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>> Toothy affair, ain't it? Well, that's the new face
of Lincoln. This is their brand new car, the MKS.
Let's take it for a ride, check the tech, check the
handling, and see if they've really got a creditable
alternative here to the mid-dollar German cars, not to
mention the Japanese.
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>> Now inside our MKS is a relative tech-toy tour de
force. Navigation with hard drive, THX audio system,
and Sync. Let's start with the navigation. It's a
good-looking system. Of course everything on this car
is touch-screen. The good thing about that is the
buttons are all nice and large. Ford has always had a
good touch for large touch zones. And as I mentioned,
the navigation is hard drive based, so it's easy to
update the database. But more importantly, that gives
us some room for a media server. You can rip CDs to the
hard drive on this guy, of course. Here's an audio CD
that goes into my single-slot audio system because
you've got a hard drive. Once you get your music rips,
you can see all that in the jukebox. And again, it's an
easy way to get around your library, and turn the car
into your iPod. And also with that sync technology we
also have the ability to connect user devices. Those
are these. USB, Bluetooth streaming, and also a line-in
jack that of course lives right here. But that's just
is it kind of a dumb peripheral. And by the way, that
USB port can also to an iPod or other type of
intelligent player and charge it, as well as taking USB
sticks. This is part of what's really cool about Sync.
The other part of Sync that's really cool, of course, is
the voice recognition technology. But Sync cannot fix
the fact that voice recognition can be overused. Here's
where it is good. For things like dialing a phone
number, or if you're going enter a destination. Here's
where we don't need voice. Temperature. 68.
>> Did you say 68?
>> Yes.
>> Set temperature.
>> Here's the other way to do it. That was easier.
Another great trick on our media system, once done
ripping your audio to the hard drive, take advantage of
your single-slot which also digests DVDs, and watch a
movie. When you're parked, of course. That screen is
really great. The sheer quality of the black level and
the dot pitch. I mean, it's a great TV, period. THX 2
certified, dot one surround, of course. 16 speakers,
600 Watts. It is phenomenally well-engineered. Okay,
check it out. Very new to Ford and on the Sirius
satellite radio platform, the Sirius Travel Link. Movie
listings. And there we are. Movie listings along our
route. You also saw we have sports scores, sports
schedules, which I think is pretty cool, and of course
the all-important weather, which can be overlaid on to
your navigation map.
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>> Now at this point in history, as of our taping,
there's only one engine available. A 3.7 liter dual
overhead cam, 24-valve, fuel injected V6. Now I say
right now because next year Ford's going roll out the
ecoboost V6, and which car which is a slightly smaller
displacement but with twin turbos and direct fuel
injection, in terms of handling, the car feels much
more, I don't know, tippy and wobbly. It doesn't have
that really planted feeling that frankly I was
expecting. I detect quite a bit of axle hop in the rear
which I found disturbing over rough pavement. So this
is not a big handling car, although it drives well, you
know the difference? Handling is like when you think a
car is a sporting gear. Driving well is when it just
drives well. That's what most of us do. The automatic
transmission in this car is a six-speed and it's your
own choice for transmission. It's a good automatic. I
found that when I needed power it was ready to go. It
was ready to down shift quickly, didn't need a big tromp
on the pedal to get it to down shift. So this is not a
transmission that frustrates. Let's price our MKS.
38.5 for this front wheel version. It's about 1900 more
if you get the all wheel drive. And I mentioned that
ecoboost twin turbo engine. That comes out next year,
2009. And they say it's only going to add $700 to the
MSRP. We shall see. Now major options. For $3,000 you
can get the navigation which is hard drive based, the
media server that goes with it. That includes the
touch-screen Sirius Travel Link, THX audio system --
that's a pretty good bundle, I think, as a value.
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