The Freestyle name is expected to live on, but it will no longer continue in its current form. This is the surprising word from Ford, sparked by new information coming from suppliers. The Freestyle did not sell nearly as well as was originally forcasted, so the Blue Oval plans to discontinue the model in its current form after the 2007 model year. The Freestyle name will probably shift to a Mazda6-based crossover. With two new wagons slated to enter the Ford line up, the-little-wagon-that-apparently-couldn't has become the unlucky one in the 'board room.' No one likes an underperformer, but we can't entirely fault the Freestyle as a product. It did suffer from a lack of power, but we think Ford's marketing is also partly to blame for the poor sales performance.
Still, the Freestyle's only been on sale for 10 months and they're already considering killing it. Ten months! Honestly, we think the sales issue could've been fixed by a decent V6. Although one could also argue that Ford doesn't have a decent V6, at least not one that can compete with the six-pot powertrains from Honda, Nissan and now even Hyundai.
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