Ask the Nautilus owners!

[walkabout]

I wonder if you Nautilus owners might answer a few questions for us MKX owners. I suspect, that like me, a few are coming off of expiring leases and are considering re-uping:

 

1) Do the seat coolers (a weakness on the earlier versions) work well?

2) Anybody have the parking sensors (comes with the package that had the 360 camera)? Does it ever false (it does like crazy on the MKX)?

3) Comments on comfort of seats (which appear to be less aggressively bolstered from what I can see)?

 

I've narrowed my choice down to the Nautilus and Volvo XC60. I was optimistic about the Q5 too but my evaluation yesterday did not go well. 

 

[shoeguy]

Hey Walkabout. The Nautilus is a much better car in every way , and I can say this after only having mine for 10 days. 

1. Much to early to tell you about heated and cooled seats. My MKX was a March 2016 build and I had a tsb done to address your issue as well after that was done I had no issue or complaints, so I do not anticipate any here. 

2. Sensor false alerts are much better than my MKX was. Saying that it still does fire yet not as sensitive. 

3.  Seats are much softer and comfortable, not as hard. Mine is a reserve with standard seats. Not the massage. 

4. Standard Revell radio is great. Standard in MKX was POS. 

5. Steering is more direct yet very comfortable. Very quiet ride even with the 2.0. The drive is soft and comfortable yet more buttoned down than the other.  Hope this helps. 

[Cosmos36]

For those Nautilus owners with STANDARD SEATS who might be wondering if the bottom bolsters might have been altered in height from STANDARD SEATS in the MKX: place a level (e.g. yardstick) across the approximate center of the seat and measure the distance to the seat bottom. The MKX measurement will be 1.5 inches at the seat center, increasing to a maximum of 1.75 inches if measured a few inches aft of the seat's center measurement. If the Nautilus seat measurements are less than the above MKX measurements, it would confirm that the Nautilus seat bolsters have been 'flattened' as reported.

[Gurgeh]

2 hours ago, Cosmos36 said:

For those Nautilus owners with STANDARD SEATS who might be wondering if the bottom bolsters might have been altered in height from STANDARD SEATS in the MKX: place a level (e.g. yardstick) across the approximate center of the seat and measure the distance to the seat bottom. The MKX measurement will be 1.5 inches at the seat center, increasing to a maximum of 1.75 inches if measured a few inches aft of the seat's center measurement. If the Nautilus seat measurements are less than the above MKX measurements, it would confirm that the Nautilus seat bolsters have been 'flattened' as reported.

 

Cosmos, just did the measurement test. At the center I came up with 1.25", further back 1.5" (at the highest point), and toward the front .75". I have standard seats.

Edited April 13, 2019 by Gurgeh

[Gurgeh]

4 hours ago, walkabout said:

I wonder if you Nautilus owners might answer a few questions for us MKX owners. I suspect, that like me, a few are coming off of expiring leases and are considering re-uping:

 

1) Do the seat coolers (a weakness on the earlier versions) work well?

2) Anybody have the parking sensors (comes with the package that had the 360 camera)? Does it ever false (it does like crazy on the MKX)?

3) Comments on comfort of seats (which appear to be less aggressively bolstered from what I can see)?

 

I've narrowed my choice down to the Nautilus and Volvo XC60. I was optimistic about the Q5 too but my evaluation yesterday did not go well. 

 

 

I never owned an MKX, though I drove one once as a loaner, but can't really comment much on the comparison. One thing I will note is that talking to the top service tech at my Lincoln dealership (I had an audio problem they had to hunt down and squash with my new Nautilus) it seems there are more subtle and not-so-subtle changes beneath the skin than I expected. When he opened up the doors to get at the speakers and other parts of the interior to get to other audio components he said there was a lot changed from what he was used to with the MKX.

 

1) We had one of our first warm days here in Maryland recently and, as I don't have garage parking, the seats and interior were pretty warm when I started driving. I turned on the ventilated seats and it seemed to work about as well as in my '16 Q5. I don't ask for the "cooling" function to actually produce cold seats, only get rid of the hot and it did that. I turned off the cooling function after just a couple of miles. The blazing heat and energy-draining humidity of our peak summer temperatures will be a better test, but I think they will work fine for my needs. 

2) I haven't noticed a lot of false alarms with the parking sensors. I use the 360 camera a lot in parking, as I get used to the extra width and length from what I am used to with my Q5. I find that if I have to turn sharply into a parking lot entrance because of some dunderhead not leaving me enough room, the sensors will often go off briefly as I have to carefully maneuver over a bit of the curb, but that's all I've noticed.

3) I find the standard seats in the Nautilus more comfortable than the MKX seats. I had test driven the MKX last year when I first started my car search (I needed to get out of my Q5 specifically because the the fairly hard sport seats with high bottom bolsters had become painful to me on long drives), and I had taken the MKX off of my list initially because I didn't find enough improvement in seat comfort. But when I test drove the Nautilus I noticed a marked improvement. See my measurements above in response to Cosmos' question. The quarter inch flattening of the bolsters might not seem like much, but they make a real difference.

