Reviewed: The 2010 Lincoln MKT

 

When we tested the Ford Flex last March, we knew the Lincoln MKT would be arriving on deal lots soon. At the time we wondered if the new Lincoln would be/could be the new “Black Sedan” or maybe have a bit of that private jet feel to it for second row passengers.  Other than the motor in the Flex, the standard 3.5L V-6 which we found just a touch lacking, we loved the Flex, and knew that it would be hard for Lincoln to come up with something better.

Right off the bat the thing that smacks you in the face with the MKT is the styling.  As with most of the rest of the Lincoln line you either like the styling, or you don’t.  We dig Lincoln’s exterior look and have no problems with the execution of the design language here.  Pay attention when we say exterior. 

While the Flex looks like a giant MINI from the rear, you aren’t going to mistake the MKT for anything else.  Not only does it have Lincoln’s strong front facia, it has the kicked up shoulder over the rear wheel that gives it a more muscular look as well.  From there the rear part of the roof begins to slope down into the rear lift gate.  While it doesn’t have the elegance as it could have had if the Ford designers had used more of a French Curve, the rear treatments are for the most part successful. 

A straight-on rear shot does give you an idea of just how large this vehicle is though.  An interesting thing to note with the MKT is what a difference color plays here.  When you see an MKT in black, as our tester was, it appears much more substantial than when you see it in a lighter color.  Normally the fashionistas will tell you that black is slimming, however, on the MKT that’s not the case.

If you have been inside a Lincoln recently, the interior will feel vary familiar, just a little larger in scale.  The materials are very nice, though not quite to the Audi Q7 level.  Then again the MKT checks in about twenty grand less, so there you are.  There are soft touch materials where you would expect them, the center stack is well laid out, and of course you get Ford’s great SYNC system.

The second row of our MKT was equipped with captains chairs and the refrigerator in between.    If you are a mom from Westchester County hauling the boys to hockey practice, and the girls to their equestrian lessons the cooler does a good job of keeping their sodas cold.  If you are an executive using this as your “black sedan” then it does a passable job of keeping that Non Vintage bottle for Krug cold.  Second row passengers not only have plenty of leg room and their own HVAC controls, but also heated and cooled seats as well.       

Row three is where we see the largest difference between the Flex and the MKT.  In the Flex, two full sized adults can fit back there, for a time, and not be uncomfortable.  In the MKT, they can’t.  It isn’t so much the leg room, it’s the lack of head room in the MKT.  The sloping rear section of the roof of the MKT cuts in the cabin a great deal and the result is a serious lack of available headroom.  While at not quite 5’11” I can sit upright and have plenty of room in the third row of the Flex, anyone much over five feet tall won’t be able to sit upright in the Lincoln’s third row.

The major nit that I have to pick with the MKT’s interior is one that I think would be solved by a change in color.  By choosing the Olive Ash wood trim you aren’t forced into the rest of the interior being all black.  With the Olive Ash trim you can get what Lincoln is calling “canyon” which is more like a nice darker tan/camel color.  The other choice for the seating materials and some of the interior trim pieces is “light stone.”  While I would not call the all black interior of our tester oppressive or claustrophobic, it did feel a bit cave-like.  Even with the large double panoramic sunroofs teh cabin lacked the airiness of the Flex we tested almost a year ago, and I believe much of that has to do with the interior color choice.

Have a look at some of the interior pictures of the MKT that our friends over at Autoblog had about the same time we had our tester, and I think you will see the dramatic difference. 

There are a few things we’d like to see in the interior of the MKT in future model years.  First would be a heated steering wheel.  Grabbing the the wheel on some of the cold single digit temps we experienced while the MKT was in our driveway was not the most pleasant thing without gloves on.  Perhaps a switch of materials to Alcantera or some other micro suede would accomplish the same thing and give the Lincoln an even more upscale feel without a bump up in the price tag. 

My second suggestion for Ford’s engineers has to do with the MKT’s remote start function.  How about a system that remembers the last settings for the heating and cooling of the seat and cabin temps?  Again jumping into the MKT during temperature extremes can be unpleasant.  It’s a small thing, but one that would make a big difference in our eyes.  As Ford and Lincoln expand their “My Touch” and open the software for the Sync system to developers, perhaps we can have an app for our iPhones/Crackberries/Android’s that accomplish all of that together.

Under the hood of our Lincoln was the 355 Horsepower 3.5 liter V6 EcoBoost engine.  The added power and torque of the EcoBoost over the standard, non-boosted 262 Horsepower V6, easily solved our largest issue with the Flex, and that was needed just a bit more grunt in passing and merging situations.  Even with the added power of the EcoBoost and the extra drive line losses of MKT being an AWD model the difference in mileage between the two people haulers wasn’t much, maybe one or two MPG at most. That makes the EcoBoost well worth the trade off we think.

As for handling, well, at a curb weight just over 5000lbs, it’s no sports car, but the MKT is more than competent for anything you would ask of it. It handles predictably, there is no real tug from the front wheels in the AWD model when you apply power from low speeds around corners.  And the ride on the highway, even on Michigan’s bomb cratered roads was good.

While we really do like the MKT, we are left with one issue, is it fifteen grand better than the Flex?  Our immediate reaction is no, but then again maybe it depends on what you are looking for. And if it’s something quite peculiar, something shimmering and white, it leads you here, despite your destination, under the milky way tonight.   Where the Flex comes across as the tall wagon with hints of the Woodys of the 40’s and 50’s, the MKT does have a more substantial, more serious presence about it.  You can’t help but feel the interior of the MKT is a serious Hugo Boss suit person, while the Flex is more khakis and polo shirt kind of guy

If what you crave is most of the interior usability of the Flex in a package that projects a more upscale adult feel that the Flex might, then the MKT is for you.  While the interior is not quite up to the Audi Q7 level, it’s fairly close, and as we said earlier a twenty grand difference in price between the Lincoln and the Audi is fairly substantial.  The MKT might not quite be the four wheel Gulfstream G550 we had hoped it could be, but having to fly business class on Emirates Airline isn’t exactly a hardship.

