2016 BMW 750i xDrive: Utter Tech Fest Inside Out

There are more people talking about the BMW G11/G12’s key than the people talking about the whole car itself. The 2016 7er key is literally the #1 thing that people talks about. Smart Kidney Grilles? A body with carbon fiber structure? Adaptive driving modes? Anti-roll bar that adapts electrically? 4-wheel steering? Yeah, yeah, I get it, I know, they’re brilliant. But, seriously, though, LOOK AT THAT KEY

I wouldn’t call it a damn key, no, it’s not that old dang smart key, push to goddamn start. It’s a f**king smartphone, that’s what it is. I mean, it’s so cool, that I had to write a swear in this review, hahahaa.

It’s called the BMW Display Key and it’s just a $250 option, it’s essentially an iPhone 6 that doesn’t bend when you sit on it, much cheaper and you can control many, many things on your G11/G12. No, your $800 iPhone 6 Plus can’t do that, it’ll bend if you put it in your pocket and sit with the phone on your pocket. I actually tested that out and hey, it didn’t bend when I sat on it. So, how smart is this smart key? It can give you many informations such as estimated fuel range, fuel level, service details, and to lock and unlock. A gimmick? Just maybe. But that’s not exactly the point. The point is, this key is such a booming thing and the amount of people talking about it is just massive. If Saabkyle04 did an in depth review of this car, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be an hour long, half of it talking about the key and I’m not joking, there’s a lot of features on a thing that is smaller than my hand. I think the key itself can do more things than the MKIV system on my old E39. OK, enough with the key, this is literally the first time I’m actually writing a whole paragraph about the key itself.

Like I said,

ENOUGH WITH THE F**KING KEY ALREADY

This flagship luxury sedan has a lot of difference between it and its older brother, the F01/F02 technology wise. The new iDrive 5.0 is no longer controlled by that stupid ball knob on the center console, instead, it’s now touch screen. You still get the knob if you want to control volumes, zooming in and out when you’re in the map mode, and some other little things. The rest, you can do it with the touch screen. Another big highlight is the hand gesture system (which is a feature that is so cool, the car that I drove didn’t come with the package). You can now control some things by moving your hands in front of the iDrive screen. The $3,900 Luxury Rear Seating Package comes with a 7-inch tablet that can control your seats, massage, interior lighting, AC, display your satnav, it’s basically an iDrive in a tablet. Can it act like a regular Android tablet? Yes, it can. If the car that I drove had that package, I would install the CT app there, too bad it didn’t.

There’s also a cutting-edge technology in the core of the car, literally. Its body is made out of a combination of aluminum, steel, and carbon fiber. That’s not the first time for BMW, the materials were also used in the i3 and the i8, and the carbon fiber was made in the new BMW facility in Moses Lake, WA. BMW calls this body the “Carbon Core”. It’s 86kg lighter than the F01 7-Series. The carbon fiber on the roof also help lower the car’s center of gravity. The Autobahn package that you can get (which I did get) for $4,100 gives you the high-tech active anti-roll bar.

OK, what about the engine? The 4.4-liter V8 is now weaponed with twin-scroll turbochargers, a compression ratio of 10,5:1 to push up the power to 445-hp @ 5,500-6,000 rpm and 651-Nm of torque at around 2,000-4,500 rpm. The engine is connected to an 8-speed automatic gearbox and a control system to decide the strategy of gear changes and adapt with the road’s topography and your driving style. This system was borrowed from the Rolls-Royce Wraith. Rolls-Royce engineers have also helped the suspension settings with 3 modes: Comfort, the standard one; Comfort + (Plus), the even softer one; and Sport, which makes everything stiffer than a board. And then there’s another mode: Adaptive, which senses the road, your driving style and then adjusts everything to suit the road and you the best.

On the Comfort mode, the suspension is soft and easy to control. Comfort Plus on the other hand, feels like a W222 S-Class but at the same time, I’m impressed with the absence of body-roll. My personal favorite for driving on a nice Northern Californian road is the Adaptive mode. Why? The right amount of compromise, best level of comfort, smooth yet sharp gear changes, and stiffens up the suspension for the my sporty side.

MOAR TECHS!

OK, now what? The active front Kidney Grille. The front grille with active shutter and the lower front fascia controls that the air flow around the front tires, the redesigned wing mirrors, and many other exterior design improvements helps reducing the drag coefficient by up to 15% more than the F01 7-Series.

Floor it around a twisty country road, the 750i xDrive feels relatively light (BMW claims that this car is about 300lbs lighter than a Mercedes-Benz S550 4Matic) and responsive when you’re entering a corner but, the xDrive AWD system drags the car understeering in a wide, long turn. Lifting off the throttle can help setting the nose but I did lost some speed. I think the RWD version would have no understeer issues.

The 4.4-liter V8 rockets the 750i from 0-62 mph half a second faster than the S550 4Matic (my test). The whole technology in the 7-Series really impressed me, but perhaps not the design. It kinda looks like an LCI E65 to be completely honest. Oh, s**t the Chris “Butt” Bangle effect is still a thing. It’s all sorts of boring and too “classic and predictable”. The interior is also very nice but when you get to those black plastic buttons on the center console, well, you need to be a bit hard because it’s not sensitive and it’ll leave a fingerprint. Now, here’s another thing that kind of made me worried theoretically. For many years, BMW have been designing their cars by downgrading the 7-Series. That’s why the E34 and E36 looks like the E32, E39 and E46 looks like the E38, so on, so forth. With all this tech fest going on, I’m afraid that these tech fest will ruin the M5 and the M3, their “Ultimate Driver’s Car”. But then again, it’s just a theory. And rumor has it, BMW is planning to make an M-Performance version of the G11 using he V12 from Rolls Royce. Rumored to have 624hp and a whopping 800Nm of torque. I wish this rumor becomes a reality because oh, boy, it’ll be good.

Conclusion

It’s a nice car technology wise, the handling isn’t the greatest but it is half decent for a 4,850-lbs car, exterior is rather predictable but it is beautiful.

-CSL