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Imagine if Abe Lincoln had had the opportunity to drive in his namesake, the Lincoln MKX sport ute.<\/p>\n
At 6-foot-4, our 16th president would have slipped easily into the passenger seat of the two-row SUV as a Secret Service agent drove him down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day. With the \u201cPanoramic Vista Roof\u201d open, Abe\u2019s stove-pipe hat would have stuck out like, well, a stove pipe. On occasion, he might have stood on the seat and emerged from the roof waving a long arm to the madding crowds.<\/p>\n
Far from the awkward-looking Lincoln MKT large SUV or the last-generation, prison-bar-grille MKX, the \u201916 mid-size MKX is the most elegant ute in its class. Dead last in U.S. luxury market sales, Lincoln is showing signs of life. Following in the tire-treads of its smaller MKC stablemate, the X\u2019s design is noble. With the bars turned pleasingly horizontal, its signature, double-grille spreads like the wings of a bald eagle.<\/p>\n
I lived for 13 years in the nation\u2019s capital, and the stately Lincoln would have been at home on its grand boulevards, the picture of class. No doubt, if 19th-century Abe had encountered an MKX he would have reacted like he had seen a UFO.<\/p>\n
Returning from a trip to Chicago on a Saturday night, I descended on an I-94 interchange service center outside Kalamazoo like an alien spaceship in \u201cClose Encounters of the Third Kind.\u201d An MKX SUV UFO, if you please. The X\u2019s 12 LED headlights and distinctive, tubular LED running lights \u2014 front and rear \u2014 are so sci-fi a group of locals hanging out on the curb might have expected aliens to emerge from inside. They got Mrs. Payne and me instead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did you do just then?\u201d one local exclaimed pointing at the front of our spaceship.<\/p>\n
He had seen the Lincoln star logo rise up and a small camera emerge as I inched forward into the parking space. I had actuated the front camera (which has its own washer, natch) with a console button so I could dock closely to the curb without hitting it. Gather \u2019round, my earthly pals, there\u2019s more. They crowded around the driver\u2019s door like kids who had just been invited into an airliner cockpit for the first time. The button-festooned MKX interior was a century-removed from the old Ford F150 pickups and compact cars in the parking lot. I demonstrated how the forward lens \u2014 combined with two under the mirrors and one aft \u2014 give the driver a bird\u2019s eye view of the vehicle in order to place it exactly in a parking space.<\/p>\n
If the Lincoln had gull-wing doors like inventor \u201cDoc\u201d Brown\u2019s DeLorean in \u201cBack to the Future\u201d (or the Tesla Model X introduced this week) the scene would have been perfect.<\/p>\n
But the MKX doesn\u2019t have gull-wings. Nor does it have 5,000 horsepower like an SRT Jeep Grand Cherokee. Or 11-inch rear tires like the BMW X5 M. Or an F-Sport badge like the Lexus RX. Now that SUVs ride on car chassis, manufacturers are keen to load them with testosterone to grab headlines and quicken the pulses of auto show crowds.<\/p>\n