The new Lincoln Navigator is enormous but sophisticated - here's what it's like to drive

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

• The original luxury SUV is all-new for 2018.
• It embodies Lincoln's "quiet luxury" philosophy at a massive scale.
• We tested it for a week, and it was more than up to every challenge we threw at it.

There's a mighty new Lincoln Navigator in town, and we really put it through its paces in the New York and New Jersey area as winter bore down on the region.

The Navigator, around since the 1990s, is the original luxury SUV. If the recently arrived new Continental is the flagship sedan of Ford's revived premium marque, then the Navigator is the dreadnought of the fleet. This is the fourth generation of the big guy.

We saw it for the first time as a flamboyant, nautical-themed concept vehicle at the New York Auto Show in 2016; Lincoln officially debuted the new Navigator at the 2017 show. It was only a matter of time before we got our hands on this behemoth for some test time behind the wheel. That happened late last year.

Here's how it went: