Oh dear. When USA Today car critic James R. Healey finds a car underwhelming, you can bet it has very, very little to recommend it. In fact, Healey is less impressed with the big Lincoln than our Justin Berkowitz. Where Berk praises the MKS' mission critical waftability, Healey says the MKS' ride and handling is "not so good. The former was a bit stiff, even harsh, on moderate bumps in one test car equipped with 20-inch-diameter wheels and their stubby-sidewall tires. The tester with 18-inch wheels was smoother, but still delivered an unpleasantly choppy ride… [The] MKS lacks the firm, lively, well-controlled feel of an Infiniti, which Lincoln says will be a rival. Nor does it match the creamy feel of Lexuses, also potential competitors." Although Healey couldn't top Justin's "Sucko the Clown" description of the MKS' six-speed, the USA Today guy was similarly unimpressed with the cranky cog swapper. So… what then? "It has the right size, features and power. But MKS is not knockout gorgeous, and it lacks the sweet, lively integrity of the best luxury sedans." Ford doesn't have much time to sort-out the MKS' deficiencies. The Blue Oval Boys better hop to it.
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Agreed 100%
I’ll wait for Dan Neil’s take. His writing will also be more entertaining than Healey’s, whose prose is not as dry as, say, Consumer Reports’, but otherwise is pedestrian at best.
It’s a Ford 500, why would anyone think it was special?
Damn! Either the guys in that picture are really short or the car is cartoonishly huge…
The American car companies allow for too much marketing and accounting to influence a vehicle’s development. The MKS is an example of that.
The car looks amazing until you get behind the wheel (or so it seems from reviews). Even if you don’t like the styling, it’s hard to say that it’s boring. The car has the requisite power numbers and features. Add in big wheels and lots of chrome; what’s not to like?
Well, everything unseen and unwritten has been compromised. We start with the platform. A stretched Mondeo platform would have been absolutely perfect for this car. And at this price, there’s no excuse for not utilizing Ford Europe’s gem. Then we have the knee-jerk-reaction-to-gas-prices transmission. The cost-cutting of less-visible interior bits. This is not a car that Ford can be proud of (the LS6/LS8 was). Rather, the MKS is basically a semi-competent segment-filler.
This car begs the question: Why did Ford give up on the LS? And how good would this car be if were the 3rd-gen LS instead?
Over at the Washington Post, their dubious auto critic, Warren Brown, delivered a similarly tepid review of the MKS and says that for a nearly identical price he prefers the Buick Lucerne Super with the Northstar V-8.
I wonder if the Town Car can triple its sales, just like the Marquis does to the Montego/Sable.
20-inch wheels? What do you expect? Where did this idiot fascination with Conestoga wheels come from? A prime example of style over substance.
I’d opt for 15-inch wheels on a performance car, but nobody makes serious tires in that size anymore. Fortunately, 16-inchers are still well-supplied.
We got our 1st MKS this week. Here’s my take:
I love the exterior style. This is really an Acura RL competitor for $8k less, and in that light it has much better style than the RL. I love the side profile, the whole front end, the chrome that wraps up and over the roof a la BMW 7 series/Maxima.
Inside it’s a mixed bag. Real wood and chrome is nice, but the sun reflecting off the wood makes it disappear next to the chrome. Everything is soft touch, but ends up looking cheap. The door panels in particular are soft touch top to bottom, but look hard, and the door pocket is tiny. Everything works fine, but I was disappointed by the Ford parts bin switches. The center stack switches are new, but the MKS reuses the window, door lock, mirror, headlight and turn signal switches from every other Ford. The lower roof line combined with the higher window sills make it seem tight inside.
The sunroof is nice, until you open it. It is very loud on the highway.
The best feature is the new navigation system. The resolution of the screen is awesome and the graphics look great. I love the new Sirius Travel Link features, but they are slow to download and disappear above 10mph. Your passenger isn’t allowed to check the movie listings while you drive??? The weather map pinpointed rain on my test drive perfectly. No sooner had I looked at the screen and said “It says it is supposed to be raining” I had rain dropping on the windshield.
I was disappointed that the seat rails were left exposed on the floor and that the high center console holds such a small bin under the armrest. The center armrest is split and slides forward, but the action is very cheap feeling.
The trunk is huge inside, but the opening is very small due to the sloping rear window.
Driving the car, it’s best just to leave it in drive. I tried the manual shift feature, but it’s just a waste of time. When you start shifting for yourself, the tranny stops paying attention and you really have to do it all yourself, at least until you put it back in automatic mode. Doesn’t seem to make the car any quicker. At least the engine has plenty of power and sounds great.
Overall, the MKS is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s gorgeous, drives great, and has all the expected luxury features. The only 2 negatives I mentioned that would bother me day to day would be the narrow trunk opening and the slow Travel Link downloads. While I won’t be in the market for a $46k luxury sedan anytime soon, I am already dreaming of a 2 year old $25k MKS. Black on Black please.
Oh, and sir, no it DOES NOT come with a bench front seat. The Town Car is over there…..
Having had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time with the MKS recently, I will share my two cents (and as a disclaimer, yes, I am an employee of a Lincoln dealer).
The MKS is an excellent vehicle for what Lincoln needs it to be – a replacement for the Town Car that actual people will want to drive, and not just retirees and livery services.
It is not a sports sedan, nor does it claim to be. It is however comfortable, roomy, a great value (no other luxury sedan comes close to offering the same amount of kit for the price), and overally stylish is a restrained/safe way. In normal driving the transmission behaves very well, the engine has plenty of power, and most importantly, everything just works.