[walkabout]

Gurgeh - The Q5 just got dropped from my list because of those seats. Hard as a rock and the bolster cot into my leg. 

 

Honestly, the foot and finish was not all that impressive either - not like the Audi of old. 

[shoeguy]

5 hours ago, Rick65inlosangeles said:

My first MKX was a 2010, I ordered it and it took seven weeks before it arrived at the dealer.  The vehicle was totaled in an accident in April 2015.  At that time the order bank had just opened on the ‘16’s.  The dealer had no information on the ’16 other then what was on their computer screens.  I order one since I was now driving my backup Lincoln, an ’86 Mark VII, I had originally purchased in July of 1986. With the ’16 the order was placed April 20th, the vehicle was built in July 23^rd and I took delivery Sept 10^th.  I could accept the delay because the vehicle weren’t even in production until eight or nine weeks after I placed my order. So the total time was 19 weeks. 

 

Now were dealing with a vehicle that been in production for months, guess you could say it’s in its mid-year cycle.  SO the ’19 was ordered March 7^th, it took five weeks before the VIN was assigned.  According to the production week scheduling information posted by ice-capades over on Blue Oval, vehicles scheduled for the week of April 8, the Nautilus would be scheduled for production the week of June 3^rd.  If I’m lucky and the vehicle is produced that week, AND if there’s an available railcar is heading west, then the car should be at the dealer by the week of June 23^rd.  We all know that we don’t live in a perfect world and it seems that everything is getting screwed up these days. So there a good chance that you’re right and the vehicle will be here in July. At that point it would be 16 weeks from order to delivery.  ANY longer than that then I’ll just walk away as the vehicle will then be an end of year production model and will depreciate sooner.  Plus the longer it takes the less my ’16 is worth as a trade.

 

[Gurgeh]

7 hours ago, walkabout said:

Gurgeh - The Q5 just got dropped from my list because of those seats. Hard as a rock and the bolster cot into my leg. 

 

Honestly, the foot and finish was not all that impressive either - not like the Audi of old. 

 

Walkabout,

 

I drove a lot of the redesigned Q5s as loaners in the past year or so (I had a persistent rattle in my sunroof that took 4 tries to finally fix), and there are things that I liked about the new Q5, but a few things I didn't like as much as my 2016. First, like you, I found some serious cost savings going on in the interior, typically one of Audi's strong suits. I can only assume that the multi-billion hit from dieselgate is the reason. In particular, the upper dash material is now non-tactile plastic, a real change for Audi. The interior materials just overall less luxurious than in the past. OTOH, they did a really nice job with the updated infotainment system, especially the eye-popping virtual cockpit where you can move navigation over to the screen in front of you, minimizing other data, and leave the regular infotainment screen for audio or other uses.

 

Another thing I didn't like about the new Q5 is that they removed the V6 option unless you want to go for the SQ5 which is a whole lot more expensive and less comfortable. In fact, the normal Q5 now has no engine upgrade option at all. One must go with the less powerful 2.0 turbo 4-cylinder. I did like the new double clutch transmission, however.

 

I also cross-shopped the XC-60. It has a gorgeous interior and a lot of nice features. It stayed on my list for a while (along with the Range Rover Velar, which at one point I actually had a factory order for until I test drove the Nautilus). Every car has its strengths and weaknesses, but in the end there were a couple things I didn't like about the Volvo.

 

One is the fact that it has so few physical controls -- moving almost all controls to the big center screen is in fact one of the ways they got such a good looking interior, in a Scandinavian minimalist way. I know a lot of carmakers are going this direction, but I like to be able to turn up or down things like temperature and fan speed, or easily click on or off seat heaters. In the XC-60 to turn down the temperature you need to find and tap the temp icon, then find and tap the down arrow enough times to hit your target temp, then find and tap the X icon to close the screen. I know that you can do a lot of that with voice commands, but I don't always want to be shouting at my car.

 

Another is the engine options. Unlike the Q5 there actually are some, but I worry about the complex way they achieve power. You can get the base 2.0 turbo, or increase power with the double boosted 2.0 with both a turbo- and super-charger attached, which uses 3 different power sources to try (and I found generally fail) to achieve a smooth power band: engine, turbo, super. Or you could go with the top engine option that uses electric motors to power the back wheels and the 2.0/turbo/super combo to power the front wheels. I get that Volvo isn't producing anything with more than 4 cylinders anymore and is transitioning to all electric, but the ICE combos they are using in that transition period are so complex they are asking for maintenance and performance problems, in my view.

 

If you're looking for a basic turbo 4 and don't mind Volvo's new touchscreen-centric interior, however, the XC-60 is a great option.

Edited April 14, 2019 by Gurgeh

[walkabout]

Guergh -thanks so much for this very valuable insight. Much appreciated! Also, thanks for not making fun of so the autocorrect errors in my post.