It looks good, feels good, smells good. In fact, this SUV can even make you feel like you’re in a spa

The Nautilus now takes on the competition with a larger platform, a new gas-electric hybrid engine option, and a futuristic-looking pillar-to-pillar screen. The latter provides an overall spa-like “Rejuvenate” experience that combines available scents, massaging seats and an orchestrated light show through the cabin.

Granted, that’s an experience for when parked, which makes much more sense to offer in a vehicle that plugs in, which the 2024 Lincoln Nautilus does not. But it could be a welcome luxury bubble for a few solitary, relaxing minutes when waiting to pick up offspring, or a partner.

Soon after returning from the Canadian launch event just outside Halifax that meandered through Atlantic Canada, with memorable stops in both New Brunswick and Charlottetown, PEI (with its epic COWS ice cream and T-shirt factory), I landed in the driver’s seat of one of this Lincoln’s main rivals, the Lexus RX 350. The ‘350’ part of its name designated that this was the regular gas version, which was close in price ($65,000-ish) and competes directly with the gas-only Nautilus version I had just experienced.

It highlighted how Lincoln is becoming more aggressive in offering more technology inside on top of its traditional comfort-oriented luxury, with the Lincoln’s massage seats particularly missed in the RX. But Lincoln is also now offering a more high-tech dynamic game, with an advanced hands-free BlueCruise 1.2 that allows for long stretches of no hands on the wheel, as long as you have your eyes on the road, as well as a touch-to-pass function on the turn signal when the BlueCruise system is activated.

These features may not be new to Tesla owners long used to intelligent adaptive cruise software. (Don’t call it autonomous, as all such systems still need visual and driver attention!) In fact, both the Lexus and the Lincoln have very active eye-reading systems, both of which admonish you on a fairly regular basis if you’re not facing straight ahead. Sunglasses help reduce the number of these chastising dings, but don’t eliminate them, which even the Ford folks admitted seemed more frequent in some of our testers than usual.

Potential Nautilus owners concerned about this may be wise to wait for the 2025 Nautilus, which Ford says will offer over-the-air updates, which the current ’24 models do not. This again was another Tesla innovation that has dragged most other luxury automakers to offer updated software, which, in this case, may somewhat smooth over the driver attention software’s sensitivity settings.

Just opening the door to the Nautilus, which starts at $61,900, reveals that the massive door-to-door screen is the showpiece digital jewelry around which the rest of the interior is built. The squircle steering wheel is flatter up top to enable it to be positioned low enough so the driver can see the gauges over it, while the centre screen in the middle is noticeably smaller than most other luxury vehicle screens, and even many mainstream centre screens. This made for some soft buttons that were smaller and more difficult to adjust while on the move.

There is plenty of welcoming space in the front and rear seats, with notably more room for people and cargo than in the shorter Lexus RX. But the Cambridge, Ont.-built RX also offers more advanced and plentiful powertrain choices: there are two hybrid choices on offer for the Lexus, one more frugal, the other more performance-oriented, as well as something the Nautilus unfortunately doesn’t offer: a plug-in hybrid version.

After spending a day in the Nautilus (250 horsepower) and its Hybrid variant (310 hp), there’s no doubt that the Hybrid seems the more appealing. Besides the extra power, the Hybrid model is quieter and smoother in operation at low speeds, where the gas engine’s stop-start system struggles more to switch on and off imperceptibly.

Fuel-consumption estimates have the Hybrid well ahead in overall efficiency, averaging 7.7 litres/100 km, compared to the regular’s 9.8l average, both of which are based on a two-litre, turbocharged four-cylinder engine. On mostly traffic-free driving routes, the fuel consumption of both landed much closer together, with the combustion-only version in the mid-8ls, and the Hybrid in the high-7ls.

So don’t expect to make up that $3,500 hybrid upcharge very quickly (or at all) if you do mostly highway driving, or, at least, the free-flowing kind.

Both engines take regular fuel, which also offers some cost savings over many luxury SUVs, although Premium is recommended. And if you’re trying to spot whether a Nautilus is a Hybrid model or not, look for the blue lettering of the Nautilus script on the fenders.

With standard all-wheel drive, a roomy interior and advanced features, the 2024 Lincoln Nautilus provides some worthy luxury and pampering technologies. There was one incident of screen freezing that turned off all our audio, which would make me lean toward waiting for the ’25 model which will offer over-the-air software fixes.