2009 BMW 750Li: The Best Luxury Sedan

The 400-horsepower BMW 750Li has rear-wheel steering. Below 40 miles per hour, the rear wheels can turn as much as 3 degrees opposite the direction of the front wheels, thereby reducing the big car’s turning radius.

I'm quite certain that somewhere right now, emotionally shattered BMW technicians are gathering in a church basement for a support group, huddled around the cookies and the coffee urn, their hands fairly vibrating with frustration. For as well deserved as is the title Ultimate Driving Machine, BMWs also have earned the reputation as the Ultimate Hangar Queen, taking up residence in dealership service bays and sending mechanics over the crumbling edge of insanity. Hello -- sob! -- my name is Dieter and I'm a BMW tech . . . . Hello, Dieter, keep comin' back. . . .

Yes, BMWs have middling initial quality and distinctly less-than-middling reliability -- so sayeth J.D. Power -- but people still buy them and adore them, because they are inarguably spectacular cars. Even the BMWs that I loathe are great cars. The new 135i is uglier than a Radcliffe glee club, but it's also fierce, fervid, delicious, a bottle of Bollinger that's lost its cork.

And then there's this car, the 2009 BMW 750Li, the flagship of BMW's starfleet, which might be -- one hates to draw lines in this particular sand -- the best luxury sedan in the world. Oh, sure, it could be better. It could run on the tears of disgraced CEOs or cure warts of the keister. But as an executive saloon, as a synthesis of power and grace and ease and prestige, the new 7-series demands that we reset our calipers, raise our ceilings and throw out our measuring sticks. There is now a new standard.

And yet, the 750Li boldly/daringly/foolishly leverages its greatness on the fulcrum of one of the company's perennial weaknesses: electronics. This car comprises a blazing amour fou of control modules, sensors, microcontrollers, solenoids and mechatronic actuators, all wired together with the CAN-bus network from hell.

Our fully optioned $110,170 test car provides an acute example. Among the systems: night vision display with enhanced pedestrian detection; active blind-spot detection; lane-departure warning; park-distance control; head-up display; adaptive headlights with high-beam "assistant"; three high-resolution cameras on the rear deck lid and front fenders.

Of course, there's an 80-gigabyte, hard-drive-based navigation system, satellite radio and premium audio system; and a completely redesigned version of the multifunction iDrive controller (the previous system was nicknamed "iQuit").

My favorite? The integral active steering system, which is to say, rear-wheel steering. Below 40 miles per hour, the rear wheels can turn as much as 3 degrees opposite the direction of the front wheels, thereby reducing the big car's turning radius. Great for parking and tight city traffic. Above 40 mph, the wheels turn in phase with the front wheels to increase handling responsiveness, cornering and agility.

Does integral active steering perform as advertised? Has Hasselhoff had work? This car runs like mighty winged Pegasus, carving mountain roads and dicing switchbacks as if it were an M3 with a pituitary problem. No big car has ever had so much rail-to-rail slaloming agility, such effortless composure at the limit. It's uncanny, it's eerie, it's surreal.

Indeed, the effect of all these electronics is to knit together a kind of digitized meta-reality where the surly bonds of physics have slipped a bit, a place where this enormous, heavy sedan can dance like a sports car. Think of it like the world of "The Matrix," inside of which Keanu Reeves can fly, or act.

And so we arrive at the truest portrait of the 750Li: half machine, half machine code; a kinetic sculpture, partly aluminum and steel, partly a stream of zeros and ones. Wonderful, epic, historic.

But can you trust it?
I really don't know. On the one hand, I'm utterly smitten by the technology. I love piloting a leather-lined spaceship with a 20-way adjustable captain's chair with heating/cooling and massage function.

There are moments on the interstate at night -- when the ghostly thermal-imaging night-vision display is on, the head-up display is reading out navigation messages, the lane-departure warning system is gently reminding me to use my turn signals, and all is bathed in serene LED cabin light -- that the 750Li really feels like something that comes after the Automobile.

Still, I'm nagged by doubt. All of these exotic systems, such as the head-up display (Nippon Seiki), lane-change warning (Hella) and night vision (Autoliv) come from suppliers in Japan, Germany and Sweden, respectively. The 750Li is practically the U.N. of Tier 1 suppliers. Considering the state of global comity, a question occurs to me: Can they all get along?

