2010 Lincoln MKZ Car Review

2010 Lincoln MKZ Review The Lincoln MKZ, under the skin, it’s basically a Ford Fusion but quite different in refinement and style. Let’s check the tech. Let’s get to the cabin tech. Our vehicle is fairly well equipped. We have as you can see a touch screen, hard drive based navigation system. We have DVD playback when you’re parked of course, not while you’re driving. A good size screen, it’s about 6.5 or 7-inches. Nav quality is good, not class leading. It’s a little bit jaggy and kind of fuzzy-looking around some of the edges of fonts and street lines and such but it’s in there with the best of the pack. Being hard drive based, you also get pretty good snap, good throttle response if you will on inputs on the screen and of course, as it’s becoming common these days, you’ve got the 3D bird’s-eye view or if you prefer like I often do -- the good old fashion 2D map view. Now, when you get this car without any optional packages, you still get Lincoln sound, not this THX. We do as you can see have the upgraded package with the THX audio. It is 5.1 surround sound system, one of our favorites in the business. So, when you are watching a DVD movie or playing a DVD audio disc by the way, you’re going to get, correct, 5.1 decoding. As I mentioned, hard drive based system; that also means you’ve got a duke box here where you can store music and of course, Sirius Satellite Radio is standard on this and the reason for that is more than just the audio. You’ve got satellite radio of course but that also brings you Sirius Travel Link and that’s under this ‘I’ button down here to bring you information that comes down for the satellite network. This car comes with six months of activation on Sirius, after that, it’s on your nickel. Now, here’s a key point. These cars all come with SYNC. It’s just about every Ford does these days or at least offers optionally and even if you don’t get this hard drive based navigation system, you still have navigation through SYNC. They call it Directions and Information or something. So, you can do a voice command through the data connection of your Bluetooth cell phone to reach out to tell the system “I want to go to a certain place” and it will then feed down a very rudimentary display of directions on them, a text display and give you audio prompts. When you get the nav package, you also of course take advantage of that screen to give you a back up camera that gives you zones of how close and far you are from things but it doesn’t give you trajectory as you steer the wheel. And because we have SYNC, that also means we have these toys here in the console. The now familiar USB jack and auxiliary input to one of the better systems that way and of course, you can connect wirelessly with A2DP stereo Bluetooth streaming. That’s also part of SYNC which is standard on this car. I want to talk about this for a second. This is a Ford Lincoln Mercury thing, this keypad on the outside of the car. Sometimes they put it up here on the pillar but either way, it’s very cool for when you to lock your keys in your car. I find the new Lincoln grille and face very similar to what’s found on the MKZ and MKT is a good looking piece of work. The rear? Not so much. The nav package also includes BLIS, Ford’s blind spot information system. It tells you about things in your blind spot, yes, but also warns you of cross traffic when you’re backing out of a blind driveway for example. Under hood is the 3.5-liter Duratec V6, not a technologically more advanced EcoBoost model which would have turbocharging and direct injection. That said, this Duratec is a good motor. Power is ready right now, part of that thanks to a six-speed automatic that takes most of the slash out of slash box. 263 horsepower and 249 foot-pounds of torque are not amazing numbers today but they’re very usably applied in this car. MPG is 17/24 which is a little unimpressive. Let’s price out this MKZ, base is about $35,000.00, again include SYNC and some other niceties. It’s not a basic car but on top of that, you’re definitely going to want to spend $2,500.00 on the navigation package which is more than nav. It’s the hard drive audio system. It’s the navigation as we saw, the touch screen interface, also the blind spot warning and the cross traffic alert technology as well as the rear-view cameras. It’s a pretty good package for that price but to do all the way CNET style, you got to spend $5,600.00 total for a package that includes the nav package I just mentioned, a tech package which includes some advanced lighting and such and rain-sensing wipers and then it adds in THX audio which is a killer, 17-inches wheels, I could take or leave those and power moonroof.