Lincoln Continental Concept Revealed! (It is Already Headed for Production)

Take a Ford Taurus, rub it sparingly with the sad ham of luxury appliqué, and you get the Lincoln MKS. In reality, there may not have been a automobile more cynical in Ford’s repertoire given that post-Malaise downsizing of the 1980s. Finally, Lincoln has decided to erase this blight upon its name, and if the new Continental idea car is not the blocky, presidential pomp machine the fashionably tattooed were hoping for, it is undoubtedly a step away from the baleen-waterfall-stache visual grammar Lincoln has been selling of late.

Officially, the Continental is a notion. But you will see a production version next year. Our sources suggest that the new Conti will not ride on the MKS/Taurus platform, which is also shared with the Lincoln MKT and Ford Flex, but rather on an enlarged version of the CD4 platform, which underpins the Fusion and MKZ.

Ford is playing coy with regards to the concept’s powertrain specifics beyond the reality that it makes use of a 3.-liter EcoBoost V-6, a slightly enlarged variant of the 2.7 Nano. However, we hear that the 2.7 would be a base engine, at least here in the United States. China would likely get an even smaller sized 4-cylinder option. The thrilling bit is that the Continental is rumored to use the very same trick all-wheel-drive system employed in the new Ford Concentrate RS.

We presume the emphasis is on certain-footedness rather than out-and-out stoplight drags or gymkhana-fied acrobatics. Throughout the car’s unveiling at a preview in New York, FoMoCo honcho Mark Fields and Lincoln chief Kumar Galhotra repeated Lincoln’s “quiet luxury” mantra ad infinitum. So considerably so that we identified ourselves lulled into an alpha state by the sense memory of Matthew McConaughey’s laid-back twang. It is all just sounds, man. It is not even like . . . words.

One look at the back seat affirms this. Tap the underside of the chromed handle sticking out of the windowsill and the door pops open. It is a big honking door. It is a Maybach-ian, Chinese-energy-broker-grade door. The sunroof is electrochromatic—changing from opaque to clear at the press of a button—and Ford has taken out 50 patents on the seats in this point. The seats function 30-way adjustment, and a single of the joys is an outer side bolster that deflates to aid ingress and egress. Also, we want a girlfriend produced of the plush, plush carpet. Or at least a cat—a cat would almost certainly be a lot more acceptable. The complete interior therapy, resplendent in dark blue and chrome, suggests the glory of the jet age without having getting slavishly retro. We dare Lincoln not to dumb it down any much more than is necessary to pass crash standards for production, since it is as good as anything south of $ 200,000.

The exterior has its moments. In profile, it’s somewhat Mulsanne/Phantom-esque. From the rear, it’s aces. We specifically like the quad exhaust with asymmetrical outer guidelines. The front finish screams Jag-ura, with its RLX-style headlamps and XE/XJ-mimicking grille. Even though it’s a far better appear than the prior remedy, it is a lot more Euro-Japanese derivative than we’d like to see from an American brand. We do, even so, really like the peaked hood. The headlamps, by the way, are of the matrix-LED style that Audi can’t sell to us maybe an American organization futzing with the tech can lastly get it legalized.

All in all, the new Continental comes off as a slightly mixed bag. That is an improvement more than the MKS, which was not the sort of bag that James Brown would ever have been pleased to own brand-new. But this Continental? He may well just have liked this.

View Photographs View Photographs

Lincoln Continental Concept Revealed! (It is Already Headed for Production)