BMW 7 by NYTIMES - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

yal · #1 05-13-2002, 12:53 PM

Best quotes from this article:
" If you've wondered what a car from Microsoft might be like, the 7 offers a clue. You half expect it to ask, "Where do you want to go today?""
and
"The influential Automotive Lease Guide estimates that the 7 Series' residual value — its projected resale price — will be significantly lower than that of the Mercedes S500."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dazed by a Technical Knockout
By JAMES G. COBB

EOPLE seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication," Niklaus Wirth, the Swiss computer scientist, once said. In luxury cars that flaunt the latest technologies, gadgets and amusements, it can be hard to tell the difference, just as it is difficult to define the point where technology intended to aid the driver starts to get in the way of driving.
No car frames this debate like the 2002 BMW 7 Series, the grandest line of sedans from a company renowned for its ultimate driving machines. The new 7 is one of these, for regardless of the criticism it generates — for its styling, for its newfangled mechanisms, for its computerized controls — it is a remarkable car with so many genuine technical advancements that elaboration would fill several pages. Suffice it to say that the 7 is surely the world's most advanced sedan, but it is not the most user-friendly.

So much about this car is different that BMW includes instructions you slip to parking valets, so they'll know how to move the car a few yards from a restaurant's front door. Some dealers allot three hours or more to hand 7's over to customers; after you've bought it, you must learn to drive it.

In truth, many of the 7's controls are intuitive, though certainly not all of them, and after a bit of instruction it is not so hard to get the thing moving. But even after weeks at the wheel you may wonder whether the unusual controls are intrinsically better than those in other cars, or if BMW if just trying to upstage the Mercedes S-Class, another big sedan with a technology complex.

The 7's eccentricities extend to its appearance. To give the car more "curb presence," and to make it look less like smaller Bimmers, the 7 grew wider, longer and taller. In profile, it is indeed uncluttered and somewhat sporty.

But up front, the look is avian, with the turn signals forming thick brows over the headlamps. And the rump is unusually high — for aerodynamic efficiency, BMW says. It looks as if the designers plopped the decklid from an old Plymouth Breeze atop the 7's natural contours. The effect is particularly awkward because a gap under the lid makes the trunk seem permanently ajar.

Even those who dislike the styling may find it grows on them, though I've yet to hear anyone call the 7 gorgeous. But if the light is right and the car wears dark paint, it looks rich, which is probably the point.

A more fundamental issue is how the 7 forces the driver to think and act in new ways. In reassessing the modern car, BMW concluded that things like the ignition key and floor shifter were obsolete. It also decided that luxury cars had too many buttons. I wouldn't disagree, given that a while back I counted more than 100 illuminated switches, many quite small, in an Audi A8.

BMW's solution is called iDrive, a system in which essential controls are clustered on and around the steering wheel, with many secondary functions embedded in a computer interface. Using an aluminum disk on the center armrest — it looks like a jar lid and works like a joystick or a mouse — one calls up menus on a screen atop the dashboard. Some functions — 270 in all — can be summoned by voice commands, assuming you have a good memory but not a thick accent.

To start the car, you slide a thick card into a slot on the dash, but you do not twist it. Instead, you push a start button — your foot must be on the brake pedal — and you push another button to release the electric parking brake. Instead of a shift lever there is a small stalk near the steering wheel. (Like the other controls, it is an electric switch.) Pulling the stalk toward you releases the car from park; tugging it up or down puts the car in drive or reverse.

Before you are only a speedometer and tachometer plus spaces for readouts that you call up. To check the remaining fuel, you conjure up a digital gas gauge.

To operate innumerable other iDrive features — including the audio, climate and navigation systems, the built-in phone and all sorts of programmable settings for the locks, the lights and the like — you use the disk on the armrest, called the iDrive controller. First you tug it one of eight directions that correspond to the points of a compass. To call up the navigation system, you push the controller to the right. Then you scroll through menus and submenus on the central screen by twisting, twirling or pressing the knob. It is not a hands-free process.

Though intended to be intuitive, iDrive is maddening, especially at first. The hardware becomes easier to use with practice, but just as you get the hang of it you run into some exasperating quirk of the software: you call up menus just to tune the radio or adjust the air flow. If you've wondered what a car from Microsoft might be like, the 7 offers a clue. You half expect it to ask, "Where do you want to go today?"
The pity is that this complicated and distracting user interface overshadows technology that works much better. In the 745i, the first model in the series, a new 4.4-liter V-8 generates 15 percent more horsepower (325) than the engine it replaces, and it gets 14 percent better mileage. The 745i is a big, heavy car, yet it races from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in less than 6 seconds.

