Words: Sirish Chandran
It’s the lifestyle of the rich and famous that BMW wants us to experience, if only for two days, as we check into the Park Hyatt in New York, a few blocks from the iconic Times Square. It’s a hotel at the cutting edge of modern luxury (or so we’re told) – tastefully appointed, manned (womaned?) by impossibly good-looking staff, lit up by artistically twisted chandeliers and with nothing so ‘yesterday’ as a reception desk. (For two days I wondered why those pretty ladies were standing behind gleaming MacBooks and wishing me so courteously). That evening we walked past Central Park to dine at the fancy Jean-Georges restaurant at the Trump Tower, so fancy that even we journalists had to wear a jacket to enter (nobody noticed I was wearing jeans). However, we Indian journalists were way too jet-lagged to notice the three Michelin stars on the door or truly appreciate the volcanic eruption and seismic shifts in flavours as we sunk our teeth into a perfectly grilled steak.
The next morning we did laps in the pool overlooking downtown Manhattan, signed a few waivers and took a helicopter to the Monticello Motor Club which turns out to be a members-only race circuit. I’ve heard of member’s only clubs, but a member’s-only race circuit? With a Pinninfarina-designed coke dispenser? I’m beginning to feel like the wolf of Wall Street.
What you should note though is we are at a race circuit, to drive a two-tonne luxury saloon. I thought driving an SUV on a race track was a little loony, but riding the kerbs on a luxo-barge ? I begin to wonder if the whole ‘Ultimate Driving Machine’ thing is getting a little out of hand.
We opt for the sensible thing and hit the public roads around the circuit. Now the US of A might be the most developed country in the world but you won’t be hard pressed to find roads that remind you of home. For the most part the roads are wonderfully surfaced but we did find potholes, roadworks, coarse surfaces and even a bear crossing the road with two cubs (though that has no relevance to this story). And the very first thing that strikes you is the new 7 Series rides nearly as well as the standard-bearing S-Class, and to explain why, lets get a bit nerdy.
With the Project i cars (i3 and i8) BMW is now at the forefront of carbonfibre usage in motorcars and the lessons have been liberally applied to the body-in-white of the new 7 Series. Unlike the i8, the whole monocoque is not in carbonfibre, but considered usage of the material in key places reduces overall weight by nearly 130kg. Carbonfibre is used to reinforce the transmission tunnel, C-pillars, parcel shelf, roof cross-members and tubes that run the length of each roof rail. Further weight reduction is achieved by using aluminium doors (each is 12kg lighter than the previous 7’s steel doors), aluminium roof (which lowers the centre of gravity) and aluminium chassis components, including the wheel carriers, brake calliper housings, brake disc carriers and rear transverse suspension arms (totalling a 10kg reduction in unsprung weight at each corner). This leads to a perfect 50:50 weight distribution, front to rear but more importantly makes the 7 feel much lighter.
As for the suspension, the 7 now uses air springs at the front and rear (the earlier one only used it on the rear), continuously varying damping and automatic self-levelling. You can raise the ground clearance by 20mm at speeds below 30kmph, while in Sport mode the 7 automatically hunkers down by 10mm. In addition to Comfort, Sport and Adaptive modes, the Drive Experience controller has a new Comfort Plus mode demonstrating BMW’s efforts to instill a more cosseting feel than it’s stiffly sprung predecessor. Adaptive mode meanwhile predicts which setting is best suited to how the car is being driven and also reads the road ahead (corners or straights coming up) to proactively switch between modes. And like Merc’s Magic Ride Control, stereoscopic cameras at the top of the windshield identify obstacles like potholes and speed breakers and soften the dampers to ride out the undulations (and like Merc’s system, works only during the day and in clear weather).
It’s a load of tech, and it all works. Coarse surfaces are ironed out completely, the dampers ride with more fluidity over bumps and it is wonderfully relaxing to cruise at the speed limit and take in the scenery. It works so well, in fact, that I will need to drive the S-Class on the same road to really say for sure whether it still retains its ride quality crown.
The insides too have been suitably softened, especially the seats that are plusher than I remember from past 7’s. It even has a soft pillow strapped on to the rear headrest to cushion your head, a la S-Class. Rear legroom is claimed to be the best in its class on the long wheelbase version (the only one to be offered in India) which has been stretched out by an inch. The optional Executive Seating Package (a Rs 3 lakh option but you’d be crazy not to option your 7 Series with it) folds the front passenger seat forward, sticks out a footrest and reclines the seat behind to create a truly lavish perch. This four-passenger configuration also gets a Samsung tablet in the centre console to control everything – climate, car settings, navigation, massage functions, exercise mode (yup, the rear seats have an exercise mode!), seat ventilation and much more, all via the car’s in-built Wi-Fi. It’s a seriously cool tool but is overshadowed by something even cooler – gesture control.
