Well I got same face time behind the wheel this weekend and lots of time to mess around figuring out how everything works while my wife was shopping. I put about 500km on it with a good mix of highway and back roads during a trip to Fredericton yesterday, and a short trip down the Fundy Coast today.
As expected it is a highway cruising champ, but did equally well on the twisty, undulating, and mostly rough back roads of rural NB. Normal mode seems to be just right for highway cruising and Sport+ was easily the best choice for the back roads. The most obvious impression was that everything is so well integrated and that there was a lot of thought that went into every aspect of the car's design. It's definitely a smooth operator!
I got a few chances to open it while passing cars on the 2-lane highway and it has decent power if not pin you back in the seat torque. Compared to my old 2003 Lincoln LS V8 the GS was much more linear in its power delivery, whereas the Lincoln was almost violent when it kicked down despite having slightly less hp. The transmission is likely the reason there as the 6-speed in the GS is a gem with barely perceptible shifts.
Man this thing is comfortable and has the best seats I've ever sat in! The seats are 18-way, but it only took a few minutes to find the perfect setting, and the perfect seating position with the nicely finished tilt/telescopic steering wheel. One thing we really appreciate is that both the driver and passenger have the same seat settings, so no cheaping out on the passenger side. The interior seems no bigger than our old Fusion, but i like that the drivers seat has much more travel. It doesn't have the premium ML audio option, but the standard audio is still much better that the Premium Sony unit in our old Fusion, so no problem there.
It's really impressive how quiet and tight everything feels. All the controls and everything you touch has a feel of precision and quality. For example most of the motors for adjusting things are two-stage. When you touch slide the seat back it starts off slowly, then quickly kicks in to a higher speed when held down. Similarly the windows start up at high speed, but slow down just before they close. Also, in the Fusion wind noise when the sunroof shade was open while travelling at highway speeds was enough that is was annoying, but it's barely perceptible in the GS.
The HMI controller thing is a little jumpy and will take some getting used to, but this is my first experience with built-in navvy, so I have no frame of reference for that. As much of a techy guy I am at work I'm all analog when it comes to driving. The most impressive feature imo thus far is the adaptive headlights. I have kind of a lighting fetish anyways and it's so cool to see the headlights follow the steering inputs!
Looking forward to a long road trip!
