SUV Review: 2021 Lincoln Aviator Reserve AWD

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There are at least two schools of thought when it comes to how to most comfortably undertake a long-distance road trip. The first posits that a driver spending a half-day or more behind the wheel is best served by something of a captain’s chair — upright, supportive, comfy, but not too compliant. The second is that all those miles are better covered sitting on inches of cushioning, padding, and foam that will yield to a driver’s weight and help absorb every bump in the road. Think something more akin to an old sofa on wheels.

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I had this revelation on a 3,500-km round-trip drive this summer, from Toronto to Thunder Bay, Ontario and back. It turns out I’m a student of that first ideology, while my co-driver – my younger brother, Matt – is very much of the latter frame of mind. And the 2021 Lincoln Aviator we were driving? Well, it didn’t agree with him either.

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I was keen on getting his impressions of my tester — the premium automaker’s second-from-the-top-rung SUV, below the Navigator — because the man is veritably obsessed with vehicular luxury. The caveat is that in his opinion, American cars reached their zenith some time in the early to mid-1970s; the barge he parks in his own driveway is a 1972 Buick Electra 225 four-door, if that helps. I knew he was generally dismissive of modern cars, but he’d yet to spend a significant amount of time driving anything of this decade. Could the luxe Lincoln lead him to change his mind?

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Cleared for Takeoff

Regardless of whether you’re a fan of Disco-era velour car interiors or leather-upholstered modern Q-ships, you likely want a bit of oomph in your luxury vehicle. By the time we reached Parry Sound, we’d got a feel for the powertrain underfoot.

In our 2021 Reserve trim tester – $84,600, as-optioned – that plant was a 3.0-litre twin-turbocharged V6. It channeled some 400 horses and 415 lb-ft of torque to all four of the 22-inch gloss Ebony wheels. This Lincoln weighed a lot, tipping the scales at 2,205 kg, but you wouldn’t know it leaning on the pedal. (The hybridized Grand Touring trim adds nearly a hundred more horsepower, pairing the same V6 with an electric motor, but also adds about 300 kg.)

That grunt earned the Aviator some points from Matt right off the bat. While my road trip’s resident luxury connoisseur doesn’t drive stick shift – why would he? There’s nothing opulent about rowing your own gears – he did put Lincoln’s SelectShift paddle-shifter feature through its paces. The 10 speeds meant flicking them up or down didn’t do a whole lot, but they also meant the revs stayed under 3,000 rpm even through Northern Ontario’s ceaseless elevation changes.

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For my part, I appreciated how the not-small sport-ute didn’t drive like a big vehicle — I’m not sure if it was the numerous parking cameras, but the Aviator actually felt much more manageable than its 5,063-mm (199-inch) length would make you think. Matt didn’t agree, though of course he’s used to mooring a 5,789-mm (227.9-inch) boat of a Buick sedan.

We assumed all that power, heft, and girth came at a price tied loosely to the cost of 87 octane, but by Sudbury our real-world calculations showed impressive economy numbers of 9.4 L/100 km, even better than its official 9.7 L/100 km highway rating (the number is 11.9 in city-highway combined).

Reaching Cruising Altitude

Speaking of highway mileage, nearly 15 hours of driving each way meant once we settled into the sparse summer traffic on the Trans-Canada, we had plenty of time to explore the Aviator’s luxury features.

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Before we toyed around too much, we set the Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control — this neat piece of kit, which lets you set a following distance from the car in front that the Lincoln automatically maintains, is not at all segment-exclusive, but good luck finding anything like it in a Nixon-era land yacht.

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Combined with the lane-keeping assist that aided in staying between the lines, it made the Aviator a sit-back-and-relax cruiser. My brother did have one qualm: the system slowed itself down to the new speed limit – or, if you wanted, up to 14 km/h over it, we found out digging through the settings – whenever it passed a posted sign with a lower number on it.

