This seems to be all the more surprising given the vehicle’s shape—it has the same “box on wheels” look that led some wags to dismiss the styling of a Flex shape-a-like, the Scion xB, as a rolling refrigerator.
But this aerodynamic Amana has a few tricks up its boxy sleeves. “It's amazing what the little details can do,” Richard Gresens observes, and he should know, being the Flex’s chief designer.
All of those little details add up to a coefficient-of-drag number of 0.355 (the number refers to how easily the vehicle moves through the air). Although not as slippery as, let’s say, a Nissan GT-R sports car—that car moves through the atmosphere like a hot knife through butter, with a 0.27 rating—the Flex bests its competitors, which average 0.375 in wind-tunnel tests.
Another advantage to making the Flex aerodynamically agile is by giving it that lowrider look. Although it doesn’t ride quite as low as the typical lowrider cruiser, the Flex’s stance has been lowered so as to reduce the airflow over the underbody. (Plus, it looks more stylish, too!) The reason for this is that when you reduce the ground clearance, more air goes over the top of the vehicle, which results in less drag.