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Lincoln’s best-selling crossover gets fresh content and colors for ‘23, but after three years in the market it remains in the middle of the pack.

Lincoln celebrates its 100th anniversary this year as Ford’s standard-bearer in the luxury segment, and in 2022 its best-selling model, the small-ish Corsair crossover, is getting a series of meaningful upgrades, including a bold red interior and available hands-free driver-assistance technology.

The Corsair first arrived in 2019, sharing some of its underpinnings with the less-expensive (and popular) Ford Escape. For ‘23, the Corsair’s exterior styling gets a modest refresh: The headlights and sheetmetal are the same, but the new grille is larger (a widespread trend among luxury brands), and the front fascia is a bit more chiseled. The decorative fog lamps are gone.

On Grand Touring models, the new grille features oval design elements—coated in a satin metallic foil—that appear like drops of falling rain. A new 20-inch wheel option is available, as are two new exterior colors (Crystal Red and, new to Lincoln, Whisper Blue), along with the Jet Appearance Package with blacked-out exterior trim.

“With the new Corsair we are offering a glimpse into Lincoln’s new exterior design language and introducing new and more youthful colors and materials to offer more ways for our clients to make their vehicle their own,” said Kemal Curic, Lincoln’s global design director.

Yes, the Corsair is Lincoln’s best-selling vehicle in the US (up 21% this year, according to the team), and the brand has delivered 18,139 Corsairs this year through August. And yet, the Corsair is a middling contender in the midsize luxury crossover segment as tracked by Wards Intelligence, being outsold by a wide margin in the first six months by the Audi Q5, BMW X3, Lexus RX, and Mercedes GLC.

If the Corsair’s modest exterior upgrades fail to move the sales needle, perhaps the revisions inside the cabin—and on the technology front—will.

Not everyone wants a bright red interior, but it’s now available for the first time in the Corsair, marketed as Eternal Red and punctuated by handsome “Pista” textured aluminum trim that runs across the instrument panel.

The design team intentionally limited the red leather to the seats, center armrest, and instrument panel but left it off the door trim, so the interior wouldn’t appear to be awash in red. Instead, red stitching on the door panels is intended to tie the interior together aesthetically. This new shade replaces the Beyond Blue interior offered previously on the Corsair.

Joining red in the Corsair’s interior color palette is a neutral mid-tone being marketed as Smoked Truffle. The Corsair will be the first Lincoln to introduce the “truffle color family,” intended to create a warm, luxurious environment.

The center stack also gets attention in this latest refresh. Previously, the climate controls consisted of hard buttons that occupied a fair amount of prime real estate on a shelf that extended above the center console.

Now, the climate controls are integrated digitally at the base of a new, 13.2-inch horizontal display screen positioned atop the instrument panel (replacing the previously standard 8-inch display), serving as the gateway to Sync 4 connectivity. Removing all those hard buttons makes for a cleaner look and easier access to storage space in front of the cupholders.

In front of the driver, the new 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster also replaces an 8-inch unit from the ‘22 model.

On the driver-assistance front, the new Corsair offers Lincoln ActiveGlide 1.2, which was first introduced on the ‘22 Navigator and offers radar-based hands-free (and pedal-free) driving on mapped highways up to 80 mph, which Lincoln claims is a first in the segment.

If you care to try it, the vehicle will perform a hands-free lane change on the highway—once you’ve tapped the turn signal—and it can even suggest a lane change in slow-moving traffic. There’s also Predictive Speed Assist to smoothly adjust when approaching a sharp curve, as well as In-Lane Repositioning to make hands-free highway driving feel more natural, while subtly shifting the vehicle away from others in adjacent lanes.

The Corsair’s powertrains carry over: a 250-hp 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder and a 2.5-liter four-cylinder plug-in hybrid with 266 hp combined. The hybrid launched last September and makes up 7% of Corsair sales.

Arriving in showrooms in early 2023 and available now for ordering, the Corsair is built at Ford’s assembly plant in Louisville, Kentucky.