The new wood-and-leather steering wheel features buttons for cruise, audio, and climate controls. The instruments feature large, easy-to-read numbers and a digital speedometer to more easily monitor your speed as you drive quickly and quietly down the road.

Front seats have been redesigned to provide better support and comfort. The front seats offer an additional 1.5 inches of fore/aft travel over the previous model. Reshaped seatbacks provide additional knee room for those sitting in the back seats.

Interior space is more accessible and more user-friendly, though it's no larger than the previous model's. The doors open wide to make it easier to get out of the front and rear seats. New storage units provide 44 percent more volume. This is provided by a new fold-down front armrest with a double-hinged top that can be opened to either the driver's or passenger's side, storage pouches sewn into the front cushion of the front seats, hinged storage bins in the front doors, a 20-percent larger glovebox, cupholders and a storage tray that out from the front edge of the center front seat, atlas-sized pockets in the front seatbacks and a fold-down rear armrest of storage and cupholders.

The interior is even quieter for 2003 with thicker noise insulation in the floor, firewall and pillars. It's very quiet, allowing maximum fidelity from the 145-watt Alpine sound system, which includes AM, FM, cassette and single CD play (a trunk-mounted 6-disc changer is optional on all models for $605). The audio system offers CD and cassette players for buyers who enjoy books on tape. Or, you can listen to the new, more powerful exhaust sound deliberately engineered into the Town Car.

Long-wheelbase versions offer 47 inches of rear seat leg room, with 120.5 cubic feet of total interior volume compared to the standard model's 113 cubic feet. The rear doors of the long version have been redesigned with 17 percent more glass area than before for better outward vision.

Lincoln is selling several different kinds of luxury with the new Town Car, starting with its quietness, materials, and pure spaciousness, and the Cartier L has more of that than any other luxury car on the market. Its rear-seat armrest contains controls for the rear climate control and the audio system, two additional 12-volt power points, an ashtray and lighter in each door, and a separate control that can adjust the fore/aft position of the right front seat. Heated rear seats are standard on the Cartier L.