Bear in mind, all of this gear is overlaid on the car's, the brand's already fraught electronics: the e-throttle-equipped 4.4-liter, 400-horsepower, twin-turbocharged V8 with variable valve timing on intake and exhaust cams; the adaptive six-speed ZF transmission; the adaptive dynamics system, which itself has four distinct modes (Comfort, Normal, Sport and Sport+), which ratchet up performance thresholds for the engine, transmission, brakes, steering and stability control. The braking module governs anti-lock, traction and stability control, brake "drying," brake-fade compensation. . . . It just goes on and on.

What few buyers appreciate is how difficult systems integration is on a car like this. For the BMW 750Li to work, every system and subsystem has to mind-meld with the others in a cold chatter of instant, endless algorithms, faultlessly, every time, forever and ever, amen. No wonder they go buggy.

So when I say the 750Li is the best luxury sedan in the world, imagine a weather-balloon-size asterisk. I guess, as long as it starts, it is.

2009 BMW 750i 400HP Twin-Turbo Road Test

Just like a kid writing a 10th-grade term paper, the 2009 BMW 750i is just begging to mention the guy who said, "The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal." In other words, one man's Thomas Jefferson is another's Guy Fawkes.

After being flamed with criticisms of its Bangle-butt styling and infernal iDrive controller, the last-generation BMW 7 Series seemed to be a shoo-in for criminal indictment. When this model was introduced back in 2002, car enthusiasts gathered with pitchforks in hand, carrying effigies of BMW chief designer Chris Bangle and yammering about an honored automotive brand being besmirched by styling blasphemy and misguided technological wizardry.

And yet the E63 has sold better than any of the three previous generations of the 7 Series, while both its controversial rear-end styling and iDrive control interface sprouted in copycat form all over the automotive landscape. Whatever you might say, the 2002-'08 BMW 7 Series has been undeniably successful — a revolutionary, not a criminal.

But like Thomas Jefferson, revolutionaries must move on and mellow through time. The all-new 2009 BMW 750i does just that, presenting a more enlightened approach to the full-size luxury flagship. The 2009 7 Series is quite simply one of the finest automobiles made today — no pitchforks needed.

Good-Bye, Bangle Butt; Hello, Habib Nose
The 2002 BMW 7 Series will be remembered for its Bangle butt — the curiously shelflike trunk lid and down-turned rear corners from Chris Bangle's design team that helped disguise the car's dramatic increase in overall height compared to the previous generation and the high, turbulence-reducing trunk that was required.

Meanwhile, the 2009 BMW 750i will go down for its Habib nose, the enormous, vertical, kidney-shape grilles on the front of the new car that come from the 7 Series design team led by Karim Habib, a response to new European standards of safety for pedestrian impacts. It's an imposing new face for BMW's flagship, yet it seems appropriate. It's the most controversial element on a car that is otherwise tasteful, yet visually interesting, paying just enough attention to classic BMW cues as it establishes new ones.












It all adorns a body incredibly similar in size to the car it replaces, as if the engineering furniture has been only slightly rearranged. Compared to the E63, the F01 7 Series has an additional inch of length, the same exact width, 0.3 inch less height and a 3.0-inch shorter wheelbase. Though the structure is lighter (and 20 percent more rigid), than before, this 4,599-pound car is 113 pounds heavier than the last 750i we tested. The result, in any case, is a big sedan replaced by a big sedan.

Only the lankiest of long-legged drivers will impinge upon the legs of the rear-seat occupants, who occupy a supremely comfortable backseat virtually identical in size to its predecessor. If space should indeed be an issue, the 750Li adds 5.5 inches of wheelbase for a limolike backseat. By comparison, a Mercedes-Benz S-Class falls in between these two body styles of the new 7 Series.











Smaller Is Bigger
The deck lid might read 750i, but under the hood resides a 4,395cc V8 with a pair of turbos sandwiched in between cylinder banks that hums to the tune of 400 horsepower at 5,500 rpm and 450 pound-feet of torque at 1,800 rpm. That's more torque than pumped out by the former V12 (an engine that hasn't been ruled out for eventual application in this new car, by the way), yet it's delivered in a remarkably no-fuss manner that's very like a V12.

