Has BMW's Design Gone Wimpy With The New 7-Series?

The BMW 7-Series has always been a car that has a striking and recognisable. The first generation (E23) 7-Series was a clean and attractive looking car, but nothing else looked quite like it. The 7-Series also had many of BMW's signature design elements like the rear door kink, BMW's kidney grille, and the pointed shark nose. BMW have always been about performance not styling and performance is what separates every 7-Series from the Jaguar, Mercedes, and more recently Lexus. The second generation (E32) of the 7-Series was larger, added the long wheel base, V8, and V12 engine options. The second generation 7-Series had all sorts of unique options including a telephone, fax machine, a wine cooler, stability control, and windshield wipers designed for the Autobahn. The E32 7-Series was also the first car to have BMW's 155 mph governor, but BMW still claimed a 750iL could go 186 mph without the governor. The third generation (E38) 7-Series (my favorite 7-Series) was a great balance of classic BMW and modern(-ish, it came out in 1995) styling. The E38 had a wonderful chassis and a great suspension setup. To drive the E38 feels extremely solid, handles impressively, and still manages to be comfortable and luxurious. That car had some drawbacks, the basic sat nav was useless and it had flimsy cup holders, but when you pull out to pass on a two lane road and the 740i's 4.4L V8 slams you into your seat with its 325lb.ft. of torque (more than a Toyota Land Cruiser's 4.7L V8) none of than matters. On a highway road trip the 740i could average 30 mpg despite the EPA rating of 22 mpg. The E38 BMW 740i was pretty much every car you could ever need. Now you can find buy a 2001 740i in great shape for under $18,000, but the most of them are the gas guzzler Sport version or the huge 740iL. There are even bullet proof and bomb proof versions for available used for under $27,000, since when would a Toyota Camry protect you from a bullet. In 2002 BMW brought out the E65 7-Series which had the extremely odd Cris Bangle design and the "Bangle Butt". The fourth generation 7-Series had grown in length and especially in width and height. The worst feature of  the E65 7-Series is the iDrive, which is so unintuitive to use that a BMW salesperson I talked to couldn't use the iDrive even after 5 years of selling them. The iDrive caused huge reliability problems in most 2002-2004 E65's, because of faulty software. The iDrive problems could be disastrous, because the iDrive controls so much of the car. The E65 did at least drive well and sold well, but it really wasn't a good car. In 2006 BMW improved the E65 7-Series (it became the E66) with cleaned up styling, a new 360hp 4.8L V8, and a few changes to the iDrive.

For 2009 BMW is introducing a new fifth generation 7-Series and it should be much better. The old E65/E66 7-Series's Achilles heel was the iDrive system. The new one has a heavily revised iDrive that works more like Audi's extremely intuitive MMI. It has several buttons that access different functions of the iDrive system and a large button that you can point, spin, and click with. The gear change lever is now on the center console, not the steering column like before. The interior will be good, but the exterior styling isn't anywhere near as extreme as the E65/E66's. The exterior has been smoothed out a lot and gets a rear end just like the Lexus LS460. People have adjusted to the old car's styling and want something more extreme than this, it seems like BMW may have wimped out on the design. Hopefully BMW can redeem itself in performance. The engines are planned to be the 400+hp 4.4L twin turbo V8 (750i), a 320+hp version of the twin turbo 3.0L I6 from the 335i, and possibly a diesel or V12. The engines sound good, but BMW will need to work hard if the want to beat the Mercedes-Benz S550 on handling and driving pleasure, weight was a problem with the last one. This 7-Series needs to be great, but if the rest of the car is like the styling it won't be good enough.