The 2025 Lincoln Navigator is not a Cadillac Escalade, but it’s an still enormous, over-the-top, three-ton $130,000 luxo-mobile with “digital scents” and a four-foot wide screen. I’m sure you have some curiosities about it.
Jason Torchinsky is on his final leg of an absolutely ridiculous cross-country trip in a 375,000 mile beat-to-heck former New York City taxi cab, and I wanted to surprise him with a car he can relax in upon his arrival. Three-thousand miles in an $800 heap that was really designed for city driving and not long freeway runs is no joke, after all. So I chose something ridiculously bougie, but not only that — it’s a car I’m legitimately curious about, because it looks…kinda good!
It’s basically a swanked-up Ford Expedition (in much the same way that an Escalade is a swanked-up Suburban), but it’s coming from a brand that’s putting some real dollars behind a push towards a much-needed renaissance. I drove the baby-Navigator, the Nautilus, last year, and I thought it was great. Surely the ‘gator will be even better?
We’ll find out.
If you have any questions about the new 2025 Lincoln Navigator, throw them into the comments below!
Did Picasso work on that pointy (awful) rear 3/4?
Seriously that fake range butt is awful
Is it really worth 130k?
Why in the name of cars is this thing $130K?
Plebian Expedition goes to $90-couple thousand, so I guess they need to make that Lincoln badge cost something to be special.
When you put it like this, you may fool someone into believing a Lincoln badge is worth anything…
15 years ago I would’ve agreed with you, but modern Lincolns are genuinely good.
Maybe it’s the color draining the creativity and joy out of my brain, or maybe I just don’t care, but either way I can’t think of anything.
I want to know if it has suicide door options. I actually kind of want to know why the sliding door option is not prevalent on front doors of more vehicles. I know it make people think minivan if place out back, which is a shame, but man I would really like front doors that pop and slide forward out of the way more often than not.
What you’re describing sounds a lot like an airliner door. I actually think this would be cool, but it would be so heavy and over engineered, that no mainstream manufacturer would put it into production. I could see Rolls Royce trying something like it.
Does it come with Matthew McConaughey?
I know it is way over the top. How would you compare it to the Escalade? Nice to drive?
That color must really pop in person at (checks website) $2000 extra! It’d need to be really spectacular and not just make you look less like an Uber Black at that price.
Will it Baby? Seriously when I had two little ones I think having something this massive would have been amazing, but it costs more than the house I owned at the time; so it better be.
Why wouldn’t it?
It absolutely should, but how well does it in the real world? One of my friends had twins, and upgraded to a Jeep Grand Cherokee (in roughly 2011) so they would have room for two car seats and themselves (both over 6 ft) and shockingly didn’t really have the room they were hoping for. I doubt this will be an issue here, but real world expierence that backs up expectations is a nice thing to have.
It babies shockingly well. I put two kid seats in the back of one. Only issue is height for shorter parents might make the hoisting of an infant carrier into the seat difficult. My wife (5’2”) struggled with it, but I (6′) did not.
I just had a Grand Cherokee L as a rental. I loved it but it would baby worse than a normal sedan and way way worse than a minivan. This thing is even bigger and might be easier in some ways from a space perspective, but then you’re wrestling all that stuff into a small house on stilts.
I know it is positively massive, but with the high beltline and oversized wheels I could not tell it from an Aviaitor at a glance without a frame of reference.
How long does it take to roll down a driveway and crash into a tree?
All kidding aside, has anyone noticed the silly, fragile and low-hanging lower control arms that look like they are a half an inch from the ground on these things (and also the GM T1XX triplets Suburban/Tahoe and Cadillac)? Makes me want to sling a rope around one and pull all of that fugly cheap looking suspension out.
Can you test the scenario that Mercedes just had when she lost the key? Like drive away without the key and see what happens after you park, try to shut it down, etc.
My Chevy cars will let you know you dont have a key and it allows u one restart, the restart to drive and get the damn key lol
I would like to know who the hell is buying all these in large enough volumes to justify production.
Or are they actually low production with stupid margins?
Probably the latter instead of the former.