Almost like a supercharged Jaguar V8, the 2009 BMW 750i's twin-turbo V8 whisks you up on a quiet wave of thrust best described as civilized hooliganism. There's no chest-thumping roar, no wild exhaust histrionics, no hint of the turbos spinning away under the sculpted hood.

Instead, the 750i quietly pins you into its double-articulated seatback on its way to 60 mph in 5.2 seconds (or 4.9 seconds with 1 foot of rollout as on a drag strip). That's about a second quicker than the S550 and old 750i, and just as quick as the S63 AMG that costs $37,000 more. Oh, and this engine also orchestrates a spectacular burnout.

Should you unfortunately have to stop, the new 7 Series comes to a halt from 60 mph in 112 feet with no drama, no fade and a consistent pedal every time.











More Choices Than Cheesecake Factory
How that effortless wave of thrust is called upon depends on the Driving Dynamics Control, the most elaborate, driver-adjustable tool for chassis setup that you've ever seen. Throttle sensitivity, transmission shift characteristics, steering effort, suspension damping and stability control are adjustable via settings for Comfort, Normal, Sport and Sport Plus. Adjustment of throttle action makes the biggest difference in the way the car behaves; the adjustment of suspension makes the smallest difference, as it's always supple.

DDC sounds complicated, but it allows the 2009 BMW 750i to better appeal to a greater number of drivers. In fact, you can break down Sport mode into chassis-only (steering and suspension) or drivetrain-only (throttle and six-speed automatic transmission), although we wished each DDC aspect could be individually selectable for an even more personalized driving cocktail. That's just nitpicking, though, as is the fact that the car defaults back to Normal or Comfort at startup in order to promote fuel-efficiency.

While only enthusiasts usually opt for a Sport package on a BMW, the example we found on our 750i test car is a must for anyone. Its rear-wheel steering (Integral Active Steering) allows this long luxury sedan to whip itself around hairpins or U-turn into tighter parking spaces better than much smaller cars. At low speeds, the rear wheels turn opposite the fronts for improved maneuverability, while they turn in the same direction at highway speeds for better stability. All the rage among Japanese GT cars of the early 1990s, four-wheel steering might finally be ready for prime time.

At the track, the 2009 BMW 750i and its engineering bag of tricks managed to snake through the slalom at a truly remarkable 66 mph — 3 mph faster than the Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG. It circled the skid pad at 0.84g, displaying impressive balance and communication. Quite simply, a car this big should not be cornering like this.

While the 7 Series has always felt at speed as if it had shrunk to a smaller, more agile size around you, this fifth-generation car with the Sport package feels like it was thrown into a hot dryer. The big car's steering isn't as tactile as that of a 5 Series, but as a sport limo, it's hard to fault its effort or feel in Sport mode. Comfort is a different matter, though, as it delivers too much play on-center.













Stop the Presses. We Like iDrive
For the past decade, the word "iDrive" has been greeted with the same sort of response usually reserved for "Detroit vacation." No more.

While the original knob-and-screen interface was indeed revolutionary for its solution to an overload of dash buttons, it was terribly flawed. The latest edition borrows innovations since introduced by competitors and also builds upon the iDrive fixes BMW has added over the years. Buttons have been installed around the controller for quicker access to frequently used functions, and we found them to be more intuitive to use than Audi's similar MMI layout. The iDrive screen itself is more attractively integrated into the dash and features more logically arranged menus. Graphics are also nicer, especially the navigation system map, which now features a bird's-eye topographical perspective.

One of iDrive's biggest problems was that too many functions were put under its fussy jurisdiction. Now liberated are eight preset buttons on the center stack, separate climate controls (now with a BMW-first dual-zone sync function) and a toggle button on the steering wheel for selecting radio stations.
A Metaphorical Statesman Fit for Literal Statesman
The rest of the big BMW's cabin is an exquisite blend of highest-quality luxury materials and eye-catching design. A leatherlike material covers the dash and door tops, with stitching that adds a handmade touch. The glossy wood trim is classy and gracefully wraps itself around the cabin.

