Up Close With the 2009 Lincoln MKS

• The MKS looks and feels swank, especially the leather seats. I wasn’t wowed by the controls in the center console, but Sirius’ new system, which offers real-time traffic, weather, gas prices and even movie times, was pretty impressive. What I particularly liked was being able to select from several theaters, then being able to look at all the available movie times there. Since my family members often have very different tastes in movies, being able to go through multiple times at multiple locations would be a blessing.

  You can search gas prices by location (is there one close enough so I won’t run out of gas?) or by price (I’ll go another four blocks if it’ll save me 10 cents a gallon). What’s really interesting, though, is that the Sirius system doesn’t (yet?) work with Ford and Microsoft’s Sync system, of which we at Cars.com are big fans. — Patrick Olsen, 2:10 p.m.

This is the first in a series of posts in which Cars.com staff will check out the just-introduced cars at the L.A. Auto Show and report back. We’ll update each one as soon as we can with different impressions, snapshots from the floor and other ramblings. If there’s anything you want to know or see about the cars, let us know in the comments.

• The MKS’ grille looks bolder than the Pontiac-esque manufacturer photos suggest. Inside are plenty of soft-touch surfaces, and the knobs for the radio and air conditioning controls have cushioned movements, as any luxury car’s controls should. The leather wrapping on top of the dashboard looks more upscale than it feels. I found the seats a bit narrower, with larger side bolsters, than a typical Town Car buyer would want, but Lincoln says it wants some 60 percent of MKS sales to come from outside the brand (compare that to the MKX crossover’s 40 percent), so perhaps sporty is good.

  The MKS is based on Ford’s D3 platform, which underpins the Taurus and Mercury Sable. Besides a few switches here and there — the turn signals, headlight controls and power mirror and door-lock buttons — I noticed few shared pieces. That sets it apart from the smaller MKZ, which seems too similar to a Ford Fusion inside. — Kelsey Mays, 12:28 p.m.

• The grille works for me — though bold grilles are getting so common I wonder how long it will be before someone has to go subtle just to stand out. The rear end, on the other hand, looks weird. What’s with those little vertical taillights and white backup lenses? The interior is pretty nice. Lincoln says the leather is made with the same process used on infant shoes — and you know how discerning infants are about such things. The materials are good overall.

  The dash looks elegant but isn’t very soft to the touch. (What would the infants think?) What concerns me is the dashboard’s center control panel, aka the center stack: This is something Lincoln has never gotten quite right. A good design, layout and materials are important in this focal point of a luxury car. The MKS’ is decent, but it doesn’t scream luxury. — Joe Wiesenfelder, 10:16 a.m.

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2007 L.A. Auto Show: 2009 Lincoln MKS