Lincoln Town Car

The Lincoln is a big car, even by today's overweight standards. Park it next to a Toyota Camry, and it's obvious that there's a lot more sheet metal in the Town Car than America's best selling sedan, by a long way.

The 2006 Town Car is 78.5 inches wide, and 221.4 inches long.

The 2009 Camry is 71.7 inches wide, and 189 inches long, so the difference is pretty clear. There is a large weight difference too, with the Town Car at 4502 pounds, and the Camry at 3483 pounds. That's 1019 pounds extra lard in the Lincoln.

From the rear, she looks womanly, in that middle-aged hippy (as in hips, not Woodstock) way of American ladies. It's a roomy car, but not as roomy as the outside dimensions suggest. Where did the extra space go? Well, a lot of it is in the trunk. It's big, easily handling three full-size roll-ons, and two or three smaller ones. No wonder she's popular as an airport drone.

And the rest of the space is forward. Honestly, the size of the bonnet is enormous. It's like driving a tennis court around, with some of the same handling characteristics, but there is plenty of room for the bog standard Ford 4.6 liter V8 and associated four-speed automatic transmission.

I like the look of the car from the front. It is conservative styling for sure, given the signature Lincoln chromed grille, but there's some aggression there too. Overall, the styling works - one big plus for the Ford folks.

It's not an edifying experience.

Driving a Town Car is like herding your Lay-Z-Boy around, except that the Lay-Z-Boy is more comfortable, and corners better.

Ahead of you stretches that giant-sized hood. This single sheet of metal wobbles and lifts like a bedsheet above thirty miles per hour, so much so that one is always left wondering if the damn thing is correctly closed.

Damping after hitting a bump is slow. It takes...one...two...three cycles for the wallowing to stop. That's the price paid for designing a car to be as plush feeling as possible, but I think they might have gone a fraction too far. As you would expect, cornering is sloppy. There's lots of body roll and, when pushed hard, chronic understeer. I have had these cars nowhere near the limit, but it's not hard to imagine how bad things would get.

My biggest gripe is about the brakes. It doesn't have enough of them. Use them for a rapid stop, and the first thing that happens is the nose dips. Then you notice how spongy the pedal is. Then deceleration begins.Then the boost kicks in, causing more nose dip and slightly more deceleration. It's plain awful.

Because we spend so much time on freeways, I always allow lots of space to the car ahead. I just don't trust the brakes to stop me in time, and that's not good for a supposedly commercial vehicle.

The other problem is that the front brake rotors warp unbelievably easily. Every stop, which I try to make as smooth as possible for the customer, is punctuated by the surging feeling as the brake pads ride over the uneven discs. Some aware customers have commented, which is not only embarrassing, but leads to having to lie that I'll be fixing them immediately.

Despite the V8 engine, these old girls don't accelerate well. Firstly, there's all that weight, and secondly, the transmission is barely up to the job. The gear changes are clunky and slow, and sometimes come with odd whirs and shudders.

But once up to speed on the freeway, going in a straight line and not braking, it's not a bad buggy. Just remember to leave plenty of room in front.

And if you're a Road Trip junkie, you might want to check out my Road Trip lens.

The dash is a mess. An ungainly combination of digital and analogue instruments looks like the interior committee was unable to make a decision. Someone needs to look up and apply the word "simplicity" or even "clarity." Take some lessons from the Ford Model T. Or Toyota.

In one of the cars, the CD player cannot eject CDs. It's a small thing, but telling. How difficult can it be to source a component as simple as a CD player that works first time, every time?

Seating position, steering adjustments, control accessibility are all fine. One excellent feature is an adjustable lower back support that some call "having a football in your back" but I call "heaven for keeping one's posture good". Or something like that. All the seats are leather upholstered, and look classy enough.

Passengers, on the other hand, love riding in the Lincoln. I would say that one in every five people mention how smooth and comfortable the ride was. That always surprises me, and yet it's clearly honest commentary.

Does the Lincoln have any redeeming features? Not really. It's a big, softly sprung sofa-bed on wheels, with a good sized trunk and relatively benign handling. As an airport transfer mule, it is good enough, but that's about as much as I can say.

My question is: why aren't the people at Ford ashamed of this car? It has no subtlety. It's witless, without any ability to delight or please the owner. Nothing about it makes you want to get in and drive, just for the heck of it, and you're always wondering if it's all going to work.

It's dopey, pedestrian, agricultural, boring, dull and bland. Steering is insipid. The airconditioning is noisy and fiddly, and the AM band of the radio barely works.

Simple things (like, um, brakes) don't work as they should, and are unreliable in service. The engine is harsh. The transmission is unpredictable. Small stuff, like the storage box in the front doors have latches that break.

In short, this car shows exactly why the US automobile industry is failing. It's sad to say, but unfortunately true.

Okay, gotta go now. Someone's waiting at Tampa airport.

This is Consumer Guide's guide to the '06 Town Car.

Edmunds.com pricing if you want to buy one.

An incredibly flattering review from Cars.com.

And, amazingly, some actual information rather than just regurgitated Lincoln sales brochures.