I mean, Expeditions already have massive margins on them. I’d imagine the only additional costs to build a Navigator are the cost of improved interior materials and a few other odds and ends. Outside of covering a whole heaping load of overhead to make sure that someone remembers Lincoln exists (they probably should spend more, honestly) this thing is just a fancy truck.
At one time the Lincoln Badge engineered stuff generally got the lower market top engine as the base and then their were better and more powerful options exclusive to the vehicle. This only gets a slightly more powerful 3.5, surprisingly they are not using raptor R opportunities to play in the Competitors V playground. Instead they are hoping the last vestiges of hip hop links and increased interior tech will persuade you to them. It might work?
The Navigator took over from the Town Car as the fleet vehicle for my local airport shuttle for about a decade. Now I see them mostly driving Expeditions, which makes a lot more sense to me. Why pay extra for something you are going to flog for a few years and then toss on to the secondary market? I don’t think it did Lincoln’s brand image any favors either.
Most of the airport transport limo/shuttles in my neck of the woods are Toyota and/or Lexus vehicles.
The drivers note how much less fuel they use than their older vehicles and/or SUVs of comparable size, and how much nicer they are to drive in a congested airport than the SUVs. These are also people that often see a vehicle roll to 7-digits on the odometer.
How many kittens can it hold? How easy is it to pull out of soft sand?
Lastly, why is there no hybrid?!?
What does it look like after it has been charged by an angry rhinoceros? How many live octopi can it carry? How long will it take to sink if dropped into a large body of water? I mean, any of these would be more interesting and entertaining than any information you might conceivably discern from actually driving it
“digital scents”
So it smells like somebody’s fingers? The range of things human fingers can smell like is rather broad. Some of them you really don’t want to smell in most contexts. For instance, have you been holding a fish, or a cheese?
So an explanation of the “digital scents” is in order.
Aside from that, how many goats can it carry?
How many chickens?
FYI, don’t try putting goats and chickens in the car at the same time, they freak each other out!
If you ever pull up to a police K9 patrol car with a goat in your car the police dog will absolutely lose it. Big fun.
I think it’s because it caught me by surprise, but “so it smells like somebody’s fingers?” grossed me out a a visceral level that few comments have achieved.
Really, this whole comment is top notch work.
How big is it, calculated in football pitches?
Soccer fields aren’t a standardized size though… so you’ll have to be more specific about what one you want used as the standard.
About half the length of a shuffleboard court and about 30% wider with erect mirrors.
Or a third the length of a bowling alley and twice as wide.
Or the area of five pool tables.
No questions. It’s an overpriced, bloated, thirsty station wagon for spoiled wives to drop off their children at school in, then go get a Starbucks and a mani-pedi.
Is it big enough to safely drive a baby half a mile to daycare or would it be better to upsize to a bus?
Which of the luxury touches feel like actual luxury, and which feel like they’re just there for novelty’s sake?
Also, which feature would you expect to break first?
Our first house in 2004 was not much more than $130k. I can’t even.
The gap between that and an Expedition is just too much for me. It’s one thing to talk about a loaded Camry XSE being twice the price of a base model. It’s a whole nother deal when you’re in this price range. That’s 3-4 modern classics plus a hefty maintenance and insurance reserve. I just don’t assign that much cachet to Fancy Ford. I can’t.
My Tacoma, WA condo bought in late 2011, was $125K. And unlike this Lincoln, it has appreciated nicely and likely will continue to do so.
Is the leg room up front quite short or is everything else just really, really, really massive?
And can I put it in the washer or is it dry clean only?
“This SUV says dry clean only, which means…it’s dirty.”
–Hedberg, RIP
I’ve ordered a “Reserve L” (base, extended length) with bench seat, but I haven’t gotten to see one in person yet. Planning to replace our 2020 Telluride with it. My questions are:
How comfortably can it fit three car seats across the 2nd row?
Are there 2nd row window shades? Any other nice touches for kids?
I know the 2nd row seats are supposed to be able to tilt and slide even with a forward-facing car seat (provided it is attached via LATCH); how quick and easy is that to operate in practice, and does it actually give decent third-row access?
How roomy is the 3rd row? Suitable for 2 adults?
How good and user-friendly is BlueCruise?
