2002 BMW 745i

From The Driver's Seat

Way back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when almost nobody in this country had ever heard of BMW, let alone aspired to own one, the newcomer from Bavaria had oddly styled cars, the 1600 and the 2002. These had tall "greenhouses" (the portion of the cockpit walled in glass) and squared-off shoulders, and generally looked not at all like the competition from Stuttgart. By the 1980s Americans, amazingly, began to regard BMW as the "it" carmaker of their generation, a standard-bearer for the young and ambitious. And those Americans also grew to like the look of BMWs that, despite starting life in this country as quirky, eventually became downright lovely to behold.

Ah, but that was when double-breasted suits were making a comeback. In 2002 we have another BMW to behold, and its looks are, well, unconventional.

We have to start here, not at the driver's seat, because to look at the new 7 is to know that it will be different. It has an intimidating profile, with big slab sides cut through by one sharp strafe at the apex of the fender bulge and continuing in a line through the doors and back over the rear wheel and fender. The metal-to-glass ratio is also skewed toward the former, so the car looks even more massive.

Taking it in from the front, the new 7 has what look like droopy "eyelids" hanging over the twin headlamps (the previous 7s had this, too, just not as pronounced). But a bit less pleasing to us are the fenders that arc downward at the corners, forming a sort of jowly frown at the nose.

Still, it is the trunk lid that offended most critics because rather than integrating with the rear fender line, it sits on top and inboard of the tail lamps, like the tail to an altogether different car snapped onto this one.

We'd love to say it offends us terribly, so that we don't, uh, stick out but, sorry, we just can't get all that excited.

That's because when you sit inside this car--yes, there's an inside--you forget about the controversial bum and remember that BMWs are meant to be driven.

Right, then let's go.

Not so fast. First, we have to get comfortable, but this takes a second. Find the seat controls, those mounted by your right thigh on the center console; select the part of the seat you want to adjust. No, no, these don't move, they just select. Now use the knob mounted forward of the seat selection buttons and turn, twist, slide fore and aft and eventually you get it right. Phew. At least the seats are marvelously comfortable.

Now put the fob (there's no key) in the ignition. Put your foot on the brake, then hit the start button. The 4.4-liter V-8 thrums to idle, and the tach jumps its needle to a steady 700 rpm.

But to go, you still have some work. There are four stalks that surround the new BMW 745i wheel, each with a particular function. The one to the top right controls drive, reverse and park. Put the car into drive by pulling the lever toward you then down, then push the button by your left knee--there's no pedal--to release the electronic parking brake (you put the brake back on by pushing the button again).

At last, you may go.

All that isn't as difficult to accomplish as it is to describe, but it is a bit more complex than what any of us drivers are used to. And in fact it begs the question: why?

After all, the justification for the new iDrive system (we'll get to that in a moment) is that there were just too many functions to manage with buttons on the last 7 series, so it was time to reinvent the wheel. Yet there are buttons everywhere you look in the new car: on the wheel for audio controls, fan, voice activation (to control functions aurally rather than digitally; also on the wheel are phone controls, downshift buttons and even another button to turn the downshift system on and off; there are switches to activate the heated steering wheel, as well as to adjust the wheel; plus, of course, turn signals.

By the way, that's not everything on and around the tiller, and there are dozens of buttons elsewhere, scattered like pimples on an adolescent's face.

The point: The hard part of adjusting to the 7 series isn't iDrive. It's all the hedging BMW did by including too many additional switches, and the way in which the company's rethink of systems (turning the car on, adjusting one's seat position) overcomplicated things we already knew intuitively. If the goal is to simplify, BMW's gone about it in a most complex way.

Anyway, put those thoughts aside for a moment and drive the bloody thing. And discover that the 745i is a dream of a road-going sedan.

Take the steering alone. At slow speeds, the 745i can be jockeyed around supermarket lots with a sole index finger on the tiller. It's a baby to drive at slow speeds. Stab the gas and slalom around the same lot and steering effort increases, with all that boost melting away and sensation jumping back into the wheel. Now drive the car very sportingly and steering gets ultrasensitive darting feel from the rubber on the wheels--right up to your hands.

Likewise, the suspension of the 7 is impressive for what it does and doesn't transmit to the driver and passengers.

The last 7 felt uncannily solid at speeds above 100 miles per hour, but you wouldn't want to guide it through a set of mountain switchbacks at 45 mph; it would push too hard and feel like the heavy, large car that it was. This 7, in contrast, has a bevy of technological tricks that make it able to corner much more acutely without attendant understeer. And it does so without feeling even slightly harsh--smooth as glass around town, taut as a much sportier car at its limits.

What makes this possible is a device called Active Roll Stabilization. This uses hydraulic actuators attached to the antiroll bars that crank into action against the natural tendency of the car to flex from side to side in a turn. Throw the car hard into a right-hander and the car wants to roll left but ARS counters the motion, flattening the attitude of the 7's chassis and keeping the car more directly on-line without (like other systems) having to bite at the progress of the wheels via traction control and other tricks.

Oh, yes, those things exist as well, and will actuate when you drive exceptionally aggressively. There's Dynamic Stability Control, Antilock Braking, All-Speed Traction Control, Dynamic Traction Control, Electronic Brake Proportioning, etc. We don't have room to tell you what all these do, but we can say that iDrive allows more options even within the aforementioned systems. So the driver can, for example, select a sport setting for the suspension and the Dynamic Traction Control, and the car allows for more wheelspin and more slide, meaning you can now toss your $70K toy around a bit more enthusiastically.

And the car is quite tossable, despite its heft; it will turn into a bend quickly and counter directions just as sharply, its stock, 45-series rubber grabbing the road hard and staying glued.

One other thing about its performance: the marvelous motor.

The 325-horsepower V-8 puts out almost as much juice as the V-12 edition (the 750iL) of the previous 7 series line, and does so with a screaming eagerness that is very rare in this super sedan class. All-out thrust is tremendous, with gear changes of the automatic six-speed transmission lightening quick, and downshifts in sport mode coming on faster than in any automatic we've driven. Punch it, in other words, and it goes. But it also sings the right, gravely V-8 tune: smooth and quiet at idle, grunting at low-down rpm propulsion (peak torque is at 3,600 rpm but the torque curve itself is exceedingly flat), whaling loudly, cleanly at redline.

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