First Drive: BMW’s tech-loaded 7 series takes on Mercedes S Class

What do you give the man who has everything but doesn’t much like Mercedes-Benz’s S-Class? Right now you have a choice of a facelifted Jaguar XJ, an Audi A8, a Lexus LS or this.

BMW has jumbled in a bunch of new technology into its all- new 7 Series, the under-skin bits of which defy an evolutionary body design.

It has also, thankfully, been completely redone inside, with quality materials everywhere, including metal buttons, gesture controls for the multimedia system and carpet so thick you could lose coins in it.

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And, critically, it has the very best key in the business. It’s a chunky unit with the traditional lock/unlock/boot buttons at one end and a big touchscreen occupying the rest of the palm-sized unit.

You can swipe across different functions, you can find out whether or not the car is locked and, in reality, it’s all so you can show off your 7 Series even if the car is parked at an airport on the other side of the world.

We tested both the 730d and 750i LWB versions in and around Porto in Portugal, and found marked differences in them that went well beyond the choice of straight-six turbodiesel or biturbo V8 power.

The short wheelbase standard cars have very different handling characteristics, while the long-wheelbase version, contrary to type, handles with terrific composure and assurance and has an agility of which Z4 owners would be jealous.

It has weaknesses, too. Both cars use four-wheel steering and both cars have the same awkward off-centre direction change at speed, but it’s more pronounced on the standard wheelbase.

The trade-off from that is the agility it brings at low speed, or in winding road conditions, where the 7 Series does a passable impersonation of a 3 Series, but with a better ride and less noise.

It has plenty of tricks available as options, too. Maybe too many. It’s a long list, with all-wheel drive adding 70kg to most models, there’s also a full-size sunroof, the tech to park (and unpark) itself in tight spaces by using just the key, laser lighting, a rear-seat tablet to operate most in-car functions – it goes on and on.

The flagship of the BMW range is the internally acknowledged technology leader of the brand, stacked with every innovation it couldn’t afford to put in lesser cars.

Carbon fibre

That includes integrating carbon fibre into the limousine’s passenger cell to add strength, lower weight and create space, slashing about 130kg from the total weight of the sixth-generation car.

Despite the weight reduction, the long-wheelbase version is, at 5,238mm long, the biggest series production car BMW has ever built.

The ride-and-handling package has had a major overhaul, with self-levelling air suspension at both ends of the car, along with standard dynamic damping control to adjust to both driving styles and road conditions along the way.

There is also an optional set of electromechanical anti-roll bars to reduce body roll in hard cornering while still ironing out bumps and road undulations.

Its active safety package includes everything from active cruise control to steering and lane-keeping assistance, side collision protection, a traffic-jam assistant so you don’t have to brake and accelerate in heavy traffic and a front, and rear crossing traffic warning system. If that all sounds like it’s pre-rigged for autonomous driving, well. . .

There is also active aerodynamics that open and close the grille louvres (you know, like the Volkswagen Golf TSI BlueMotion).

The fastest of the two models we drove was the 750Li xDrive, with its biturbo V8 thumping out 330kW of power at 5,500 to 6,000rpm. The 4,395cc motor also has 650Nm of torque from only 1,800rpm and it holds on to it to 4,500rpm.

That’s good enough to shoot the all-wheel drive V8 to 100km/h in 4.4 seconds (or, put another way, perilously close to M5 territory), and it is limited to 250km/h. For all that pace, it clocks an NEDC figure of 8.1 litres/100km and its CO2 emissions hit 189 grams/km.

Keep the accelerator pedal down and the 750 will treat any country’s speed limits with disdain, though there is a fix for that. The car can link its speed limiter to its speed-limit recognition system so that it never breaks the speed limit. While that would significantly limit the time you could spend extracting the V8’s best, at least you might end up driving the car for longer.

It is so quiet that its speed is deceptive, creeping up in increments unless you’re keeping a close eye on the head-up display or the speedo. It’s beautifully isolated from the cabin, too, so you just get the noise without the unwanted evidence of its exertion.

The gearbox is mostly invisible, too, which is a good thing, and the car is simply always in the right gear, but you never really notice how it got there.

Solidity and luxury

The big step forward from the old car is the body control. It’s still recognisably BMW in the way it delivers a firm stance on the road, but the body control is now so good from the air suspension that nothing hurts. It’s as though it’s floating, without ever wafting.

There is good and bad in the interior, with Audi’s Virtual Cockpit suddenly making even the new 7’s digital instrument cluster seem a little clunky and old-fashioned, even as it comes on sale.

The fixed, raised, centrally- mounted multimedia screen is also something of a throwback, but that’s about it for criticisms inside. It’s perhaps a little old- fashioned in its design, but the majority of people in this demographic aren’t after shock and awe, just solidity and luxury. The 7 brings both.

The rear seat is exquisitely comfortable, with adjustability built in for two people and a thick central console and a very squat transmission tunnel, squared off at the top where the carbon fibre reinforces it for bending rigidity.

It’s immediately easy to get comfortable in the driver’s seat, too, and the instrument cluster is all digital, displayed on an 8.8-inch screen, though this can be bumped up to 12.3 inches at a price.

A two-zone air conditioner is standard and there's now a fragrance system, not unlike the one in the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, which is the key foe of the 7 Series.

Go crazy with the interior specifications and you could end up with the Executive Lounge package, which delivers four- zone climate control, active seat ventilation, a rear-seat massage function and a backrest that reclines close to horizontal.

There’s also a fold-out table, a seven-inch touchscreen multimedia tablet that can be removed from the car and you can spend even more money (on the LWB models) and get the full panorama roof, or the Bowers & Wilkins sound system.

These new power plants are fitted into a complex body structure that combines high- strength steels, aluminium and carbon-fibre-reinforced plastic.

There’s a lot of space to put all of these materials, too. The standard 7 Series body sits on a 3,070mm wheelbase and is still just shy (by 2mm) of 5.1m long. The long-wheelbase cars are 5,238mm and ride on a 3,210mm wheelbase.

Both body styles are 1,902mm wide and 1,478mm high, while it manages a 515-litre boot.

The Mercedes S-Class has long dominated this end of the car market but BMW is ready to put up a serious fight for the well-heeled 1 per cent with all the money.