A few weeks back, the folks at Ford recently reached out to offer me a test drive of the new Lincoln MKS.
I was a bit skeptical at first, considering the history of the Lincoln brand. Namely, I didn’t figure I was quite old enough. Lincoln is the brand my grandparents drive. Lincoln is the brand of the Land Boats of my childhood. Or at least that’s where I started the weekend.
But after driving this MKS for a few days now, I can see that Lincoln is working on building a product that younger folks would be interested in. The car was feature laden, and for a gadget guy like me, that’s tasty fun.
Here’s a quick run down of some of the fun features:
- Badass cruise control – this was probably the most enjoyable feature about the car. The dynamic cruise adjusted to deal with obstacles around you (i.e. other cars) and slows down and speeds up to keep a safe distance from the car in front of you. Even if the car in front of you has recently occupied that space. Very cool. When you put this car in cruise control, it really controls your cruise, so to speak. Unlike typical cruise controls, it doesn’t make you hit the breaks when someone changes into your lane.
- Seat heaters… and coolers! Yeah, it’s cool to heat your seats. Unless you live in Texas. I’ve dreamed of a day when I could drive to a meeting in a nice shirt on a Texas summer day without walking into the meeting with sweat marks down my back. Gross, sure. But if you’ve ever been in this situation, you’ll feel me.
- THX Sound – who knew they did cars and Pixar movies!
- Microsoft Sync – Worked pretty slick for my iPod, but I couldn’t for the life of me get my iPhone’s bluetooth to connect. Looked pretty cool if it had though. Had I had the car longer, I would have googled to figure out how to fix it.
- Seats and mirrors that readjusted automatically if changed. I didn’t have enough time to deal with figuring out how to set my own preferences.
- Smmooooooth ride – like any of the Lincoln models I’ve been in over the years, this one had a pretty smooth ride. A bit on the rough side on the freeways (though not “rough”, really) but on city streets it absolutely floated over bumps.
As much as I liked the car overall, this is definitely not a kid friendly car. The car seat barely seemed to fit overall, allowing The Girl’s feet to be well within kicking distance of the passenger seat. The bottom seat anchors for clipping the car seat straps in were aligned really poorly and were far too far apart to make the short strap on our car seat actually work. And the trunk, while big enough to fit a body, wasn’t very deep. I often find myself changing The Girl in my trunk, or letting her play in it while I deal with bags or strollers. (Don’t worry, I leave the lid open!) The way the MKS was designed, it doesn’t really work for that.
Of course, families with 2 year olds certainly aren’t their target market!
Thanks to the kind folks at Ford for the drive. I’d be happy to drive anything else you want to loan me!
