2026 Lincoln Aviator

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The Aviator is quick in a straight line. While there's a slight delay when you ask it for power, the Aviator really gets going after that. In Edmunds' testing, our all-wheel-drive test vehicle accelerated from 0 to 60 mph in a quick 5.9 seconds.

Braking and handling are less exemplary. The brake pedal is overly soft, making smooth stops difficult to do consistently. The Aviator also feels big and wallowy when you're making turns and doesn't give you much confidence in its stability. But on the upside, the Aviator rides smoothly over the majority of bumps and cracks in the road.

The Aviator comes with an appealing number of standard advanced driving aids. These include a high-def 360-degree parking camera and the hands-free BlueCruise system. BlueCruise allows you to take your hands off the wheel on the highway when certain conditions are met. It's helpful in letting you relax a little, though we noticed in our testing that the system had occasional errors that would result in the driver needing to take back vehicle control. On the whole, though, the system drives much like a person would.

The all-wheel-drive Aviator, which is what we tested, gets an EPA-estimated 20 mpg combined in city/highway driving. In our hundreds of miles of testing, we averaged 17.5 mpg. A previous Aviator we tested also came up short, getting 16 mpg combined. Other three-row luxury SUVs typically do a few mpg better.

The Aviator is most comfortable for front passengers. There's plenty of legroom and headroom — even for tall people. The climate controls and auxiliary buttons like drive settings are clearly marked and easy to find. The available 30-way seats offer a silly number of adjustments, so there's a lot of fiddling and fussing until you find the right position. After a few days of driving, however, the seats are eminently comfortable.

There's sufficient room in the second row, but the hard seatbacks of the front seat limit usable knee room, and the sloping roofline reduces headroom for tall passengers. The third row has a low seat bottom and a tall floor; if you're able to fit an adult back there, it'll be with crunched knees and a deflated ego. That's to say nothing of the contortions they'll subject their body to just to get into and out of the back row.

No matter which row you're in, the climate system works pretty well (though we wish the seat coolers were more powerful for hot days), and wind and road noise is impressively subdued.

The Aviator has an edge over competitors for storage behind the third row. Space behind the second row is average, while a number of competitors offer more maximum cargo volume. Our Aviator test vehicle had the optional air suspension, which you can use to lower the ride height and make it easier to load cargo. Inside the cabin, all three rows offer a handful of useful storage options. Small-item storage is quite good, with a lot of concealable bins in the front row.

If you want to tow, the Aviator offers a solid 5,600 pounds of max towing capacity, but truck-based rivals offer more.

The Aviator has a Google-based infotainment system that's pretty easy to use. A persistent column of buttons on the left side of the touchscreen displays high-level functions that include Home, Vehicle Settings, All Settings and Apple CarPlay. Our only real gripe is the inability to customize that column of buttons, but otherwise, the system is responsive and intuitive. Employing Google Maps as the default nav system means you're probably already used to using it on your phone, but the lack of onboard navigation means it relies on a data connection, which you might not always have in rural areas.

With eight USB ports, a charging pad and more, the Aviator is up to date when it comes to tech offerings.

The current-generation Aviator was one of the first Lincolns in the modern era to effectively hide its Ford roots. Even though the two vehicles share a platform, it doesn't look like anything like the Explorer on which it's based. The interior materials are a step above what you'll find in the Explorer, though they aren't quite as luxe as those in class leaders like the Mercedes-Benz GLE.

Unlike many of its competitors, the Aviator is pretty well equipped in its base form. It even includes Lincoln's BlueCruise hands-free driving system. And you can get the majority of the best features in the middle of the trim lineup, so you don't have to upgrade to the top-spec Black Label to get all the goodies.