Test drive BMW 7-Series
If there was a reason why the chairman of the board of directors of BMW AG Harald Kruger fell at the motor show in Frankfurt, then it is the coolness of the new "seven" ...
You leave the house, which itself closes the door behind you, wishes you a good day and reminds you that in the evening you will have dinner with new neighbors. Next, a drone flies out with articulated, like insect-like limbs, in which it tenaciously holds a forgotten umbrella. At the same time he straightens his tie, buzzes something encouraging and flies back. A car drives out of the garage, the door slides to the side, you sit down and dictate the address. The car starts smoothly, no one is driving. 2040, the dollar exceeded 250, Putin with a sigh takes back the nuclear briefcase from Kudrin - he is 88 and he is tired, but the people insisted. Tiles are being changed in Moscow.
There is no other industry that has popularized the technology of the future as much as the auto industry. Even Elon Musk, although he has already aimed warheads on Mars, is promoting his vision of the coming decades through Tesla, and the four-legged Boston Dynamics robot has not left the room since he saw the video with a Lexus hoverboard. It is important that each innovation immediately goes into production - it can be touched, pinched and used. 2015, the dollar tends to 70, in the offices of officials all the same portraits, and the BMW 7-Series obeys gestures, leaves the garage itself at the touch of a button on the key display, monitors the road relief with a stereo camera and shines laser headlights 600 meters into the future. And if there was a reason Harald Kruger fainted at the Frankfurt Motor Show, it was the coolness of the new XNUMX.
In the age-old derby of BMW and Mercedes, there were devastations - either in Stuttgart they will build an ambiguous W220, then in Munich they will overload the F01 / 02 with compromises, and it was very important for this "seven", generation G11 / 12, to be no worse than the absolutely extraterrestrial W222. The Bavarians had to release something as groundbreaking as the i8 supercar, and they did just that, dragging a lot of solutions from their i-polygon, including carbon fiber at the base of the body. And the main question that I asked during the test drive of the new 730d and 750Li in the vicinity of Porto - whether the BMW 7-Series has become comparable in terms of comfort with the executive Mercedes - remained unanswered. And this is a victory for the Bavarians.
Because such a "seven" drives the way BMW should drive - recklessly, evil, precisely and collected, and in terms of care for the passenger it is so close to the W222 that to find the winner they will have to be compared in person. Moreover, in Portugal there was nothing close to similar to the outskirts of Nizhny Novgorod, Pskov or Podolsk, famous for their modernist vision of what the asphalt should be like, so we will postpone the question of the energy intensity of the G11 / 12 suspension until we meet in Russia.
A grippy steering wheel, a comfortable fit, rear-wheel drive, 620 Nm of torque and a cool hard body - I did not succumb to the provocations of the Subaru WRX with Swiss numbers for about five minutes and three settlements, and then I could not stand it and rushed after him along the winding wine paths. The WRX, as if mocking, slows down excessively before corners, turning our argument into a frog race. A couple of times he succeeded in this trick, I missed the starting point of acceleration and let him take off on a straight line, but for some reason in front of a clearly visible arc he hits the brakes again and I catch up with him in a short BMW 730d. This is a big enough and devilishly fast car, but there is one problem: you don't want to live in it. And there are not even curtains on the rear windows in the basic rear-wheel drive version, which, however, will not appear in Russia - only the xDrive all-wheel drive.
750Li is completely different - it is a collective image of wealth. There is no longer the back row, which can easily accommodate three people - only two full-fledged seats in the business class, where the main role is assigned to the rear passenger on the right with various types of massage and the ability to expand the seat almost to the state of a berth. It is not so omnipotent in turns and reminds of its dimensions at the moment of completely puzzling maneuvers, but the "smart" suspension, collecting data about the upcoming road section using a camera and GPS, does not allow rolls and leaves only hooligan hints of swinging so that the driver does not lose feelings of the machine. For a surcharge, in addition to the default air suspension in a circle and electronically controlled shock absorbers, you can equip the Seven with active stabilizers, and this is the case when you cannot save money, and the carbon elements of the body structure gave the Seven a lightness that you never expect from a limousine. It’s not even a matter of lightening the structure (out of 130 kg of difference with the previous generation, Carbon Core only accounts for 40 kg), but of increasing its rigidity.
