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2018 Lincoln Navigator Review | 900 miles in mid-century opulence

PORTLAND, Ore. — Driving the 2019 Lincoln Navigator on my usual 80-mile evaluation route just wouldn't be sufficient. The quick jaunt through downtown Portland and out into wooded mountain roads couldn't possibly do justice to a vehicle intended for the literal long haul. All those seats; all that cargo space; all that comfort and opulence. What the Navigator needed was a road trip, so I took two of them — within five days, over 900 miles and a grand total of 20 hours and 17 minutes in the 24-way power-adjustable, massaging, ventilated saddle. The first journey would be from Portland down to Bend, Ore., and then working my way gradually back through central Oregon backroads. This included winding two-lane highways where the Navigator's excellent adaptive cruise control system maintained its distance (and my sanity) when stuck behind parades of Outbacks, before the 450-horsepower EcoBoost V6 of Raptor fame could dispatch them from across the dotted yellow line. Enough really can't be said about how masterful this engine is — so smooth, so powerful and so quiet. It's perfect for a Lincoln. It also got 20 mpg over the course of the full 900 miles, which compares to the EPA's 21 mpg highway rating. Pretty good given the mountainous terrain and the liberal throttle applied to keep up with a pair of substantially sportier cars I was trailing as part of a photo shoot. Not that the Navigator was really able to keep up with anything once the road got tighter and twistier through the lava fields of the Willamette National Forest. Though I still concur with my initial praise of the Navigator's independent rear suspension and steering that "provides consistent, appropriate and reassuring weighting," there's no getting around the laws of physics. This is a gigantic land craft pushing three tons that's best kept at a relaxed pace – also perfect for a Lincoln. As for the ride, which disappointed during my Navigator first drive in Southern California, the "omnipresent nervousness" I reported didn't really materialize on better pavement in Oregon and later in Washington. True, it's not quite as supple as a unibody Range Rover or Mercedes GLS would be, but it doesn't suffer from the near constant vibration over even the smallest bumps you get in a Chevy Suburban or GMC Yukon XL. On the subject of comfort, though, those 24-way front seats can't be ignored.

2004 Lincoln Mark X concept car goes to auction

Twenty years ago, retro design was arguably at its apex (though it's really never gone away, either here or in other markets). And apparently Ford and Lincoln were considering a way to offer even more retro two-door goodness out of the Thunderbird, which was a couple years old in 2004. The result was the Lincoln Mark X concept car, which is pretty much a rebadged Thunderbird with a couple of unique features. It never went into production, but if you really had your heart set on it, this is your chance to make the sole example your own. At a glance, you might not notice the Thunderbird connection, especially with the top down. The Mark X leans heavily on the '60s Continentals with its wide chrome grille and subtle integrated headlights. It also features the distinct chrome trim that runs along each edge of the car from the headlights all the way back to the tailpipes. It also features slender, wide rear taillights, and a dramatically sloping rear fascia with a sharp edge where the tailpipes lurk. The Mark X also has the party piece of the then-trendy power retractable hardtop. It even had glass panels in the roof, kind of like the later VW Eos. But look a little longer, and you can see the similarities. The proportions, and especially the hardpoints around the doors and windshield, are pretty clearly straight off the Thunderbird. And as contemporary reporting showed, everything mechanical in the vehicle was the same as the Thunderbird, from the powertrain to the suspension. It gets the same 280-horsepower 3.9-liter V8 and five-speed automatic as the T-Bird, along with rear-wheel drive. The interior is much more of a departure from the T-Bird, though. It has the retro dual cowl dashboard that would later appear in other Lincoln products including the Zephyr, Navigator, Aviator and MKX. The MKX of course was actually a Ford Edge-derived, front-drive-based SUV, and so hardly related to this Mark X concept, but it did at least have a similar Continental-style grille when it launched. To a certain extent, it's a little bit surprising the Mark X didn't get a green light for production. Since all the mechanical bits were already in production, and not just in the Thunderbird. The platform, called DEW98, was a unique rear-drive platform with fully independent suspension that was used in the Ford Thunderbird, Lincoln LS sedan and Jaguars S-Type and XF. They all were offered with the same 3.9-liter V8, too, with V6 variants of the LS and Jaguars.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.