The 2018 Lincoln Navigator SUVHollis Johnson/Business Insider
Editorial note: Business Insider will name its 2018 Car of the Year on Monday, November 19. Each day this week, we’re taking another look at the five vehicles that were runners-up that were selected from a pool of 15 finalists. The first vehicle up is the 2018 Lincoln Navigator.
- The original luxury SUV is all-new for 2018.
- It embodies Lincoln’s “quiet luxury” philosophy on a massive scale.
- It’s so popular that in January, Lincoln dealers struggled to keep up with demand.
- We tested it for a week, and it was more than up to every challenge we threw at it
There’s a mighty new Lincoln Navigator in town, and we really put it through its paces in the New York and New Jersey area as winter bore down on the region.
The Navigator, around since the 1990s, is the original luxury SUV. If the recently arrived new Continental is the flagship sedan of Ford’s revived premium marque, then the Navigator is the dreadnought of the fleet. This is the fourth generation of the big guy. And it got off to a great start. Lincoln reported in January that Navigator sales were up 132% from January of 2017.
We saw the vehicle for the first time as a flamboyant, nautical-themed concept vehicle at the New York Auto Show in 2016; Lincoln officially debuted the new Navigator at the 2017 show. It was only a matter of time before we got our hands on this behemoth for some test time behind the wheel. That happened in December.
Here’s how it went:
As my colleague Ben Zhang said, Lincoln really thought through the interior to make the Navigator stand out against it main rival, the Cadillac Escalade, and to deliver on Lincoln’s brand promise of “quiet luxury.”
Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
A pair of rear infotainment screens provides an abundant range of entertainment options.
Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
A technology called “Lincoln Play,” according to the brand, “allows passengers to stream content wirelessly with compatible mobile devices to one of the 10-inch adjustable screens mounted on the rear of the front seats.”
The screen can also show independent content, and media can be input using wired connections, such as through USB or HDMI ports.
Lincoln also offers 4G LTE WiFi connectivity, which can handle 10 devices, according to the carmaker.
So what’s the verdict?
Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
The new Navigator is indeed new. Lincoln’s revival and the “quiet luxury” approach hasn’t meant that the SUV replicated everything we saw on the concept vehicle, but what we have here is a very large machine that’s also quite suave, loaded with technology and a high level of luxury for the price, and outwardly much more urbane and stylish than the previous generation.
The Navigator continues to be a Ford Expedition under the skin, but the overall impression isn’t one of a badge-engineered premium upgrade. The Navigator continues to maintain its own identity.
Power junkies might wonder how the 3.5-liter twin-turbo mill stacks up against the 5.4-liter V8 from the previous generation, but Lincoln did add the smaller engine to the lineup in 2015, so the market was prepared.
I thought it performed admirably, and in my testing, I worked my way through all the drive modes and explored the various dimensions of the foul-weather setup, as a snowstorm swept into the New York and New Jersey area (the four-wheel-drive system can be tweaked to handle both moderate and deep snow). The Navigator brushed it off. The turbos also exhibited no lag, as the power came on strong no matter what.
I pushed the limits of this big rig’s people-toting capacity: six adults and two teenagers at one point. The six adults also made the run to Brooklyn and there were no complaints about comfort. Jaunts to the grocery store to provision my family of five were sort of comical. “Is that all you’ve got?” the ‘Gator seemed to be asking. It might have been happier if I’d been trying to load an upright piano.
Navigators are popular for high-end livery service, so the new SUV should make those buyers happy, as it has before. For civilian families, the thing is a dream: so big, so comfortable, so many entertainment options. And the 10-speed auto coupled with the V6 motor and lighter weight mean that while MPGs still aren’t great, the Navigator provides some relief at the pump.
With the new Navigator, following the debut of the flagship Continental sedan, Lincoln has nearly completed its comeback in the luxury market. Navigator was an important part of this process, and Lincoln has basically done everything right. The classic has been updated, gracefully, without sacrificing its functionality. It now stacks up much better against the Cadillac Escalade, and Caddy will be under pressure to keep pace.
If really, really big rides are your bag, you can’t go wrong with the 2018 Navigator. Lincoln created this segment, and it’s clear that they still know exactly what they’re doing.
