The Lincoln Nautilus’ 2024 redesign didn’t get too radical on the outside, with styling that is a clear evolution of the attractive look of the previous generation SUV. But climb into the front seats and you’ll see that Lincoln let its interior designers run wild. Occupants are greeted with a flashy display screen that stretches across the entire front of the cabin, from windshield pillar to windshield pillar, while the driver sits behind an oblong steering wheel that poses some challenges.
Yet there is a lot more to this SUV than a big (if somewhat less-than-useful) screen. Look past that eye-candy and you’ll find a well-finished interior that is spacious and super quiet. And Lincoln BlueCruise, which allows for hands-free driving on limited-access highways and roads, is an impressive active driving assistance system.
Under the hood of our test car is an available hybrid powertrain that returned 30 mpg overall in our testing, an admirable figure that puts the Nautilus in the same fuel-economy conversation as the Lexus RX350h hybrid. The Nautilus’ standard powertrain is a 250-hp, 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder paired with an eight-speed automatic transmission.
But even though Lincoln emphasizes “serenity” and “tranquility” when describing the Nautilus, we found a number of facets that ended up raising our blood pressure. The controls are complicated, with the automaker taking one of the worst features from Rivian and Tesla and applying it to the Nautilus: Forcing the driver to adjust the direction of the air vents by way of the infotainment screen. And while the ride is tranquil on marble-smooth pavement, it quickly becomes unsettled and jittery the second it is challenged by road imperfections. Plus, the new Nautilus has lost the handling acumen of its predecessor, and instead feels mushy and ungainly even through routine corners.
We bought a Nautilus Hybrid in the Reserve II trim for $64,170—anonymously from an area dealer, as we do with every vehicle we test—for the purpose of this road test review.
We chose the hybrid powertrain, which combines a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine with electric drive to deliver a total system output of 310 horsepower. This is truly a winning combination, delivering both strong performance as well as impressive fuel economy.
The electric motor produces plenty of torque, which allows the 4,515-pound Nautilus to smoothly move off the line from a stop. That torque also helps on the highway, giving enough assist when merging that the engine doesn't have to rev too high too often. Unlike the electronic continuously variable transmission found in the Lexus RX350h, the Nautilus’ eCVT does a better job minimizing the dreaded “rubber-band effect,” which is when the engine revs rise disproportionately high any time the driver tries accelerating with urgency. This turbo-hybrid combination makes the Nautilus a half-second quicker to 60 mph than the Lexus, although it can’t match its fuel efficiency: 34 mpg overall for the Lexus vs. a still-outstanding 30 mpg for the Lincoln.
Transitions back and forth between the electric drive and the gasoline engine are smooth, although the engine does have a harsh sound when it kicks in during hard acceleration from a stop. We also found that it’s challenging to be gentle enough with the throttle to drive around town under just electric power, as the gas engine seemed to turn on at every opportunity that it could. In addition there were times when stopped at a traffic light that the engine would turn on to recharge the battery. While this behavior is common among some plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), it’s unusual for a regular hybrid.
Handling isn’t one of the Nautilus’ strong suits, feeling mundane at best. The softly-sprung suspension, ostensibly to achieve a comfortable ride, allows the Nautilus to easily be upset by mid-corner bumps. Unlike its predecessor, which was built on a different chassis, this Nautilus lacks agility. Some of that can be traced to the slow, numb steering that doesn’t send any feedback to the driver, along with body roll that develops very early in a turn. We were only able to achieve 49.5 mph when going through our avoidance-maneuver test, which is unimpressive. The end result is a boring SUV that’s better at cruising along at highway speeds than taking the curvy route to your destination.
All of this would be understandable if the ride were better. Although the SUV feels comfortable and pampering on smooth roads, and the adaptive suspension does a nice job soaking up impacts from a single mild pothole or bump, it struggles when the road gets rough. Initially the ride feels too soft, with so much up/down and side-to-side body motions that the SUV seems almost buoyant. But when transiting over bumpy surfaces, the ride feels rough, jittery, and generally unrefined. Transverse ridges, such as expansion joints, punch through uncomfortably.
There was little drama involved in our braking tests—the Nautilus’ stopping distances on both dry and wet surfaces are average for the class—but the brake pedal itself doesn’t feel well tuned. It can feel soft and vague when pressing down on the pedal, but at the same time the brakes can be grabby. It’s particularly sensitive in stop-and-go traffic and at parking-lot speeds.
Overall, the Nautilus’ interior is impressive, oozing quality thanks to all the soft-touch areas, stitching, and chrome. There are plenty of small, fine details that stand out, such as the classy speaker grilles and the fancy-looking volume knob for the audio system. The steering wheel stalks have a luxurious damped action to their movement, and the fully-lined glove box isn’t always a given at this price point. We did find some rough edges in the hard plastic door pockets, and some of the plastic trim panels lack the quality feel of the rest of the interior.