“Any other nice touches for kids?”
When I was a kid, the nice touches in the car were clean windows, Dad leaving the AM radio on the rock station with the volume up on that single speaker in the dash so we could hear it in back, turning up the AC, and not being touched by my Sister.
I hear you. I grew up as one of five kids in a Taurus station wagon, road tripping from NY to FL in the rear-facing third row, sitting on a beach towel so I didn’t have to peel myself off the hot vinyl. When my parents got a Suburban as a company car it was a game changer.
The nice touches when my brother and I were kids was being in the back seat of our ’65 Olds 88 and not totally unrestrained in the bed of an older pickup truck without any form of climate control with whatever debris swirling into our eyes.
The only nice thing about being in the pickup bed was not being subjected to secondhand smoke from our parents smoking Camel non-filters almost continuously.
We’re both still alive and relatively healthy in our late 60s, so it could have been worse.
You had AC??? “…if you tell that to the young people today, they won’t believe you…”
Mother insisted on it in ’69 when they bought the Galaxie 500 – and ever since.
None of our family cars had AC. I was on my third new car before I got one with AC. Then again, the planet was a touch cooler back then.
Oh man I hear you. Nice touches were my parents not objecting to me opening the windows (there was no AC) or not yelling at me to read a book instead of staring out the window. A luxury touch was when we took a portable cassette player with us in the back seat so we didn’t have to listen to AM radio.
Oh yeah – Luxury touches:
Beach towels over the dark blue vinyl seats in summer.
And a new set of Michelins after the Firestone 500 debacle.
How quickly does it tow a NV200 taxi on a trailer from 0-60? Would you prefer to drive it or the Cybertruck in West Hollywood? Same question but in South Gate? Does it a proper Hot Rod Lincoln up the Grapevine?
If you drive the Navigator in WeHo – everyone will assume you’re an Uber XL.
If you drive the Cybertruck in WeHo – everyone will assume you’re a Fascist.
If you drive the Navigator in South Gate – everyone will assume you’re a Landlord or a Realtor.
If you drive the Cybertruck in South Gate – everyone will assume you’re pretending to be ICE.
How easy is it to clean various baby emissions from perforated nappa leather?
Or “nappy leather” as the Brits more accurately call it.
Good so far in my wife’s car. But the fear is in the back of my head.
I have no questions. It’s a hulking huge luxo-barge. Same as every other vehicle out there these days.
Ideally an in depth comparison of the 3.5TT vs the competitors engines. There’s actually a decent amount of variation in the segment compared to most (NA V8 or I6 diesel from GM, V6 turbo from Ford and Nissan, V6 turbo hybrid from Toyota). What are the strengths and weaknesses of each?
Also objectivity and open-mindedness in the comment section is probably hopeless, as is the case with anything expensive and/or large in size, but for those of us who like/find uses for large, expensive vehicles, how well does it fulfill its mission as defined by those buyers? How does it tow? How well does it fit adults in the back? How easy is it to add multiple child seats, and how much space is there? How is the cargo room with different combinations of seats up and down?
I kid, but for what this is I actually like it. It doesn’t fit my vehicular needs or budget in any way, but if it did I’d go with this over an Escalade or Range Rover. It’s got real presence.
A comparison between this, an Escalade/Denali, and an LX600 would be very informative for me.
Well, it’s David, so you’ll be lucky to get a comparo between this and a manual Jeep ZJ that the Jeep will somehow win.
Will this 3.5 twin-turbo V6 overheat and go into low-power mode every time I went up an incline in the hills of East Tennessee?
It was super easy to fit the rear facing and forward-facing kiddo seats in the back of one of these. As for Adults, plenty of space in the middle row, and the people I shuttled to and from my friend’s wedding didn’t mind the third row either. I didn’t get a chance to tow with it, but I’d wager it tows the same as the last gen which is great. Cargo room with all 3 rows up is a little small on the SWB model but with it down its a massive space. Granted my references are a Civic Type R and Mazda CX9, so it felt big.
That 3.5 Ecoboost is a torque monster, but man its either eco or boost. I averaged 16.4 mpg over the 1000 miles I put on one back in January.