The interior has its ups and downs. The leather is very soft and smells great, the dash is wrapped in real leather, there is real wood, and everything that your eye is going to come into contact with often is high quality (though I do agree that the chrome ‘L – I – N – C – O – L – N’ on the center stack is a bit silly). In the black interior any sub-par materials are practically invisible, and only slightly noticeable (i.e. you have to be looking for them) in other interior color options. Ergonomically everything is laid out sensibly and within easy reach, it looks thought out and classy overall.
The little things come together to make it special, like how each of the two key fobs will automatically set the seat, the mirrors, and the steering wheel for a car that has both husband and wife drivers, how all major controls (nav, phone, climate, audio, etc) can be handled from the steering wheel or via voice command, how instead of a CD changer you can get a hard drive that automatically rips all of your CDs and even connects via Sirius to the Gracenote database to label them with title/artist/cover art/etc, and how all these and the myriad other features can be accessed intuitively from the moment one sits in the driver’s seat.
The MKS can hold out for short bursts of highly spirited driving, but overall that is not the place of this car. Lincoln designed and built a great vehicle for those who want a little bit of everything, and that will completely satisfy the needs of 90% of drivers 90% of the time. You can call it safe or marketing/accounting driven engineering, and it is admittedly not a car developed for those looking for excitement and performance above all else, but nor are those the people Lincoln is targetting. It is a solid, user-friendly, well built, well driving, well appointed, and well priced car for the public at large.
Also, thus far sales and customers, at least at my dealership, seem to be agreeing. Of course, that is just my two cents.
The Lincoln Taurus is everything I would expect a “near-luxury” car to be.
Everything is good, but there is no reason to buy it over other models in the price range…such as the CTS.
HaHa, those buck teeth grilles remind me of Bugs.
NulloModo: … though I do agree that the chrome ‘L – I – N – C – O – L – N’ on the center stack is a bit silly.
This aspect of the interior just baffles me. A plain piece of flat plastic with LINCOLN on it? Why not some sort of small storage bin — or something that could funtion as a cupholder in that spot? This seems like just a complete design gaff by whomever was in charge of the interior.
dwford Says: This is really an Acura RL competitor for $8k less, and in that light it has much better style than the RL.
Which is exactly what the Lincoln-Taurus shouldn’t be. Then again, when you gotta work with that platform…
Does your sales info suggest the RL buyer as someone your dealer should court? I mean, the RL is a dud!
You would be surprised at how many Acura buyers are unhappy with their cars and find the new Lincolns to their liking. We have taken in so many Acuras for Lincolns. The MKS will definitely appeal to the RL and TL buyer. Honda/Acura has lost their edge. Witness the new uglier 2009 TL….TSX……RL….
I will agree that the only reason the MKS is fwd/awd instead of rwd/awd is because Ford lacks a modern rwd chassis to work with. Then again, so does Acura.
I still love it, despite its flaws.
Considering that the MKS is “an old person’s car,” not unlike the Taurus and Sable that it is based on, it should probably be available with a bench seat, if only as an option, like the Buick Lucerne.
It would make sense for Town Car owners looking to down-size.
Why would a Town Car owner want to downsize from a real car into a re-badged Taurus?
The Town car has a V8 (which is what a proper Lincoln flagship has), is bigger, more user friendly, is not full of gimmicks that people don’t need and will get 30MPG on the highway.
Oh well, Ford is really set on trying to make this recycled Volvo platform sell. Since it was introduced in 2005, there have been SIX failures that have used this platform…SIX! And I think that the MKTaurus and goofy Flex will be number seven and eight.
How many vehicles have to fail before you consider the platform a failure?
Dear Lincoln designers, the front grille`s angle comparetively to headlight side angle is ugly. Either change the side of headlight or the grille. What are those little chrome triangles? Looks amateur.
# factotum Says:
July 11th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Damn! Either the guys in that picture are really short or the car is cartoonishly huge…
They are really short. I almost tripped on Fields once.
IMHO once the select Ford managers and a few Lincoln devotees have bought theirs, this car will be discounted heavily. Why would they tune a car for comfort, not handling, and then give it a sport-mode shifter? Why did they put chrome and metal all over the dashboard just perfectly so the sun hits your eyes from almost any angle? What’s with the hokey space-invaders sound effects being used for warning chimes?
Sorry, this thing maybe competes with the Buick Lucerne, Chrysler 300, and Taurus(!) but they are deluding themselves if they think BMW or Infiniti customers will switch over.
Bah, this is a placeholder until (hopefully) the MKR arrives, with a proper RWD layout.
I’ll reserve judgement on the twin-turbo V6 until such as time as it (hopefully) arrives.
Then we’ll have us a Lincoln flagship, ladies and gentlemen.
There’s a good idea. 340 HP TT V6 with FWD biased AWD.
Can’t Ford do anything right?
Critics are a pain in the butt. If you are really that interested, go drive one yourself and form your own opinion.
I, for one, am watching the Ford product pipeline. I also enjoy having ‘inside people’ (dwford, nullomodo) in on the conversation. It is true that little things about the ownership experience that make a car special. As mentioned, Lincoln has a bit of work to do to come into the same mindspace as BMW and Infiniti. They can start with a proper manual/top of the line trim combination.
Lincoln may not want to court the luxo-sports crowd, BUT Ford has proven they have the platform for a serious car in this segment (Mondeo, Ms3). With the TSX in limbo, the sinking dollar inflating cost on the 1- and 3- series along with A4 and C-class, there is a growing market a solid driving nicely appointed luxo-sedan sedan that sticks to the ‘entry-lux’ price point.
Okay so you haven’t driven the new 2009 Lincoln MKS yet. Give it time this new vehicle will be coming out more and more each day to the showroom. For those that did drive the MKS already and somewhat like it drive it again it can nothing but grow on you you’ll enjoy it. Gotta go now good motoring; Oh, and remember the “Lincoln Owner Travels Well.”