Instrumented Test
From the November 2015 issue
At 80 mph, the new Lincoln MKX sails down the road as if it were built from 4664 pounds of bubble wrap, fiberglass insulation, and cotton balls. Acoustically laminated glass, lined fender wells, and active noise cancellation create a cabin so quiet that even in a rush-hour commute you can hear Matthew McConaughey’s soft drawl over your shoulder:
“I’ve been driving a Lincoln since long before anyone paid me to drive one . . . I didn’t do it to be cool . . . I didn’t do it to make a statement . . . I just liked it.”
It’s true, says the Oscar winner worth somewhere around $75 million to $100 million. “Now I have other cars, but I have driven a Lincoln and I now have a Lincoln in my driveway,” McConaughey told real-life Crypt Keeper Larry King. We take that to mean he once commandeered a Town Car as part of an on-set prank and his personal assistant now has a new, borrowed ride.
No one is going to pay you to drive a Lincoln. To the contrary, at $63,275, our Lincoln MKX is priced as if the company has already completed the turnaround, made the comeback, and ascended to the top of the luxury field. The Reserve model isn’t even the top shelf of Lincoln’s boozy trim levels. Order the MKX Black Label and you can nip at $70,000 with Venetian leather in hues named ganache and rouge noir (purple’s haughty cousin).
With the new MKX and the New York auto show Continental concept, Lincoln proposes to turn left while everyone else in the business veers right. America’s other luxury brand won’t be lured into Cadillac’s uphill battle against the sport-obsessed Germans. Instead, the 98-year-old automaker wants to channel its past, when a Lincoln was stately and confident, and performance was only incidental to the smooth V-8 under the hood. Lincoln marketers call this experience “quiet luxury,” and we can confirm that it is far more soothing than the gas-station-grade toilet paper of the same name.
Seemingly unconcerned with the German marques, Lincoln has its sights on the Japanese, generally, and the Lexus RX, specifically. That’s obvious not just in the marketing, but in everything from the way the MKX drives to the way you interact with it. Every new MKX wears adaptive dampers, but the shocks are only driver-adjustable if you add four-wheel drive for $2495. Even then, switching among comfort, normal, and sport modes requires spelunking deep into the instrument-cluster menu where you assign a suspension setting to the transmission’s drive and sport positions.
That’s the long-winded way of saying there is no fiddly rocker switch to relax the ride as you drive closer to Detroit proper. Instead, Lincoln hopes its customers set a preferred mode and forget about the driver-selectable function altogether. Or, more likely, buyers will drive their MKX in whatever mode is in effect when they take delivery.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The MKX covers ground with a pleasant, controlled softness in normal mode. The suspension damps out expansion joints and cracks while the body obediently follows the road. Accurate, nicely weighted steering with a solid sense of on-center helps the MKX feel smaller and lighter than it is. Overall, the MKX embodies Lexus-like smoothness but with greater precision. If you find yourself torn between a BMW and an MKX, though, consult the DSM-5 for the appropriate diagnosis.
A naturally aspirated 3.7-liter V-6 comes standard. The $2000 EcoBoost upgrade installs a twin-turbocharged mite of an engine that makes 335 horsepower and 380 pound-feet of torque from 2.7 liters. You can buy the same hardware for $3030 less in a Ford Edge Sport, but the Lincoln premium adds software that’s good for an additional 20 horsepower and 30 pound-feet. That’s not enough, however, to compensate for its extra 200 pounds of opulence. The MKX clears 60 mph in 6.0 seconds and strides past the quarter-mile mark in 14.5. The Edge accomplishes the same tasks in 5.6 and 14.2 seconds, respectively.