The standard "Comfort" seats are just as advertised, with heating, cooling and an almost absurd range of adjustability that includes side bolsters and lumbar support. Whether slicing through a canyon road or escaping to Vegas for the weekend, the driver seat will cosset its occupant's butt like few others. In fact, it comes with a butt massage feature that alternates pressure between each cheek. (We're all for an intimacy between car and driver, but this is probably going a tad too far.)
A $90,000 Bargain
Most of us who drove the 2009 BMW 750i came away thinking we'd driven an even more expensive car. Upon hearing our tester rang in at "only" $89,870, the 7 Series started to seem like a bargain given its eye-popping performance, car-shrinking handling and a cabin that beautifully blends technology and luxury. It rates with the Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG at a price tag less than a Mercedes S550.

While the last 7 Series certainly impressed, its visually challenging styling and exasperating interior functionality made it difficult to desire. The all-new 750i, on the other hand, is well on its way to making a place for itself among our favorite cars. What was once a ragged revolutionary is now an honored statesman.

Review: 2009 BMW 730D,the Best Car in the World

START OF A DYNASTY? One day, the 2009 BWM 7 Series will be seen as having been the progenitor of a new dynasty of Baby Rollers - less regal, perhaps, but just as luxurious.

Price: R928 000.
Top speed: 245km/h, 0-100km/h 7.2sec.
Consumption: 13 litres/100km.
CO2 emissions: 192g/km.
Best for: Social climbing.
Also worth considering: Mercedes-Benz S-Class, Jaguar XJ, Lexus LS, Audi A8.

Is this the best car in the world?

It isn't a question you would normally ask about a BMW, not even the limo-sized 7 Series, and yet it is pertinent for the British car industry.

The reason is that this, the new Seven, is the basis for the "Baby Rollers" project that has been gestating inside the BMW combine for some time, the company having bought the rights to the Flying Lady and all that some years ago.

Obviously, there will be some important changes: the pocket Rolls-Royce to be sold alongside the gigantic Phantom will be even more refined than the Seven, even better kitted and will, one hopes, retain that all-important Roll-Royce ambience and elegance, symbolised in the fabulously slim steering wheel in the Phantom.

However, under all that will be a 7 Series, and that is an excellent starting point.

The Seven's most impressive feature is its diesel engine. BMW is one of a dedicated band of manufacturers who made it their mission to make Rudolph Diesel's old oil-burner fit for humans, sporty even.

They achieved that at least a decade ago but this is something else.

The straight-six, three-litre engine as fitted to the 730d is, to answer my earlier question, one of the best (if not the best) diesel units in the world.












You know the usual adjectives that are applied to decent engines – smooth, powerful, effortless, torquey. Well, it's all true about this one. Subjectively, it compares well with the five-litre, 12-cylinder petrol engine found in the Bentley Continental GT though the BMW is only half as powerful.

So, it would be good enough for a Bentley. Indeed, it is perfectly apparent that BMW has engineered a diesel engine fit for a Rolls-Royce. I suggest that they go for it, reap the whirlwind of publicity for such an audacious act, and, ever so casually, also mention that this superb unit will return 13 litres/100km on a run and has correspondingly low CO2 emissions.

CROSSWAYS CAMERAS

A Rolls-Royce to answer the twin challenges of the credit crisis and global warming: quite a tour de force.












The second most impressive feature of the Seven, by the way, is the "sideview camera", something I'd not come across before, even on a Lexus, a brand usually first with the toys. Not sure what it's for – but it provides a "dog's eye view" of the world from the front of your car. Something to relieve boredom at the traffic lights, I suppose.*

And what needs fixing before they turn the Seven into a Rolls-Royce? Well, the handling is a little fruity if you chuck it about, so that needs taming, and the boot lid is excessively heavy to close.
WHY WAIT?

An electric motor should sort that in the Rolls-Royce but they also need to tweak it for 7 Series drivers. Otherwise, leave well alone.

If you can't wait for the new small Rolls-Royce, be assured that the surprisingly economical and soberly styled 7 Series is – nearly – the best car in the world. - The Independent, London
*BMW says the cameras peer around corners, such as when leaving a garage or alleyway or out into the street between parked cars.