Twirl your finger at the iDrive screen and you can adjust volume (on the 1400W Bowers & Wilkins sound system), give a two-fingered salute like a victory sign to get the navigation to take you home, jab a finger at the screen to answer a call, swipe haughtily to reject a call and pinch and drag to view 360-degree views of the car so that you can park it without kerbing a wheel. These are the five gestures mapped into the 7 Series – a first for any automobile, FYI – and are optimised for the driver, a sensor in the roof, near the map lights, monitoring a shoe-box-sized area in front of the iDrive screen. Do you really need gesture control? Not at all, but the same questions were asked not too many years ago when the iPhone debuted the touch screen – and it is such a cool trick that I’m sure gesture control will soon be seen everywhere.
As will variations on what is The Coolest Keyfob In The World. Sure it can do mundane tasks such as lock and unlock doors but it also has a full-colour screen on which you can check whether you actually locked the doors and wound up the windows, check range and service settings, turn on the air-conditioning, even park and retrieve the car from your garage, without you needing to be in the car. The latter we couldn’t experience, as US laws require you to physically operate the brake lever but in Europe you can get out of the car, press a button and the 7 will steer itself into a parking slot. Tell me you aren’t impressed!
The 7 Series can also drive itself and is all geared up for autonomous driving, the minute legislation allows it. For now it will steer itself (and brake and accelerate to the speed set on the active cruise control) at speeds up to 200kmph but you can’t have your hands off the steering wheel for more than 15 seconds. On the motorway, keep a light hand on the ’wheel, set the cruise control, set the route on the destination and the 7 Series will literally drive you there. Freaky!
Back to the interiors. The driver gets a meaty sport steering wheel and a 12.3-inch digital cluster that – to emphasise on sportiness – sticks with the traditional circular speedo and tacho dials with metal rings. All switchgear has a galvanised metal finish, the leather is convincingly plush and expensive and the temperature controls and iDrive screen is touch sensitive. The rotary iDrive controller remains so you can
either access functions by tapping menus on the touchsensitive screen or scrolling through them (or both!), which I think is quite possibly the best solution in a car right now. LED mood lighting basks the cabin in an inviting glow, the LED puddle lamps have a cool graphic (light carpet as BMW puts it) and you can even option a starlight pattern headliner similar to what Roll-Royce offers – all lending a wonderful
sense of occasion that was missing in the earlier 7 Series. It’s such a tech-infused cabin that it also gets wireless charging for smartphones, something that Apple has yet to introduce on the iPhone!
Ultimately though these are all gimmicks. What matters is how the 7 Series drives and for that we have a fleet of white 7 Series with the M Sport styling package to sample on the race track. The M Sport pack adds visual aggression, all the chrome is blacked-out, there’s an aggressive front apron, rear diffuser and side skirts and 20-inch wheels. It makes the 7 look superb (to my eyes at least) but fact of the matter is that unlike the visual leaps, every 7 Series generation has made this sixth gen car look like a mild facelift of the outgoing model, and that can’t be very good in this day and age of style over substance.
As for substance, bloody hell, the 7 Series moves. Indian cars, when they are launched at the Auto Expo next February, will get the 3.0-litre diesel and the twin-turbo 4.4-litre V8 and this being the USA we have the latter to sample, complete with xDrive; all-wheel drive. With 445bhp and 4800Nm of torque the 750i xDrive blasts to 100kmph in 4.3 seconds – that’s the kind of wallop you get in the full-blown M5. Turn into the first corner and that lightness makes itself felt again, the nose darting towards the apex without any slack in either the suspension or steering.
The electro-mechanical steering weights up beautifully, in sync with rising g-force loads. The optional Dynamic Drive, roll-reduction system features electro-mechanical actuation of the anti-roll bars in place of hydraulic actuation leading to faster stabilisation of the body during cornering, a more progressive build-up of lean and reduced body roll. You can feel a bit of body roll and that, we are told, is deliberate so that the driver has a reference to how much the car is being pushed and the approaching limits. The steering now uses a fixed-ratio rack in place of the previous gen’s variable-ratio rack while the (optional) rear-wheelsteer function provides up to three-degrees of counter steer for added maneuverability around town, or two-degrees of parallel steer for greater agility on the road.
It all leads to agility, precision and sportiness that is several notches above its class rivals. Forget its rivals, just on its own, being pushed hard behind an M4 pace car, the 7 Series is mega – massively quick, with astonishing body control for something so huge; excellent steering response and feel and masses of grip.
And then you switch to Comfort Plus on the cool-down lap and it completely changes the car’s character; the 7 becomes more cosseting and compliant. It insulates you from New York’s manholes and bumpy roads as you make your way to the corner office on Wall Street to hedge your bets and cash in the bonus cheque to pay for the trophy wife, helicopter and annual membership to the Monticello Motor Club.
Don’t know about best car in the world but the new 7 Series is definitely the sportiest luxury-limo in the world.