NEW YORK MOTOR SHOW: Lincoln Navigator Concept

A couple of years ago fuel prices in the US climbed beyond $4 a gallon and stayed there, and American car-makers discovered they could make concept cars smaller than before.

One look at Lincoln’s Navigator Concept shows those days are long gone, replaced by cheap fuel, and the concept cars just keep getting bigger, wilder and more powerful.

The Navigator Concept is a concept car so huge that it requires not one, but three levels of side steps to clamber up through its barn-like single side door to the McMansion of an interior.

Classy it isn’t, glitzy it is. And, what’s more important, Lincoln insiders insist it’s a preview of what the next Navigator production car will look like in 2017.

The triple-layer steps will go, along with the full-length gullwing doors, but the rest of it is said to be reasonably faithful, so expect a bonnet (err, hood) that arrives at armpit level for most people.

"It was a very interesting challenge for the design team," Lincoln president Kumar Galhotra said in New York. "The design language is all about elegant beauty. To take a vehicle that has that much volume and to make it elegant is a fun challenge."

The interior acreage carries over a lot of the new themes from the Continental concept car, unveiled at the same motor show a year ago, and Galhotra regularly uses words like “Harmony” and “Serenity” to describe it.

There are seats to suit the least athletic of American derrieres, plenty of traditional chrome used in untraditional ways and a light blue trim that makes the car feel even bigger and airier than it should.

All of its five potential non-driving occupants (yes, it’s only a six-seater) have their own screens so they can play games individually or with each other, while there’s even a video-link intercom (no, seriously) so the third row’s short-legged residents can talk to the driver.

Some of Lincoln’s traditionally hair-pulling exterior design treatments are unavoidable on the Navigator concept, particularly around the grille, though the rear-end seems evidently large but lacking for creativity. There’s a trace of Range Rover about the floating roofline, but without the British car’s elegance.

In the back, where a German company might seek to maximise the luggage space with 2000 litres of cargo capacity, Lincoln has taken its own path. Unapologetically, it’s fitted the Navigator concept with a full-size wardrobe, complete with specialist areas for those uniquely American brown leather loafers with the tassels on the top.

It’s also lit up back there and looks for all the world as if it started life as a Men In Black gun case but morphed into a wardrobe because it was shown in New York and not Houston.

The new Navigator is expected to make it to production with both the concept car’s 3.5-litre EcoBoost V6 powerplant (here tuned for 400 ‘Murcan horsepower), though a V8 is also in the offing.

It will also use fully independent suspension, via a four-link rear-end, and it will also be available as either a rear- or all-wheel drive SUV, with less of the 'S' and more of the 'U'.

Lincoln was not keen to talk about the exact length, width and height of the Navigator concept, or its wheelbase, and was especially not keen to mention its weight.