New valve controls eliminate the mechanical throttle, improving engine response, and the intake valves are infinitely variable for peak efficiency. A new V-12, part of the same engine family, will arrive next year in a 2003 model, the 760Li.

The 745i has a six-speed automatic transmission, said to be an industry first. But to avoid a gas-guzzler tax, the car lacks BMW's Steptronic feature, which lets the driver shift manually. (Steptronic will be offered with the 745i's sport package, also due next year.) Instead, the current model lets the driver hold the transmission in a gear, or downshift, with buttons on the steering wheel. Since you first press a master switch on the hub, then either of two buttons near the top of the wheel, this is awkward on turns — when the function may be needed most. It is yet another example of the sort of fussy overengineering that BMW used to disdain.

The car's chassis, though, is simply wonderful, despite its complexity and sophistication. The 745i feels far lighter than its 4,400 pounds, and it truly handles much like the smaller 5 Series, which is high praise indeed. The 7 accomplishes this without sacrificing the limolike ride that passengers in big luxury cars expect.

For the first time, the 745i has rack-and-pinion steering, and its "active roll stabilization" seems to break the laws of physics by keeping the car flat on turns. Dynamic Traction Control leaves safety systems in place while allowing the wheels to spin a bit, a boon in snow or mud, but to turn it on you must go back to iDrive and search through menus.

Of course the 745i is rich and comfortable, and the interior has a cool Scandinavian look, especially with the standard matte-finish wood trim. At night, soft indirect light sets an elegant tone. On the whole, the plastic trim seems better than some of the flimsy bits that have been showing up in the big Mercedes. Yet the two things the BMW driver touches most — the steering wheel and the iDrive controller — feel rather ordinary.
The features list seems endless. For starters, there are a dozen air bags and 14 crash sensors; a tire-pressure monitor; parking alerts to warn you if you are about to hit something or someone; brake lights that distinguish panic stops from ordinary braking; doors that stay open at any angle, even on an incline; a cruise control that recalls up to six speeds; and optional seats that can be adjusted in every conceivable way, including the width of the backrest and the length of the bottom cushion, while heating, cooling or massaging one's posterior.

Admission to this high-tech pleasure dome starts at $68,495, with the longer, roomier 745Li at $72,495 and up. Expect the V-12 version to hit $100,000.

The influential Automotive Lease Guide estimates that the 7 Series' residual value — its projected resale price — will be significantly lower than that of the Mercedes S500.

Is the new 7 Series a breakthrough, the first car truly of the information age, or is it an electronic showoff? The car might not have created so much fuss if it had come from another manufacturer — say, Lexus or Lincoln. But BMW built its mystique with simple machines that delivered maximum driving enjoyment with minimal distractions, and on that count the complicated new 7 seems to defy the company's core values.

Most people don't bond with their computers, and it is hard to imagine them developing deep emotional attachments to this car, however much they may respect its capabilities. BMW is trying to bring its performance heritage into an era of automobiles as digital arcades, but its 7 Series — part driver's car, part ultimate computing machine — feels conflicted. No wonder that reactions to it are also so conflicted.

Ashman · #2 05-13-2002, 03:29 PM

I just cant stand that I drive. Having to use it for everything, learning it is just a pain from whatI have read.

Technological innovatons are cool, but some innovations are just a bit much.

My dad's business partner has a 2002 740IL, and its a nice car, but I can't stand the Radio/GPS and how they work.

Alon

yal · #3 05-13-2002, 05:12 PM

3 hours to learn how to operate the car before you leave the showroom

This freaked me out to blackmercedes!

In some kind of emergency are you going to have to bust out a manual to figure things out before say getting out of a muddy embankment

Hilarious!

The trunk still gets me. Have you noticed how they avoid showing the trunk in their latest commercial...hmmmm signs of a redesign coming up maybe

#4 05-13-2002, 09:50 PM

I expect Dodge Intrepids to look like that.....not a 7 series BMW.

Bill Tobin
91 VolVo 740 Brick
89 300E

ymsin · #5 05-13-2002, 10:24 PM

An advise for those who comtemplates buying the new 7 :

If you're prepared to burn a stack of $20,000 on your driveway, then you're brave enough to own this machinery ...

Ashman · #6 05-14-2002, 03:09 AM

I suspect accident rates will go up with this new BMW. Think about tryign to change radio stations with the i drive only to rear end someone in a mercedes...

Alon