Throw in the new front bumper, and the mug looks sportier, less imposing, and more graceful. Yet if you were picked up by your driver one evening, from the moment you ducked inside the leather-lined, wood-trimmed compartment and settled into one of the supportive seats, the experience would feel first-class. New taillight clusters bridging the seam between the rear fenders and the trunk lid and reaching halfway to the license plate recess draw the eye across the back, making the car look wider. As stated earlier, it represents an elegant approach to the sticky problem of allowing a driver to control any of a massive array of features while still driving the car safely. Highlights include power-adjustable rear seats and sophisticated cell phone integration. While the company has toned down the styling and backed away from some of the more convoluted electronics, the car still sparks debate. Her pickup of the line is outstanding and the top end is just as outstanding as right off the line.
The contentious trunk has been softened, rounded off a bit and in general, just stylistically relaxed with a slicker transition between the backlight and trunk lid. Long-Wheelbase models were 140mm 5. That brings us to iDrive. It is hard to get this much comfort, luxury, and style for this kind of money! Switching the transmission into manual mode allows more control but seems to contradict the car's mission, although it was nice to discover that the buttons on the front and back of each side of the steering wheel shifted up and down, rather than the more conventional left-is-up, right-is-down setup. So using the car after my much shorter Spouse has done so, is not an immediate grab for buttons to re-adjust seats and mirrors, or our differnces about music choices and volume. And a costly mistake for me.
This was done to address the complaints of 'getting lost' in the menus. We felt this on a fast, greasy corner, flat-out over a crest that unweighted the suspension. Of course, you have to check some options boxes to get all the features mentioned here, but you get the picture. The feeling of Teutonic indifference, of being a better car than I am a driver, relaxes after a few miles together. This may matter on the straights, but the Audi is another animal altogether when the road gets all wrinkly. I wanted to grab one of Bangle's designs before they all get too old.
The optional Comfort Rear Seats offer only fourteen-way power adjustments but include the same heating and cooling offered up front, as well as recline through a range not often seen for rear seats. The jump in power is noticeable at all speeds and especially if you're partial to accelerating from 100 to 130 mph. The engine is a torque monster, thrusting the big car down the road with authority at virtually any engine speed, and the seven-speed transmission is so perceptive that you hardly ever need to resort to manual override. But some of the technology sometimes seems to be more of a distraction than an aid. The 760 models are two of the quickest, fastest, normally aspirated 2.
Under power, the 7 Series cabin remains whisper quiet. Audi's A8L is an incontrovertible competitor, armed as it is with an oversize leather-and-wood-lined rear-passenger compartment. Your chauffeur will love it. Adaptive brake lights increase the brake-light area and intensity under sudden hard braking, also including the taillights in extreme situations. Bumps in the middle of a high-speed corner do not upset the handling balance one whit.
It slopes at a greater angle into a larger grille that better lines up with the new, more conventionally shaped headlights. For a car that some of us thought might win going in, fifth place seems astonishing. The 750Li and 760Li L for long offer even greater legroom in the back seats. The 7 Series provides more interior storage space than some of its competitors, but storage isn't one of its strengths. Parallel parking and close-quarters driving are aided by a park-distance control feature that shows a bird's-eye view of the car with green-, yellow-, and red-colored images representing objects nearing the bumpers, augmented with a beep that speeds up as objects get closer and turns to a solid tone when they're within a foot. In return you get a great ride, drive one for a week and you wont look back. The four main iDrive menus--climate, navigation, entertainment, and communications--are at the four compass points and always one push away.
You hear things in songs you never heard before. Some adjustments are automatic, including the headrests, which change height according to the position of the seat. Climate control was standard, although dual zone climate control was offered as an option. A comfortable ride, a quiet and scrupulously climate-controlled atmosphere, multiadjustable seating with Peltier cooling pads, and video entertainment with one of the best car stereos ever devised are at your disposal. Variable-assist, variable-ratio speed-sensitive steering is seamless and useful, tightening up nicely as speeds rise. That said, other manufacturers' systems offer a few more buttons that might not be as easy to find as the iDrive knob but ultimately allow for quicker access and action, as well as a return to full road concentration. Window shade-like slats seal off vent registers when and if desired.
It's a heady combination, helped quite a bit by tasteful interior design and good ergonomics. The V8 and V12 drivetrains are absolutely silky when cruising around. One thing we never carped about was the 325-hp, 4. The voice command features alone are amazing! An automatic humidity control maintains relative humidity near an optimal 40 percent. It has met all of my expectations pre-purchase, and now after a year of ownership.
You'd think because it's big it would be clumsy on a mountain road, but thanks to the electronic damfer control and dynamic drive, the car is comfortable on the highway, and fast in the turns. The new 2009 7 Series is boring in comparison to mine. It just so happens that the company makes a long version of its 7-series bruiser — the 750Li — complete with thundering 4. The grille on the 2006 models is now slightly larger and consistent on both models; it was slightly wider at the top on the 2005 760s. The standard seats in the 750i adjust 14 ways.