New BMW 7-Series Revealed
Without much fanfare, BMW has debuted its redesigned 7-Series sedan. A supposed riff on the svelte CS Concept, the new 7 is certainly less chunky than its 2002 – 2008 predecessor. While the outgoing generation (that's E65 or E66 to BMW folks) broke the styling mold, the 2009 model is no ground-breaker. To these jaundiced eyes, it looks a lot like the current gen Lexus LS with a BMW front-end grafted on. The letter-box pipes are a particularly shameless cop from the El Finesse folk. As far as mills are concerned, it's a safe bet that the X6's twin-turbocharged V8 will nestle under-hood. BMW will no doubt bless 7-loving Euro-folk with the 335i and 535's twin-turbo inline six and a particulate of diesels. The 7's interior is all-new. While the cabin's a step up from the last gen, again, it's nowhere near as rad as it forebearer. That said, the new version adds BMW's gimmicky space shuttle (RTFM) gear lever and MMI's the iDrive (if you know what that means, get a life). The new 7-Series sedan will, of course, handle impeccably, cost a bomb and intimidate the bourgeoisie. Mission accomplished?
Immensely bored law student. I've also got 3 dogs.
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I'm with Rix on this one. All are starting to look the same. If I were spending $50K+ on a car, I would want something unique. My passenger gets in the car and says "wow, what's this?" or "cool." Remember the BMW 2800cs? That was a car with lines. Maybe Alfa will have something for us with some sex for under $100K. It was like in the 60's we couldn't afford an XJ6 so we bought a Rover TC 2000. How many of those did you see? (Yeah I know not many 'cause they were always in the shop)
Well at least the rear end looks inter-graded with the car than the current version. Now, the front kidney grills are too big, they are out of proportion with the rest of the car. The grills are also too vertical
@argentla I give BMW some credit for letting Bangle do something different. When the E38, E39, and E46 cars were launched, BMW took a lot of drubbing for being overly conservative with its styling, afraid to stray too far from subtle refinement of the corporate look. Oops… The E39 and E46 were styled by Bangle. I don't know about the E38.
I just hope it looks better in 3D. That is true for all Bimmers of the last decade. The shape in complex that it can't be understood in two dimensions.