Argot Navis

Dan Neil’s review of the Ford Flex in the L.A. Times is a thing of beauty. It was published on July 2nd, but I just read it today, so it’s new to me. The Ford Flex, like most crossovers, is something I have basically no interest in. If I’m going to spend $45,000 (the “as tested” price in that review) to get 24 MPG on the highway, I’m going to at least do it in style. Of course, I’ve never claimed to have very practical taste. The point is, this isn’t a review I enjoyed because I think the car is cool.

So why did I enjoy it? Because it contains what I have to believe is the most circumlocutious description of a car’s styling ever written:

A vivid bit of hyper-design, with postmodern insouciance combined with a kind of raw primitivism — the squared-off profile is what you’d expect a 4-year-old to draw with a fat crayon — the Flex brought the station wagon into the sardonic age.

Translation: It looks like it was designed by a mental patient, or a hillbilly, or a chimpanzee, but in a good way!