Apparently, it is this version under the G12 index, which is 11 mm longer than the G14, that it is correct to consider the main 7-Series, because all BMW's trump cards in the executive segment are collected here. “What Mercedes resurrected the Maybach is here in the G12, coupled with the BMW Individual options program,” a BMW representative tells me in response to a stupid question about the luxury version of the already luxurious Seven. However, between the usual S-class and Maybach, Mercedes also has an elongated L-version, which is still a direct competitor to the G12, and the short version is not transported to Russia at all.
The 14 cm difference between the two BMWs will be immediately felt by anyone wearing a watch on their left hand. The armrest in the back row of both G11 and G12 has a charging station mounted in which the tablet is located - it can be used to control car systems (multimedia, navigation, seat adjustment and massage, climate control), and as a separate full-fledged gadget with browser and the ability to install applications from Google Play. So, if you put your left hand on the armrest in the short version, then the watch bracelet appears exactly on the tablet display, in the future it scratches and spoils it in every possible way. In the elongated version, there is no such problem - the touch screen is just under the fingers. Of course, I set up an experiment, shoving the tablet upside down into the charging niche, and immediately discovered the only place in the 7-Series where there is a thick, rough plastic - this is the back surface of the device with large Samsung letters in the middle. BMW has been cooperating with a Korean company for the supply of batteries for hybrids for a long time and is not shy about this inscription, especially since in the most important American market for the GXNUMX, Samsung is perceived as the main player in the upper price segment along with Apple.
"Seven" became the largest BMW sedan both in size (5098 mm in length for the G11, 5238 mm for the G12) and in the abundance of special effects. Moreover, an extremely small number of them can be attributed to marketing, “selling” elements that do not carry any real benefit. For example, the cinematic effect with which the image from the camera on the display smoothly changes from a first-person view to an overhead view when parking, and, in many respects, a key fob with a touchscreen display. Everything starts fine: you pick up the key, unlock the lock with a swipe, plunge into the menu and make poorly understood enthusiastic sounds - the wow effect knocks you off your feet. But in the promising technical submenu, instead of real indicators, there is a calendar of trips to the service, and remote activation of climate control in a locked car is available only from a relatively short distance and, in fact, is useful only if the car is standing right under the office window. In this sense, GSM-tied applications for controlling car systems from a smartphone screen look more convincing.
But it is this key fob that controls the technology necessary for the “seven” with its wide doors - parking a car if its owner is outside. It happens something like this: you drive up to a narrow parking space or a garage, get out of the car, select the appropriate item in the key menu - and the car parks itself. He also leaves on his own and with caution - if there is a person behind, he will stop.
And then you get behind the wheel, twist your finger to the temple of the BMW electronic brains and the music gets louder. While we only see holographic displays and a keyboard floating above a table in HBO series, this thing is already here and it works: gestures with the right hand in the air, in front of the multimedia screen, allow you to change tracks, answer a phone call, control the image from the camera at the sight top, and the figure of two fingers facing the display can be assigned to other functions. There are only five options, and this is dictated not so much by the complexity of the functionality, but by a forced look at the global market - the gestures we are used to in other countries can be considered an insult.
There's a lot more to be said about the new 7-Series. That she is very pretty and looks much more harmonious than Bangle's "seven", even though she retained that old-fashioned inflated trunk line. That in the "seven" there is no Sport plus mode familiar to BMW, but Comfort plus has appeared - a professional lullaby performer who, if the driver does not fall asleep, promises the passenger cosmic tranquility (the full effect is achieved with the "Starry Sky" option for the panoramic roof). That there is no M-version, but there is an M-package. What we have not tried yet, but we believe in the need for the smart Adaptive mode, which changes the engine, gearbox and suspension settings for us based on data from our driving style and the upcoming section of the road - cameras and GPS navigation help. That in terms of seating comfort, quality finishes and how the interior looks (quilted leather!), the “seven” has become both the most luxurious and the most sophisticated BMW of all currently existing - for this, the company's specialists even drove to Shanghai, studying the preferences of their clients. And that it was very embarrassing for us to put our feet on an electrically adjustable footrest trimmed in light leather.
But the main thing that the new “seven” fixes with its passes in the air and a key with the appearance of a computer is a keen sense of the coming future, which, unlike Armstrong’s race about craters, cannot be suspected of being false. And the future is expensive. Still a 2015 BMW 7-Series starting at $70 for the short diesel version; about $538 for the 133Li xDrive we tested; further - to infinity.