Reactions to the front seats were mixed. Some testers found them to be comfortable enough, with decent lateral support. Others said the front seats were too squishy, and that the bottom cushion was overly short. While our tested Nautilus had the standard 10-way power adjustable driver’s seat and 8-way power passenger seat, there are optional 24-way front seats.
We were unanimous in our opinion on the oblong-shaped steering wheel, which is a new “feature” that debuted in the Nautilus. This “squircular” wheel feels truly odd to use as you steer through turns—particularly tight ones when you have to turn the wheel enough that you shuffle-steer, meaning you move your hands from the “9 + 3” position. Its shape doesn’t provide any advantage, other than that the steering-wheel rim doesn’t block the wide display screen. Some drivers found that the wheel was always positioned too low for their comfort, but that if they raised it then the angle of the wheel felt odd. Sure, it’s better than the yoke steering wheel found in some Teslas...but that’s far from a ringing endorsement. There truly was no need to reinvent the (steering) wheel.
Passengers in the rear seats get the better cabin experience. The three-person bench is very spacious, providing a ton of knee room in particular. We found the seatback and bottom cushion comfortable thanks to the cushy padding. The bottom cushion, in particular, is well angled and provides generous under-leg support. In addition, the seats can slide fore/aft to enable more passenger room or cargo space behind the seatback, and the seatback angle can be adjusted as well.
There are multiple ways to open the rear liftgate, from buttons inside the cabin and on the key fob to a small touchpad near the license plate, or hands-free by using a kicking motion under the bumper (an optional feature).
With the rear seats in the raised position there is plenty of room for luggage. Folding the 60/40 split seats flat opens up 38 cubic-feet of cargo room, a generous space that is bigger than the RX350h or the Volvo XC60.
Despite the elegant interior (and the silly steering wheel), the focus inside is the configurable 48-inch display screen that spans the entire width of the dashboard. While it gives the interior a high-tech look, its bright colors and animations make it more distracting than useful. There are just a few choices of content that can be displayed on the screen, such as weather, audio, navigation, and speed. But the inability to put a different navigation app (such as Waze or Apple Maps) on that upper screen is a drawback. Plus, much of the information is spread out and takes the driver’s eyes off the road, and there is a lot of wasted real estate instead of useful information. For example, is it necessary to have the weather for the next few hours occupying a tile in the screen, while the hybrid system operation and battery charge status is relegated to the smaller 11.1-inch screen that is lower down in the center console?
That 11.1-inch screen is where all of the infotainment functionality takes place, including climate, navigation, vehicle settings, and the audio system. The climate controls are capacitive-touch buttons that sit at the bottom of the screen, while a vertical menu on the left side allows the driver to move about the different functions. The menu is mostly logically organized with large text and buttons, but some settings require moving through multiple menus that take more than two steps to access. The screen itself is mounted quite low, so the driver has to not only look to their right, but also down and away from the road. Doing so while the BlueCruse active driving assistance system was engaged would often bring a warning from the driver monitoring system, a conundrum for the driver because they are being forced to take their eyes off the road to use the infotainment screen.
Lincoln continues to use a push-button “piano key” gear selector in its vehicles, and we continue to question why they do so. This horizontal row of buttons forces the driver to look down and to the right to make a gear selection, because it’s a challenge to operate it by feel. It’s particularly annoying to use when making a K-turn or reversing into or out of a parking space.
The Nautilus has incorporated one of the more annoying features used by Rivian and Tesla: Adjusting the air vents through the center screen. The driver or passenger has to drag their finger along the screen to adjust the direction of the airflow, a multistep process that is frustrating at best. At the worst, when the screen freezes or is inoperable (which happened to us), the climate system can’t be operated and the vents can’t be adjusted.
Lincoln proved to be an equal-opportunity borrower, as it also incorporated the unlabeled steering wheel buttons that we have found—and disliked—in recent Lexus models. These touch-capacitive buttons change function based on the menu selected, which makes it a challenge to memorize which buttons do what. The slightest touch will bring up a pop-up menu, which itself is distracting. But focusing on the menu to find the appropriate selection—instead of the road—is dangerous. In addition, drivers often found that the buttons did not respond to the first press, or were slow to respond. This required multiple presses or put the driver into menus they didn’t want.
Active safety and driver assistance
The Nautilus comes standard with the Lincoln CoPilot360 Vision 2.2 suite of active safety and driver assistance systems, including automatic emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection, blind spot warning, rear cross traffic warning, reverse automatic emergency braking, lane centering assistance, and adaptive cruise control.
The BlueCruise active driving assistance system (formally called Lincoln ActiveGlide) is available as a subscription and allows hands-free driving on pre-mapped freeways. Over-the-air software updates are available, thanks to a built-in 5G connection.