2000 mile road trip review, 750i xDrive

[speeddeacon]

With just a little over 500 miles on the odo, my wife and I had the sudden and unexpected need to take the 7 on a nearly 2000 mile road trip last week. Our daughter and son-in-law have been in the process of adoption for over two years and a week ago they received a call that they had been matched to a child to be born that week. It happened to be my off week so with just 12 hours’ notice we threw some clothes in bags and tossed them into the trunk to go meet our new grandchild. We took separate cars because I would have to return home to go back to work before they would return. I drove 900 miles each way plus a few hundred while we were there. The journey took us through parts of Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina. With the drive so fresh in my mind, I thought I’d follow the example of TheBry and others and write a reasonably quick review of the experience.

I drove a combination of state highways, U.S. highways, Interstates, Turnpikes as well as around town in various sized cities. The weather was perfect all but the last 400 mile leg. We have figured out most of the tech stuff by now, got the Hotspot activated and on our data plan and were half way through the break in period by the time we left. All that was left was to enjoy the journey, in so many ways. I drove home by myself so my wife could help with the baby as they finalized the legalities and visited family on the way home.
Let me say that this is the consummate road car. Gobbling up hunks of miles at a time is what this car was built for and it accomplishes that task to perfection. Prior to this car, my 6 series had been the best road car I’d ever owned but this car is in a league by itself. I’m a sports or GT car guy through and through, but for the purpose of long trips like this I can’t imagine anything suited better. We bought the 7 over an M3 so we could take my aging parents places in comfort but I’m wondering if I’ll ever get my wife out of a 7 series again. I suppose we’ll find out when the lease is up.

I’ll break down my observations as well as summarize my thoughts at the end should you want to skip ahead.

Seats: Of course one of the things that make a great road car is the seats. While certainly not “plush” i.e. soft, they are perfectly designed for comfort on the long haul. With every adjustment possible, finding the perfect riding position is easy and saving it to one of the presets is as easy as pressing the iDrive controller. The seat massage does an excellent job of limiting driver fatigue by keeping the pressure points to a minimum ad the muscles relatively relaxed. The position I had my seat in even eliminated neck and shoulder tension, often the source of fatigue on long drives for me. I kept the whole body activation on at the mid-level most of the time. Temps were in the mid to upper 80’s the whole trip so the seat ventilation was warranted. Unfortunately it just doesn’t cut it. Not only did it not keep me cool it didn’t even keep me from getting warm. I spoke with a BMW assist person about this when I was setting up my hotspot and he said that keeping the passengers from getting warm was the goal of this generation’s seat ventilation rather than actively cooling like in the past. I don’t know if he was just feeding me a line or what but he did say that other customers had complained. I left it on the whole time but only in the morning, when it was cool, could I even feel it working at all. Big disappointment here BMW, please give us a better functioning version.

Engine: I’m one of those guys who thinks one can never have too much power under the hood, thus the 750 instead of a 740, 335i over 328 (pre-F80), etc. Passing the 1200 mi break in period along the way gave me opportunity to do some full throttle acceleration from time to say. I have to say that BMW has done a great job with this engine. Coupled with the xDrive, the car pulls from a standing stop to highway speeds very quickly. Passing on two lanes was likewise blitzingly quick. I knew this to be the case from our test drive and I can say that I really don’t think more power would be much more advantageous in this car. If you want to drag race E63s or 911 turbos then sure, but in everyday driving this thing really is very, very fast for such a big beast.

Transmission: I admit I didn’t use the paddle shifters much, letting the car do the work instead. I used the sport auto paddle shifters all the time in the F30, but in this car it just doesn’t seem as appropriate. The ZF 8 speed is silky smooth with none of the clunkiness that was noticeable in the F30, particularly when cold. It doesn’t search for gears at any time and other than under acceleration, shifts are almost undetectable. We test drove the new Cadillac CTS-V before buying the 7 and, even though they share the same ZF 8 speed auto, GM really missed the mark with their software on that car. It would hesitate and gear hunt significantly when pushing it a bit. If that car still had a 6 speed manual, wow.

Suspension:non-Autobahn Pkg I spent quite a bit of time in all four modes, Sport, Adaptive, Comfort and Comfort plus. When hauling down the super slab I kept it in either comfort or comfort plus. I can’t say as I perceived much of a difference so I figured why not just leave it in Comfort Plus so I usually did. Driving on the two lanes and around town I switched to adaptive. It definitely keeps the body roll under control better than comfort, which was welcome when taking turns around town and on the two lane roads. I probably kept it in Adaptive more than the others on this trip. I did get some mountain interstate driving in and for this I switched to Sport. The ride firms up noticeably and body roll is minimized even more than adaptive. The bolsters also narrow, which I like.