There are two schools of thought on semi-automated cruise control tech, I found out. The first, shared by myself and Lincoln engineers, is that such a feature takes the work out of tapping the brakes or re-adjusting your kilometres-per-hour, and keeps you from accidentally netting a speeding ticket outside Thessalon. The second, to which my brother subscribed, is that the Adaptive Cruise Control shouldn’t adapt in that way — only the driver should decide if our pace is to slow, and by how much, roadside signage be damned.

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We were similarly split on several other features – Lincoln Embrace, which lowers the ride height when the keyholder approaches the Aviator, for easier entry; or the hands-free kick-to-open tailgate – that he found a little superfluous. Luxury isn’t defined by such gimmicks, Matt proffered, which just needlessly inflate the cost. I made a mental note that mid-’70s Cadillacs and Imperials boasted plenty of gimmicks, too, most less useful than the Aviator’s.

View from the Captain’s Seat

So what does define luxury? I suggested to him materials and fit and finish play a role, highlighting the Aviator’s beautiful open-pore wood trim and metallic accents; he countered that the grain in the veneer was so perfect it looked fake (ironic considering his Buick’s wood trim is fake).

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I prodded again: The deep, full notes from the 14-speaker Revel audio system, perhaps, which nearly bested my home surround sound? “I don’t hear any difference,” he deadpanned. Well, what about the heads-up display? The ambient lighting? The relative silence afforded by Active Noise Control?

Nah. Real luxury, he explained, was defined by the breadth of space in the cabin and the comfort of the seats. The 2021 Lincoln Aviator can fit six to seven passengers across its three rows, but nevertheless afforded us plenty of leg-, shoulder-, and headroom. Matt gave spaciousness a thumbs-up.

The chairs, I assumed, would see similar endorsement. Our butts were sitting on Lincoln’s Perfect Position Seats, built by supplier Lear. They come both heated and ventilated (in the second row, too); include power lumbar and power thigh extender; wear super-smooth Bridge of Weir Deepsoft leather; and can be adjusted 30 different ways.

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Best of all, they came fitted with an Active Motion Massage feature, which could be cycled through five different modes in three different intensities. Again, these seats made the Aviator, I thought, a real sit-back-and-relax cruiser.

Not so, said my resident ergonomics expert. For all their adjustments, smoothness, and massage abilities, they were simply just a little too firm . It’s here the Lincoln Aviator failed Matt’s luxury test, a point he underscored by pronouncing that he’d rather have a button-tuft pillow-cushion-style bench out of a Malaise-era sedan than the Active Motion Massage option.

The Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control is not at all segment-exclusive, but good luck finding anything like it in a Nixon-era land yacht

The two-schools-of-thought revelation I mentioned off the top hit me at right about that point, just before we reached Wawa. A Chesterfield on wheels, the Lincoln was not, but would a few inches of sinkage, extra padding, and more foam really make for a better ride? Isn’t there something to be said for a chair that cradles you in just the right position and tickles your back with a dozen tiny fingers?

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I was chewing on just that when we stopped in Marathon to stretch our legs and swap shifts behind the wheel — when I climbed into the driver’s seat Matt had just vacated, I smirked when I realized he’d left the massage function on.

Coming in for Landing

By the time our road trip reached its conclusion, my brother had, too: the 2021 Lincoln Aviator was an incredible piece of premium-grade machinery. It boasted impressive power, classical styling, and a stunning array of practical features.

It was, however, not quite as a luxurious as a top-spec mid-‘70s Cadillac might be, not as adept at road-tripping as one of its forebears – perhaps a Lincoln Continental Mk III – would have proved. It wasn’t even as comfortable as his own ’72 Buick Electra 225.

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Whether you’d enjoy the new Lincoln Aviator very much depends on which school of thought you subscribe to when it comes to long-distance road trip comfort. If, like me, you think miles are covered best in a supportive captain’s chair capable of kneading your backside through its leather upholstery, you’ll get on it with fine. But if you think automotive luxury peaked when the Apollo program ended, you’ll likely find the Aviator a little lacking, and in want of some additional cushioning and foam.

Modern manufacturers, you’d concur with Matt, just haven’t quite understood what made the cars back then so great — though they’ve indisputably come a long way when it comes to massage functions.