Vehicle Review The Lincoln MKX

Over the last few years Lincoln has made a concerted effort to move away from the choice of the blue hair, early bird special crowd, and to a younger demographic and one with probably more money, and that is the Lexus crowd.

Lincoln’s were for many years cars to aspire to.  US Presidents were driven in them, and executives wanted to drive and be seen in them.  Somewhere in the late 60’s to early 70’s they lost their way and it’s only in the last couple years that the ship began to be righted.  

Our tuxedo black MKX review unit left a good first opinion visually.  It has just enough bright work, with the optional chrome 20” wheels to offset and highlight the body lines nicely.  Going down the road, parked in your driveway or being valeted at the Big Rock Chop House in Birmingham, MI the MKX has a presence that it belongs.

When you move to the inside of the MKX and the theme continues.  The materials are nice, and the fit and finish are good.  There are a couple of exceptions where the bean counters got in the way, the sides of the center console and the face of the instrument cluster are a hard plastic rather than the soft touch leatherette found in the rest of the interior.  Seems an odd place to drop some noticeably cheep materials, right where the driver can notice it, and they saved maybe $20, wrong decision.

After out time with the Flex and the Fusion Hybrid we had gotten used to the big display for Ford’s Sync system, however the one in the MKX was much smaller.  While not too small, the larger display in the other vehicles was less prone to fat fingering as you were going through the menus.  That said this install of Sync seemed to be just a bit zippier in voice recognition.  Our only real complaint in the past about Sync is that the delay in between the spoken command and it’s response was just about a second too long to fall into normal speech patterns. The delay here seemed shorter.  Or maybe we are just getting trained by it, hard to say.

For what seems like a smaller vehicle, the MKX is roomy on the inside.  Back seat passengers will have no problems with leg room even with the front seats all the way back.  Also ingress and egress are good for back seat passengers.  On far to many SUV’s the rear doors are quite short and it can make it awkward to get in and out, especially for tall people, and some older folks as well.  The rear area has much more room that you would think from the outside as well.  You would think that it would have less room than an Escape, but it is quite a bit larger.  A trip to IKEA for some shelving and other large items we needed to redo a room in the house were easily swallowed up.  This is good news for the target demographic for this SUV, not so much that they will be hauling stuff from IKEA, or Lowe’s, but that it will haul three or four kids and all their gear to hockey practice.

Driving the MKX is a what you would expect.  The real test for us was coming home from an announcing gig that went very long.  We rolled out of Milan Raceway just after 1:30AM.  The 58 mile drive home may have been the easiest, most relaxing drive home from the track we’ve had.  It was a long day, we were VERY tired, and yet with the cruise set at 70 the time seemed to fly by.  For those road warriors that would purchase this and pile on the miles, that I would think would be very welcome.  General handling is good as well, for such a heavy vehicle, it takes on/off ramps quite well.

There are a couple things that we did not like at all for the MKX in the driving experience however.  Because of the rear design and the sloping rear section, vision between the C and D pillars on the drivers side is not existent creating a MASSIVE blind spot.  The passenger side isn’t much better either.  This makes it difficult merging in traffic trying to judge the distance to vehicles behind you.  What would be very welcome on the MKX is the blind spot detection in the rear view mirrors that we had in the Fusion Hybrid.

Mileage in the MKX is about what your would expect, be got 19 in pretty mixed driving.  We tried to use some of the techniques we learned from Wayne Gerdes to help out the mileage, but by no means did we drive far outside what we would call “normal” driving habits.


A big deal was made when Lincoln began to instal THX Certified sound systems in their product line.  We were very interested to see if it would live up to the hype.  We ran a variety of music through the system.  Mingus, Pink Floyd. Kevin Saunderson, Pantera, Mazzy Star and Norah Jones just to name a few.  Sadly, to my ears, the system sounded no better than the systems in the Flex or the Fusion.  While we are no uber audiophiles, we are pretty sure we would notice a difference of quality, being accustomed to listening to uncompressed music over some nice headphones on a regular basis.

At the end of the day we come out with some mixed feelings about the MKX.  As Billy Crystal’s version of Fernando might say, “It’s better to look good, that to feel good.”  That, and Maxwell Smart’s classic line, “Missed it by THAT much.” sum up the MKX nicely.  The vehicle looks good, but it doesn’t feel special.  If you are driving a premium brand, at a premium price, just shy of $45,000, it should make you feel special, and the MKX didn’t,  It’s a nice vehicle, don’t get us wrong, it just doesn’t feel special.

What could Ford change to bring it to that level?  That’s the kicker, we’re not sure, and we thought long and hard about it.  There is no one thing that it is, it’s just a take away.  Maybe it’s better materials inside, we don’t know, we couldn’t put our finger on it. When we shared that thought with a number of people who rode with us in the MKX we got that silent head nod that tells you they were thinking along the same lines and were having trouble putting their thoughts into words.

At the end of the day how do we grade this?  We may be being hard here but 7.8 out of 10 is where we end up.  Again, not that it isn’t a fine vehicle, it’s just that it didn’t meet our expectations.

Ford Flex Photo Tour

Over the next few days we’ll be bringing you our review of the 2009 Ford Flex Limited that we’ve been driving for a few days.  Quick take, it’s a very impressive automobile.  For today we’ll take you on a photo tour of the Flex, we’ll have a written and video review of it in the next couple of days.

Enjoy!