It’s funny how Bring A Trailer started as a site for slightly ropey project cars and ended up as the premier digital auction site for some of the car world’s fanciest specimens. It’s certainly a shift that paid off, but every so often, something needs to come around and sort of lower property values a bit. A Ford Freestar just sold on the auction platform predominantly focused on collector cars, and I’d argue it’s actually a perfect fit. Hear me out.
If you ended up memory-holing the Freestar, I don’t blame you. Not only was it effectively the third generation of the dubious Windstar minivan, it also came from the era when Ford decided all of its cars’ names needed to start with the letter F. This resulted in vague branding soup like the Ford Five Hundred replacing the Taurus, and the unusual Ford Freestyle crossover. At face value, the sort of bargain-bin minivan you could’ve rented from Rent-A-Wreck back in 2004 doesn’t seem like an obvious candidate for a collector car auction platform, but when was the last time you saw a Freestar?
Granted, I live in a land of road salt and slush, but I genuinely can’t remember the last time I saw an example of Ford’s last-ditch minivan. I’m likely not alone, as a cursory glance at Autotrader reveals just 24 Freestars for sale on the site at the time of writing. While there are almost certainly more kicking about Facebook Marketplace, finding a well-kept example of this minivan could be challenging indeed.
It probably doesn’t help that minivans often lead hard lives, full of vomit and French fries and being loaded to the gills. It’s a thankless task, carrying a brood around to dance recitals, football games, and other extracurriculars. Not to mention that if a minivan survives long enough that the children who grew up in it are learning to drive, it often becomes the whipping post for garage threshold smacks and close encounters with curbs.
Of course, the Freestar wasn’t without its problems. From a recall over failing torque converters to a recall over third-row seat mount corrosion, a variety of common issues hastened the end of many an example. It wasn’t the greatest minivan Ford had ever put its badge on, but that doesn’t mean we should write it off completely. After all, it would be a tragedy if a car were to go extinct. Someone, somewhere has to reasonably preserve at least one example for historical sake, right?
That brings us neatly on to this particular Freestar. It may be a first-year 2004 model, but it’s only done a reasonable 71,000 miles. They don’t look to be brutal miles either, because the cabin is remarkably nice. Sure, the cargo area has a couple of stains, but the rest of the carpets look certified pre-owned-ready. Besides, the Freestar gained a fold-away third row seat over its Windstar predecessor, so all you’d need to do to hide the cargo area stains is drop the wayback.
What’s more, this is a Freestar Limited, which means it sits right at the top of the range and comes with the requisite toys. Stuff like three-zone climate control with automatic temperature control up front, leather seats, a six-disc CD changer, power sliding doors, and the critical addition of a 4.2-liter V6. Not quite as large as the one in the Chevrolet Astro and GMC Safari, but still a whopper of an engine for a minivan.
See, the standard engine in the Freestar was more or less the same sort of 3.9-liter Essex V6 found in late New Edge Mustangs. With 193 horsepower and 240 lb.-ft. of torque, it was sufficient if unremarkable. However, adding roughly 300 cubic centimeters of displacement turned up the wick nicely to 201 horsepower and 265 lb.-ft. of torque. It’s that latter figure which could be felt around town.
Plus, this particular Freestar is outfitted with the single thing any child in the 2000s wanted in their family car more than anything else—a DVD player with a screen that flips down from the headliner. Sure, the LCD display is laughably tiny by today’s standards, and there are some fundamental flaws with optical media, but this was the height of family luxury 22 years ago. When the batteries in the Nintendo Game Boy Advance SPs died, the whole family could watch “Finding Nemo” together. Well, not the parents because they were in the front seats, but you catch my drift.
Whether it was nostalgia, preservation, or simply the need for a set of wheels that made this Freestar sell for $6,350 on Bring A Trailer, that somehow feels like the right platform for it. It’s a reasonably well-preserved artifact from a time that objectively wasn’t great, but still offers a sense of nostalgia. Hopefully, this van will continue to survive in surprisingly good shape, because even though a car can be flawed and not particularly well-received in its day, someone has to keep them on the road.
Top graphic image: Bring A Trailer
I bought one of these used in 2012. It served well hauling kids in car seats, towing my 3500lbs boat, and anything else I could throw at it. I even moved an upright piano halfway across the state in it.
Of all the Ford “F” models, I still think the Flex is the greatest thing to come out of that era.. the Flex EcoBoost V6 is a pretty fantastic sleeper.
Seems a fair price for the condition honestly. It’s the old BaT energy that shines through occasionally.
For some reason, I really like these vans. Simple and honest, reliable and comfortable. This is a nice example.
When Ford switched from internet browser names —Explorer and Navigator— to F names I’m surprised they didn’t name something Firefox.
When Ford named the Escape, we can all be thankful that the initial choice of NumLock was rejected.
I just had to drive one of these the other day for a short distance and was weirded out by how small it was. Like, very small feeling. The footprint of it felt like Accord size and not like an SUV.
I drove a Windstar for a while. Loved the space. Loved the look. It drove like a truck.
I suffered with the rear speakers cutting out frequently until I found out that upgrading the wattage of the stereo (it was a Premium Sound system, but not premium enough) would overcome the bad contacts that activated the speakers in the sliding doors. Why not just hard wire them, Ford??
Otherwise, not too bad for a 1999 Ford.
I dont understand why GM and Ford let Stellantis win the minivan race, these days Ford released their Bronco lineup to compete with Jeep and its very successful. I bet GM doesnt want to steal sales from the Tahoe/Suburban and Traverse.
We had one of these in the family up to about four years ago. My in-laws bought it with the dual purpose of using it for transporting our young kids around when they wanted and for the kind of long road trips that retirees like to take. It served them very well in that capacity. Times change and kids grow – my MIL replaced it with a new Escape Titanium, but it stayed in the fleet because it was a great vehicle for us to transport our kids and their stuff to college. The last hurrah was usiing it for a run from PA to GA for our youngest when starting his first post-college career. It was 2022 and the price of moving truck rentals were astronomical. I gutted the interior of all the seats that could be removed/folded and used it as the primary moving van. Utlilizing a roof carrier as well, we were able to load an incredible amount of stuff into that thing, to the point that I had no rear window visibility and only a channel where I could see the passenger rear view (pretty much what you’d get in a rental box truck). Despite it’s high miles at that point, It pulled the load admirably. Respect to that powertrain.