Fiat vs Renault – it’s an electric face-off
You’ll not have failed to notice that electric vehicles are now being thrown at us thick and fast, and I’m afraid to report that most I drive are still heavy,…
The idea here is that those not yet ready to go full EV should still have the chance to buy a flagship BMW that will waft around on electrons most of the time and cost very little to tax. I thought its all-electric brother the i7 was the best large EV I’ve driven, better by a distance than its Mercedes EQS rival, but, as a plug in, I think Benz’s rival S 580 e poses a far tougher challenge.
For a start the Merc really will do almost 70 miles before the petrol motor fires up – in the BMW that figure is nearer 45 miles; also BMW seems to have firmed up the M760e, perhaps to justify that M badge, degrading the i7’s superlative ride just a touch. If it’s any better to handle in the corners I neither noticed nor particularly cared: whatever the badge says, it’s just not that kind of car.
None of which is to dismiss it. Behind those dreadful looks still lies far and away the most convincing generation of 7 Series BMW since the very first, which was still around when I got into this game in the late 1980s. You can spend hours – literally – configuring the interior to your smallest requirements, but when stripped back to what actually matters, it reveals itself to be an eerily quiet, spacious, well-appointed and still fabulously comfortable car. The interaction between its electric and petrol motors is superb too. But if forced to make a decision, I’d still have an i7. AF
You’ll not have failed to notice that electric vehicles are now being thrown at us thick and fast, and I’m afraid to report that most I drive are still heavy,…
I have always considered what I do to be a young man’s game, inconvenient for me insofar as by the time you chance upon this column, you’ll be reading the…
The late monarch’s Range Rover went for 10 times the typical price of a similar non-Royal model
Late backer of the McLaren F1 team Mansour Ojjeh’s entire 20-car McLaren collection has been snapped up by one undisclosed buyer
This is such a superficially clever car. It’s a quite spacious five door family machine that, like so many other electric vehicles, also goes like hell when you so command.…
If you’ve watched the Netflix series Yellowstone you will want to go to Montana. If you haven’t it comes highly recommended by me and everyone else I know who’s seen…
Is Lotus really going to shut its Hethel factory? Personally, and despite the company saying it has “no plans” to do so, I would not bet against it. We had…
One of the first big jobs I did as a young road tester was to pit a Morgan Plus Eight against an E30-series BMW M3 convertible. The outcome may seem…
Long chat with Gordon Murray after what seems like far too long. As you read this the South African-born son of Scottish parents will have just entered his 80th year,…
It gives me no pleasure to say it, but the only true BMW M car of recent times to which I’ve felt a proper connection is the baby of them…
The news that the threatened 25% tariff on car exports from the UK to the US has been reduced to 10% is clearly to be welcomed. For some companies I…
As a child, Lamborghini was the evil empire. I was a Ferrari man and the only explanation I could find to explain why Boxers and Testarossae always lost comparison tests…