Fundamentally, Lincoln as a company is not a thriving brand. Lincoln comes from the days of a tiered business system and custom paper order catalogs by individual dealerships, yet they desperately try to work their own way into our Orwellian future. From 2014 until today Lincoln sales have flattened out. In one year Lincoln sells in the U.S. 1/4th of what BMW produces. Last year BMW built 412k cars. Lincoln as a brand is fundamentally behind, and after driving this car I can assure you this: they will remain behind. A BMW X5 will always be more American than this Detroit-Mexico-China hybrid.

As per all American car brands the value is not in the car itself, the platform is an ultra optioned Ford Edge underneath. Not just humble roots, sad roots. However the hybrid system puts a lot of the good into this car. Despite allegedly competing with the BMW X5, it easily averages 30mpg under moderate city and highway driving. During stop and go traffic it rarely drops into the 20’s. The ride is completely unflappable, a speed bump in this car has less feedback than an expansion joint in one of the many shitboxes I happen to own. And that brings us to the goal of the car. Simply put, it isolates. You don’t feel the eCVT ever doing anything (ford claims it’s an 8 speed for ????).  No perspective owner will look at a spec sheet, their eyes can’t read text that small, and their brains, fried by decades of Fox News drivel, can’t even comprehend what a hybrid is. Other than yelling “gay” and “communist” at the TV

But there’s yet more good news. The car didn’t say that it’s a hybrid anywhere. Not on the inside, not on the outside. The only hint of it’s mixed powertrain (ew, bring back segregated engines) is at the end of every drive, where it gives you a trip summary telling you how much gas you didn’t use. Usually it’s 1/3rd of your trip, the 2.0T getting 20mpg but being off for 33% of the drive, this integration is seamless. You have to try and confuse the car to even get the slightest clunk, something none of the owners will do. Driven within the speed limits it’s a palace, making it easier to pay attention to its 5 separate OLED displays. Like a suburb raised 5 year old staring at disabled people: look, don’t touch. Only one screen responds, and it truly does everything, navigation, radio, drive modes, whatever you say it’s there. The other added bonus is that the interior is super high quality. Everything you touch looks good and feels good. There are no bad surfaces, everything is some kind of aluminum or done by one of the screens. The leather is high quality and everywhere. The seats are 18 way adjustable thrones where you can adjust each leg individually and there’s two seprate lumbar balloons. And the excellent sound system can quietly or loudly fill the space left by the well insulated interior.

It even has my first experience with self driving. Very safe with maximal guardrails, perfect for people who actually use these. This leads me to the next point: the real price of this car is 3/4 of that of an X5. A fully loaded Black Label hybrid comes in at 80k. The bare minumum to look at an X5 with its x4 X’s for eyes? Too many (e)X’s and O’s for you in this article? Issue is, “X” is apparently core to the identity of all BMW products made here. It’s not just a BMW, it’s an X BMW. Out the door, less than 50k was paid for this 2025 model, so while Lincoln wants to pretend its compettion is German, its real compettion is loaded Highlanders and Grand Highlanders. In that space this car actually thrives.

Back on subject, blue cruise. It makes itself available on well mapped North American highways with speed limits from 55-85. It makes lane changes prompted by the turn signals. It is fast to yell at you if you suddenly stop looking forward. A good idea for its sleep prone drivers. From an outside perspective I fundamentally hated the gluttony of screens, but they work shockingly well. I have no idea what the two passenger ones are for. They’ve only shown me weather and music insights. Is that actually useful? Very up to debate. Another fun little feature it has is ‘the brake coach’ that tells you how smooth you brake on a 0-100% scale, a fun little game to play while driving around your passengers.

After driving this thing around for a while i conclude that this thing is acceptable. It’s never something that anyone of my generation or likely the generation of you the reader would bother to be interested in. But as something that simply moves around in a wafting way and provides comfort in all siutations to its agin clientele, it seems to be a perfetcly fine car. Another added bonus about these Amercian barges is they depreciate even more than the German ones and are usually chaper to fix. A good product for the era from brand slowly dissolving. Built for a generation rapidly shrinking, for those who think the American luxury badges still hold the status they held when houses were a still a working mans attainable dream. Oh well, you’re comfortable, 18 ways of power seat adjustment and a near perfect sound system. And you still have your 5 OLEDs to watch your dreams fade. Thank you to our sponsors at the Big Oval Ford-Lincoln surveillance state (patent pending)