Let me reiterate that I’m a sports car/GT guy. M3 is more my speed. Hustling through the mountains at supra legal speeds in the 7 is not the same experience by any means. There is no masquerading the fact that this is a luxury sedan, a big and heavy one at that. Body roll was prominent as lateral acceleration figures climbed. There was mild understeer but a bit of throttle kept it at bay and the all-wheel-drive pulled hard out of the corners. This was on Interstate roads, mind you, and it would be much more of a handful, and nowhere near as enjoyable had I been on the true mountain backroads like I enjoy in my sports car. My wife would not have tolerated the speeds at which I was travelling as a passenger no doubt, due to the amount of body roll, whereas she can tolerate them in a sports car.

This isn’t to say that I’m disappointed in the performance under the demanding condition because I’m not. This is a luxury car not a sports sedan yet it did perform admirably as the latter. It was capable of more than I was giving it, but you pay for it in excessive body motion. I would have been disappointed if it were an M car, but not a 7 series and not even an M Sport optioned one at that. In a straight line she was rock stable all the way well into triple digits.

xDrive: I drove 400 miles in various intensities of rainfall and water soaked roads. Not once did the car show any sign of slippage or traction loss while cruising or accelerating in the wet. Of course the tires are also new.

Tech: If you don’t like tech then the 7 is either not the right car for you or you are going to miss out on a lot of the cool stuff. I won’t go into each thing individually as it would take way too much space, but in general having the cool tech like lane assist is very useful. The car will actually steer itself through turns if there are detectable lines. While it can feel like you are battling it, what it does is allow you to use less input to accomplish the driving, which in turns lessens fatigue. This is important on 400 plus mile days. When in the mountains, turn it off and enjoy the drive but on the back roads, it is very useful. On the Interstate it keeps you in your lane but I grew tired of the constant correcting and centering after a while. Distance cruise is useful on 2 lane roads and in town (traffic jam assist) but I don’t care for it on multiple lane roads as it will slow you down, sometimes unexpectedly if you get a bit too close before changing lanes (I keep in on the shortest setting).

The myriad of camera angles is very useful for parking and when pulling out onto blind intersections, etc. Getting the active parking assist to work is a crap shoot but perhaps we just need more practice. Right now it is just faster to pull into a spot ourself rather than waiting for the car to find, then maneuver into the spot. It also seems to ignore parking space lines, using vehicles parked on each side instead. On a couple of occasions, I had to reposition the car after it had parked itself because I was over the parking space line when it was finished.

Gesture control is gimmicky. The only one that is really useful is the answer or decline an incoming phone call. The volume control is too coarse, adding or subtracting too much volume at a time. I end up using the steering wheel or dash knob to fine tune the volume where I want it. Mute of the volume doesn’t work reliably for us either. The iDrive control knob writing feature works very well as does the voice and touch command, I just can’t remember the correct voice prompts half the time.

High beam assist works very well but keeps the brights on longer than I would when approaching vehicles from behind. Other than that I like it and this is the first car I’ve owned that has that feature. One weird quibble is that on occasion, the headlight knob would move from the auto headlight position to off or parking light for no apparent reason. I’d look down to see the headlights were off when I’d rotated the knob to auto earlier. I’ve never had a car that would change that knob. I looked and don’t even see anything that should change the knob position. It’s weird. The headlights throw plenty of bright light and the adaptive feature works like it should, which I appreciate.

The Connected Car/BMW Apps proved to be a pain. It worked great in the F30 but for some reason it kept disconnecting from my iPhone. I had plugged the phone into the center console, both to keep it charged and to allow music to play directly rather than over Bluetooth. This wreaked all kinds of havoc because if the phone was synced via Bluetooth it wouldn’t play through the App via the cable. The only way to get it to do it was by turning off the Bluetooth, which means no Bluetooth phone. Every time I stopped the car, I had to go through and set everything up again. I’ll keep experimenting but it was a bit frustrating. An iPod or thumb drive will no doubt work fine but that requires another device.

One interesting note, I had to turn off the Laser detection on my Valentine because the car itself kept it alerting continually.

Audio: I have the base HK system and have no qualms with the sound quality. Adjusting the equalizer via iDrive tone controls allowed me to tailor the sound just where I wanted it. I listened to FM radio, iPhone both via Bluetooth as well as USB (see note above), CD and Satellite and all sounded rich and detailed. Playing music even at high volumes the system played clearly with no distortion or buzzing. I listened to classical, instrumental, rock, metal and jazz and all sounded pleasing and didn’t leave me wanting for better quality. I experienced none of the popping, skipping, pausing, etc. others have described.

