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Walkaround
The Mercury Milan looks as crisp and new as a $100 bill. It looks like it belongs to a completely different family of cars than the Ford Fusion, thanks to major changes to the roof, side glass, headlamps, grille and taillamps. The doors are the only shared body panels between the Milan, Fusion, Mazda 6, and the upcoming Lincoln Zephyr.
The traditional Mercury waterfall grille, as opposed to the Ford Fusion three-bar grille, is surrounded by a much more conventional-looking combination headlamp units (versus the Ford version's trapezoidal headlamps).
Out back, the high decklid is framed by a pair of bright LED taillamps that look like they came from a Japanese or German car, large and nicely integrated. The side view is pumped up several notches on the Premier version with its 14-spoke 17-inch alloy wheels and relatively fat 225/50 tires.
Interior Features
On our silver Premier, the interior was black leather with contrasting white stitching on the seats and steering wheel, with black and white switchgear, black and white instrumentation with chrome rings, and lots of satin-finish metal panels to set off the black and white. Very tasty. And if you don't like the satin and patterned aluminum trim, there's a Wales Mahogany interior trim option at no charge.
The deeply bucketed front seats were especially cozy, more of an in seat than an on seat. The rear seat folds down in 60/40 fashion, enabled by an easy-pull latch on each side, to eliminate leaning over the decklid opening and fumbling for seatback latches. With the seat down, you get the 15.8 cubic feet in the trunk plus another 46 cubic feet of cargo space behind the front seats, making it into a once-in-a-while station wagon.
The interior is roomy enough for a 6-foot, 4-inch passenger to sit behind a 6-foot, 4-inch driver, with real headroom. The rear door panels are scooped out for more elbow room. The rear armrest packs two cupholders, for a total of six.
Storage cubbyholes are all over the place, two in the console, one quite large one at the top center of the dash with a latching lid, two more in each front door pocket hollowed out to take a Big Gulp cup, and one in the bottom center of the dashboard, all of which add up to convenience and ease. The quality of design and materials for a car in this price class was generally quite high, satisfying to touch and look at.
The premium eight-speaker sound system played our favorite compilation CDs exactly as they sound at home on our high-end equipment, minus a bit of bass.
We thought there was too much glare off the main instrument cover, likewise with the radio face and the otherwise lovely analog clock.
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