2009 Lincoln MKS Car Tech Review

2009 Lincoln MKS Car Tech Review Brian Cooley: Toothy affair isn’t it? Well, that’s the new face of Lincoln. This is there brand new car the MKS. Let’s take it for a ride, check the tech, check the handling and see if they’ve really got a credible alternative here to the mid-dollar German cars, not to mention the Japanese. Now inside our MKS are a relative tech toy Tour de Force; navigation with hard drive; THX audio system and sync. Let's start with the navigation. It’s a good looking system. Of course everything on this car is touch screen. The good thing about that is the buttons are all nice and large. Ford’s always had a good touch for large touch zones. And as I’ve mentioned the navigation is hard drive based so it’s easy to update the database. But more importantly that gives us some room for a media server. You can rip CDs to the hard drive on this guy of course. Here’s an audio CD goes into my single slot audio system because you’ve got a hard drive. Once you get your music ripped, you can see all that here in the jukebox. And again it’s an easy way to get around your library and turn the car into your iPod. And with that sync technology we also have the ability to connect user devices. Those are these; USB, Bluetooth streaming, and also a line in jack that of course lives right here. Well that’s just kind of a dumb peripheral. And by the way, that USB port can also take an iPod or other type of intelligent player and charge it, as well as taking USB sticks. This is part of what’s really cool about sync. The other part of sync is really cool; of course it’s the voice recognition technology. But sync cannot fix the fact that voice recognition can be overused. Here’s where it’s good, for things like dialing a phone number or if you’re going to enter a destination. Here’s where we don’t need voice, temperature 68. [Demonstration] Here is the other way to do it. That was easier. Another great trick on our media system once you’re done ripping your audio to the hard drive, take advantage of your single slot which also digests DVDs and watch a movie, when your parked of course. That screen is really great. The sheer quality of the black level and the dot pitch, I mean, it’s a great TV, period. THX2 certified 5.1 surround of course, sixteen speakers, 600 watts. It is phenomenally well engineered. Okay check it out. It is very new to Ford and on the serious satellite radio platform is serious travel link. Movie listings, and there we are, movie listings along our route. You also saw we have sports course, sports schedules I think it’s pretty cool and of course, the all important weather which can be overlaid onto your navigation map. Now at this point in history as of our taping, there’s only one engine available, a 3.7 liter dual overhead cam, 24-valve, fuel injected V6. Now I say right now because next year, Ford’s going to roll out the Eco Boost V6 and this car which is a slightly smaller displacement but with twin turbo and direct fuel injection. In terms of handling, the car feels much more tippy and wobbly. It doesn’t have that really planted feeling that frankly I was expecting. I detected quite a bit of axel hop in the rear which I found disturbing over a rough pavement. So this is not a big handling car although it drives well, you know the difference? Handling is light when you think a car is a piece of sporting gear. Driving well is when it just drives well, that’s what most of us do. The automatic transmission of this car is a six-speed and it’s your only choice for transmission. It’s a good automatic. I found that when I needed power, it was ready to go. It was ready to downshift quickly, didn’t need a big trump on the pedal to get it to downshift. So this is not a transmission that frustrates. Let’s price our MKS. Thirty eight five for this front-wheel drive version, about $1900.00 more if you get the all-wheel drive. And I mentioned that Eco Boost Twin Turbo Engine that comes next year, 2009. And they say it’s all going to add $700.00 to the MSRP, we shall see. Now, major options, for $3000.00, you can get the navigation which is hard drive based, the media server that goes with it; that includes the touch screen, serious travel link, TXH audio system, that’s a pretty good bundle I think as a value.