BMW to Join Audi, Mercedes and Lexus, Offer AWD on Biggest Sedan

by Justin Berkowitz

July 1st, 2009 4:49 PM

bmw to join audi mercedes and lexus offer awd on biggest sedan

The 7-Series, one of the last remaining holdouts in the super-luxury category to not offer AWD, will get BMW’s boringly-named xDrive all wheel drive this coming fall on the 750i and long wheelbase 750Li models. According to the press release, up to 80% of the power goes to the rear wheels, and a new computer system called “Active Chassis Management” can eat 30 hot dogs in under a minute. Here in the Northeast, nearly every new S-Class on the road has 4Matic, Audi has offered Quattro on its big sedans for 20 years and even Lexus joined the game by offering AWD on the newest LS. (I omit Jaguar’s XJ, of course, because it sells so badly that Tata won’t even report Jaguar’s sales by model). So all is well that ends well: BMW gets a slightly more competitive 7-Series, rich people don’t have to leave the 7-Series at home and take the winter-beater Range Rover, and the rest of us get to look at even more badges and stickers on the side of BMW’s cars.

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4 of 16 comments

AlmightyPants on Jul 01, 2009

Aha, but this won't increase the number of stickers on the car. The RWD ones will say SDrive and the AWD ones will have XDrive in the same place.

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Npbheights on Jul 01, 2009

The only AWD car I have ever driven is a 2007 Lincoln MKZ AWD. The thing is amazing. I took it out in a heavy south Florida rain storm on Monday and floored it into a curve. The six speed automatic transmission downshifted about three gears, the 263 hp V6 howled, and the damn car did not slip at all. It felt like a rocket on rails. There is no comparison in high hp rear or front wheel drive vehicles. I had a FWD Northstar Cadillac and in the same rainy conditions driven the same way it would spin the front wheels and plow into the turn, My BMW and dads 300ZX Twin Turbo would just have been scary, and I would have spun out/flipped a RWD SUV or pick up doing something silly like that. I gained a lot of respect for high hp AWD platforms on monday.

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Psarhjinian on Jul 02, 2009
The only AWD car I have ever driven is a 2007 Lincoln MKZ AWD. The thing is amazing. I took it out in a heavy south Florida rain storm on Monday and floored it into a curve. The problem I have with this is that AWD doesn't help you stop, nor does it help you steer more than a token amount. There's a horrible sense of overconfidence from driving an AWD car: you don't get an idea of how bad things really are because it's not breaking traction on acceleration.

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Frizzlefry on Jul 02, 2009
The problem I have with this is that AWD doesn’t help you stop, nor does it help you steer more than a token amount. There’s a horrible sense of overconfidence from driving an AWD car: you don’t get an idea of how bad things really are because it’s not breaking traction on acceleration. Not the case with my A6. In crap weather, it rides on rails and feels great. I had a front wheel drive car previously and on a thick snowy turn the FWD would love to keep going straight if I did not slow down to 5, where as the AWD will turn. That’s more than a token amount. And in crap weather it’s always better to steer around a collision if you can rather than try and stop before your involved in it. There have been a couple of times that the AWD allowed me to steer around cars pilling up at the bottom of a snow covered hill, where the FWD would have just slid right into them, traction control screaming away to no avail. Granted, on sheet ice, the only thing that will help you much is studs or blizzaks. But when I do hit sheet ice or loose traction, I know about it. Not sure about the Lincoln, but the Audi will display traction control warnings whenever the wheels are slipping. I don't feel the slipping as the AWD compensates for it but I still know it’s happening. And AWD DOES help you stop. Instead of two wheels with traction control making contact with the ground attempting to stop the car, you have 4 wheels with traction control. It does make a big difference in stopping. My previous FWD was a focus. My current A6 with quattro weights almost twice as much but stops in half the distance in snow with the same make/model of tires (The Audi tires are wider and larger of course, but both were the same model of Pirelli's).

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