Yes...I went back and re-read the article carefully, and there is indeed a reference to that. You guys are correct.

 

Rumor is that both the Navigator and Ford Excursion will be based on the new aluminum F-150. That means a very stiff steel frame and aluminum body panels. If accurate, this would mean a drop of hundreds of pounds from the existing models. Better performance and better fuel economy could make them real competitors for the big GM models.
Steve

 

Do you mean Expidition??? The Excursion has been out of production for a long time now.


As for the Navigator concept, it looks nice, like a proper Range Rover. If you slapped some Range Rover badges on it and told me it was a Range Rover concept car, I would not have second guessed you.

 

Yes, of course, Expedition. My old memory fails me some times.
Steve

 

I like the closet they have in the back. They are looking to work with Revel for the audio. I am surprised Wired didn't think of mention Lexus as competition. They mostly talked about Audi and Mercedes.

 

oh look another really nice SUV that has awesome features we wont ever see.

 

If you have ever actually driven an Excursion, old cajun, you probably won't forget it. Unlike the lighter Expedition, which was properly engineered, the bigger, larger Expedition (roughly 7000 lbs., unloaded), was, IMO, simply too large, too heavy, and too bulky for its chassis. Its stability was awful.....it tried to go every direction at once on the road, and you had to correct with the steering wheel constantly. Coming to a stop, as you slowed below about 5 MPH, you could actually watch and feel the enormous hood in front of you bob down and back up again like a yo-yo. It, and the diminutive Smart-for-Two at the other end of the size-scale, were arguably the two worst-handling vehicles I've ever sampled.

 

Looks WAY too much like a Range Rover, especially the doors into the hind quarters.

Which also looks like a Range Rover. I have a friend who is planning on buying an Explorer when the lease is up on her X5 specifically because she thinks it looks just like a Range Rover.

 

BMW handed over the reigns of Land Rover after they broke up the Rover Group in 2000, but Ford owned them until 2008. The Explorer America concept came out in 2008 at the NAIAS so work on the current 5th generation Explorer would have been influenced slightly before that during Ford's ownership of LR.

As someone pointed out above, you can only style a box so many ways. Honestly I'm shocked everyone's hung up on the Range Rover thing, when the front is reminiscent of the F-Pace and Continental.

Doesn't really matter though, the end result whatever the production model turns out to be should prove to be leaps and bounds better than the outgoing model. It's about time Lincoln got serious about this flagship. It's easy to forget the Navigator was the trend setter before the Escalade.

Also it sounds like the Lincoln Aviator will make a return at some point

 

I'm not one to really harp on the whole "it looks that that" thing, but that Navigator REALLY looks like a Range Rover lol

 

Agreed. As I said earlier, they blatantly cribbed some signature Range Rover cues. The "only so many ways to style a box" excuse doesn't hold here, IMO. Oh well, at least the front end and interior is very Lincoln.

 

That new grille is probably going to be Lincoln's styling theme for awhile. I personally think it's a major improvement on both the toothy-grin-grille and the large wing-themes of its predecessors.

 

And the Range Rover is a distinctively shaped vehicle to begin with, no question this was styled with the Range Rover in mind.

We're not talking about the grille.

 

How can you talk about styling and not include the all-new grllle? IMO, that doesn't make sense.

 

Because the grill is not the be all and end all of the vehicle's styling, and its not the part of the vehicle that looks like a Range Rover.

Just because it has an all new grille doesn't mean that the rest of the vehicle's styling cues aren't derived from another vehicle.