Mileage: I am thrilled to report that I was getting well beyond the EPA estimate on the highway. Highway driving, on both 55 and 70 mph roads, resulted in 27 to 29 MPG. I wasn’t expecting this and am more than happy with it. I would get 31-32 mpg and my wife 34-36 mpg in the 335, which was rated at 34. I fill up at ¼ full most of the time, which was over 400 miles on this car. My last fill up came at 423 miles and took 15.2 gallon, or 27.8 mpg. I was running 75-80 most of the time.

General comfort: The car is dead silent with only minimal tire noise to tell you that you are moving. As such, it is very easy to be driving much more quickly than you perceive. If it weren’t for the HUD I could see a lot of flashing blue lights in the rear view in my future. Steering wheel effort is very light and overboosted, which is ok in this car. The suspension soaks up the road imperfections and the A/C works well with a little fiddling.

Summary

Likes:
Engine power
Ride quality
Tech features
Cabin Comfort
Seat adjustability
Fuel Mileage/efficiency
Audio quality

Dislikes:
Seat ventilation- essentially useless, whether working as designed or not. Other makes work well. This doesn’t.

Could use a Sport Plus setting for the suspension to tighten up the body roll a lot more when called for.

Quibbles:
As much as I love this car, there are some things that could use some fine tuning, or maybe I just haven’t figured them out yet.

Connected/Apps- as noted above, I couldn’t get it to stay connected/function reliably.
Headlights- wandering dash switch- for some unknown reason it would move from auto to off or parking
Parking Assistant- slow for perpendicular at least and doesn’t center between the lines (has advantages/disadvantages).
Rear climate- We don’t have the rear comfort with the tablet so reaching the climate controls when seated is difficult because of the distance.
Touch control sensitivity- many of the touch controls are a bit sensitive and can accidently be adjusted when your hand/finger is near them. For example, when placing a drink in the drink holder on more than one occasion the temperature slider slid from cool to warm or the navigation screen changed from nearly touching the iDrive controller.
No auto folding mirror setting- should be an iDrive selectable setting that auto folds the mirror when placed in park. Perhaps I just haven’t found it?
Comfort access- A pet peeve of mine since I’ve been driving bimmers is that they don’t offer comfort access that slides the seat rearward and steering wheel up when opening the driver’s door. The wheel at least tilts up but still no rearward seat moving. There’s plenty of leg room in this car to prevent leg crunch for the rear passenger.
Memory seat functionality when car off- In the F30 the seat memory function was still active when the car was switched off and the door was opened. This was my poor man’s comfort access function as I could press 2 and the seat would slide rearward. In the 7, once the door is opened the memory seat is not active.
A/C auto recirculate- I set my climate controls to auto recirculate in my iDrive. However, there is no description regarding what triggers it to auto recirculate. Frankly, when it is hot outside the A/C struggles to keep the car cool without recirculate pressed, which makes total sense. However, I never once saw it turn on automatically. I had to manually switch it on because I was hot with the fan on 4 or 5 setting and the temp on 62 degrees. Switch on the recirculate and voila, comfort was achieved. Obviously I don’t understand what that function does.

Quibbles aside, this is just an amazing piece of automotive engineering and the two of us are going to be fast friends, literally. That is, on the rare occasion when I can pry my wife's hands off the steering wheel.

[Vitacura]

Great write up, thanks for sharing!

[ando]

First, congrats to your kids. Second, great write up on the new 7.

[speeddeacon]

Originally Posted by ando

First, congrats to your kids. Second, great write up on the new 7.

Thanks.

By the way, I apologize for the lack of apostrophes and any other punctuation errors. I composed in Word then pasted to the forum and it messed with it for some reason.

[TheBry]

Outstanding (and thorough) reporting on of experiences with the car so far, speaddeacon! Well done!

I was grinning widely as I read through the entire report, as I agreed wholeheartedly with lots of your findings -- and have experienced them myself. The miles keep piling on my own 7 -- I'm up to 5K miles now.

I commiserate with you regarding the implementation of Bluetooth connected audio / connected apps. I struggled with this in the beginning, because the way I connected my iPhone to my previous-gen 7 Series was via a very short lightning connector in the center console. It served the dual purpose of charging my device, and allowing me to send audio to my stereo (and connect to Apps -- Pandora, BMW Connected Drive, etc.)

I struggled mightily with this new 7 Series to try to simultaneously use both Bluetooth (for app connection) and a direct USB connection (for audio), but finally threw in the towel. I bought a $30 wireless charging case for my iPhone 6S. Not only am I now able to use the wireless charging sleeve in the center armrest, but can also use Bluetooth exclusively for audio and app connection, and haven't had a problem since. My concern about having to buy a wireless charging case was bulk -- I hate big fat cases on my otherwise sleek iPhones, but I found one on Amazon that's really slim, and the lightening connector is flush, so I don't feel it at all. I'm surprised how little I miss connecting a lightening connector to the phone to charge it haha!