Welcome to Critic's Notebook, a quick and off-the-cuff car review consisting of impressions, jottings, and marginalia regarding whatever The Drive writers happen to be driving. Today's edition: the 2017 Lincoln MKZ Reserve.

World War II ended 72 years ago, but echoes of the conflict are still bouncing around the hallways of Dearborn and New York. How else to explain the way the standard-bearers for American luxury have become obsessed with beating the Germans at their own game? After decades of listless bloat and creative stagnation, both Cadillac and Lincoln emerged from the recession with the sleek, sporty sedans of Deutschland squarely in their sights. So for the past seven years, it's been out with the old, musty trappings of domestic opulence—boat-like suspensions, La-Z-Boy seats, and lazier engines—and in with the stylish, tightly-wound mystique of their European competitors.

And while you can spend all day mocking the way things used to be, it does feel like some quintessential parts of American luxury are sorely missing from current high-end domestic offerings. I'm not saying things were better when you could fit 20 bodies in the trunk of a softly-sprung Town Car, but there was a comforting grandeur to the old vanguard that's missing from the flashy new recruits. For all their faults, the cars both U.S. luxury carmakers made in the closing years of the 20th Century were all remarkably self-assured, no matter how terrible they really were. Building on nearly a century of experience, they had arrived.

But in this new era, it's back to square one. They're the new kids, anxious and unsure, and they've each taken a different approach to fitting in. With its lithe, rear-wheel-drive sedans and V Series division, Cadillac wants to steal buyers from BMW. Meanwhile, Lincoln's path has been less clear. Its high-end moves, like re-introducing the Continental as a flagship sedan and further fancifying the Navigator, seem targeted at Mercedes-Benz. When you look at its whole lineup, though, the attempts to shape the mushy concept of "generalized luxury" into something marketable call Audi to mind. And let's not even get into those Matthew McConaughey ads.

It's exactly that kind of split thinking that led to today's subject. The Ford Fusion-based Lincoln MKZ has a slick design inside and out, a 400 horsepower, twin-turbo engine, the same torque vectoring all-wheel-drive system from the Ford Focus RS, and loads of fancy tech. But it's also caught between two worlds, like a middle-aged American tourist who's not quite sure about the gimp suit he just put on in a Berlin nightclub. To see which side it lands on, The Drive borrowed a 2017 Lincoln MKZ Reserve for a holiday weekend slog from New York City to the beautiful Adirondack Mountains upstate and back.