Grand Touring 4dr All-Wheel Drive
2023 Lincoln Corsair

While 2023 brings only a refresh to the Lincoln Corsair, it’s a fairly robust one. It loses an engine, gains BlueCruise and receives an interior overhaul featuring a new infotainment screen running the latest version of Sync 4. Corsair may be Lincoln’s best-seller, but it competes against a variety of big-sellers in terms of both size and price. Take your pick from the likes of the Cadillac XT4, Audi Q3, Lexus NX or the BMW X1, just to name a select few; and soon they will be joined by Alfa Romeo’s new Tonale, which lines up surprisingly well with the baby Lincoln. Like virtually everything in its class, the 2023 Lincoln Corsair’s standard engine is a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder, which in this case produces 250 horsepower and 275 pound-feet of torque.  Gone is the previously available 2.3-liter upgrade that apparently wasn’t popular. For 2023, the only other option is therefore the returning plug-in hybrid model, which produces a reasonable (and carry-over) 266 horses. Unlike the Escape PHEV on which it’s based, the plug-in Corsair comes standard with all-wheel drive. With just 16 more horsepower compared to the 2.0T and more than 560 additional pounds to motivate, it relies on the instant torque of its electric motors to get off the line with authority. Lincoln gave us the choice of sampling either the standard turbo-four or PHEV for our quick outing in the Corsair; we opted for the plug-in for symmetry with our 2021 outing. As with virtually all midcycle updates, some exterior styling elements were updated or deleted. The grille is taller (and consequently larger) and is framed on the bottom by a new horizontal protrusion. PHEV models get a metallic foiling effect on the grille mesh. In the rear, it’s business as usual. Inside, the dash is redesigned around a new 13.2-inch touchscreen running Sync 4.0. Besides an updated user interface (more on that later), the screen now houses virtually all of the media and climate controls that were previously located as buttons and knobs on the Lincoln’s center stack. All that remains on the consequently shrunken stack is a single volume knob and various vehicle controls like max defrost, auto stop/start and the hazard lights. The start/stop button has also been relocated next to the piano-key transmission controls. Through all of that, Lincoln managed to make access to the enlarged media storage bin easier. Yay? Perhaps the most significant change for the 2023 Corsair is the addition of Lincoln’s highway hands-free driving suite. Originally launched on the Navigator and dubbed “ActiveGlide,” the system has been renamed Lincoln BlueCruise for 2023 to align with Ford’s nomenclature (and perhaps because “ActiveGlide” was a silly name). Specifically, it’s BlueCruise 1.2 – the same, latest version rolling out throughout Ford’s lineup. I didn’t have the opportunity to test this thoroughly in the Corsair, but recently sampled the latest updates in a Ford Mustang Mach-E running the same software, and I’m pleased to report that it performs as advertised; look for an upcoming …
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