2 days ago
The Cadillac Escalade and Lincoln Navigator Fight For the American Luxury SUV Crown
But if you look down, there is a very clearly undersized display nestled within the dash. It's too small and it controls most of the car's functions — including the detailed adjustments for the seats and the direction of the air flow from the vents. The problem is it's all too small, too difficult to use, and cramming so much of the car's primary controls into a screen (and burying them in menu after menu) is maddening.
Once you get it all set up, it's fine, but you're going to need the patience of a saint.
The Escalade isn't trouble-free when it comes to tech either. It has also gone for a massive pillar-to-pillar screen, but it just hasn't made the best use of all that real estate. Most of the time, there are huge sections of nothing being displayed, and all you're looking at is something akin to an iPhone background. Plus, the text is too small and, though it's a touchscreen, it sits too far from the driver. Good thing there's a scroll knob and some shortcut buttons in the center console to make navigating it a simpler affair.
And then there's the rest of the cabin. The interior just doesn't fit the bill of a near $130,000 luxury barge, and it starts with that scroll knob. It looks nice, but it's a bit cheap-feeling to manipulate and use and that's emblematic of the rest of the interior. The leathers are nice enough, even the front chairs aren't as comfortable or plush as what's in the Lincoln. There is a lot more hard plastic and piano black littered throughout the cabin, and even something Cadillac did well, namely the wood detailing on the dashboard, is covered by a lacquer that makes it look more like plastic.
