack it up buy new tires and scrape off that pretty white paint and chrome right?

 

Ya, if it had been up to me, i'd probably have bought an SLT trimmed Durango so that we could beat the crap out of it and not worry about how it looked. But since the wife drives it 90% of the time in town to haul the kids and go shopping, she wanted something that looked good in town too. So i'll have to leave it as is. It is actually pretty capable overall, same as any Durango. It is full time 4wd with a 4Hi and 4Lo option. Full skid plate package (more plates then my Ram has), tow hooks, etc... Defiently will go places the Honda Pilot we where looking at would not go, escpecailly since it is build on a truck frame instead of a car frame. I do plan to remove the running boards for improved ground clearance, and to swap out the 20" wheels with the 18's that where also available for it. Other then that, it will do what we need, even though it will look fancy doing it. And my wife gets a nice "town" SUV at the same time. Win.

 

That is a nice one, Silver. I bought an 07 for my wife in 08. We had wanted one ever since they came out, but the sticker price on these things are 38-44K. My son was working for this GM dealership in the shop changing oil and such, and told us this silver one had just came in and it was really cheap. Long story short, it had 22,000 on the odometer and they were asking 26K, and I got them down to 23K. They gave us 7500 for our 99 5.9L Durango. It's a limeted edion, loaded with everything except the navigation. It was a Really great buy, I don't think they knew that much about them at the time, and like you said, power to spare, and I'll add that these things ride like a cadillac. It's the most comfortable SUV I've ever driven.