Ich bin ein Bargeist (BMW 740e content inside)

[Church of Noise]

After a delightful period of perusing the usual sites with second hand cars for sale (autoscout24 and mobile.de , we are on the continent), and getting valued input from the PH collective here, the decision was made to try a couple of examples of the BMW 740e (G11 for the BMW cognoscenti).

As mentioned in that thread, we needed a car to serve 2 rather different purposes:
- Be my wife's daily driver (7 mile trip one-way) so hopefully somewhat practical
- Be the 6x/y long distance cruiser for our family (incl 15yo) to the inlaws, 850 miles away

Firstly, because her ageing Skoda Octavia is getting a bit long in the tooth, secondly because the trip to the inlaws takes 17hrs in my EQE during the colder periods of the year, which is just too long to cover in 1 day (so we'd started splitting the trip over 2 days).

What started out as a quest for the most comfortable small car, rather quickly moved towards a search for well equiped BMW 3-series tourings, or Merc C-class estates, ideally with some form of adaptive/air suspension and driving assistant magic - we'd experienced the major affect those systems have on the fatigue during such trips when we'd driven back from Italy in an Audi A6 after my Jag F-pace had decided to lunch its engine.
The thing is, this combination isn't easily found and even when available, I was somewhat disappointed by the remaining level of noise (e.g. in a C300de I tested) or comfort.

As things go with man maths, I started 'going up in the car hierarchy', and noticed that prices for BMW 3, 5 and 7 series of similar ages were not really thát far apart... One can see where this is heading...
(important to add that for tax reasons, larger engines were not really in scope)
Test drives showed that (a) it is a lot more brisk than the 2 liter turbocharged engine in such a hefty car would suggest - of course helped by the electric motor and (b) the experience is wildly different between one that's been properly maintained and one that has been used as a lot of these barges tend to be after their first ownership: champagne car run on lemonade money.

So we ended up with a 1-owner BMW 740e, 45k miles, without the M-sport package and 21-sized rims. Instead, it might be the most sober spec on the outside, with 18inch wheels on 50 profile tyres (the comfort!) and in Sophisto Grau.
Inside, it has quite some creature comforts and frankly, it feels somewhat like a flying carpet.



Picking it up this week!

Edited by Church of Noise on Sunday 20th October 19:35

[AB]

A guy in the next door office to me has one, albeit in M Sport spec and he loves it. It's got some presence too, a lot bigger in person than this picture looks.

Also one hell of a lot better looking than what came after!

Congrats.

[macron]

Excellent! Ideal for the short trip on electric alone, be interesting to see what the 2.0 petrol is like on long journeys from both a refinement and economy perspective.

[outnumbered]

It'll be comfy, but not sure about the looks with the 18s on ! We've just done something similar, but one step below with a 530e. I think it works really well for a mixture of short and long journeys.

[danb79]

Lovely!

A 7 series on 18" wheels is superb; as you said, they simply float along...

I'm sure you'll be enjoying it in no time

My previous F01 on its winter 18s was a superb drive:



I moved to 19" 351Ms for summer tyres and they were excellent also; all non RFT tyres... I binned the 20s the car came on as soon as I could; even with new non RFT tyres it didn't drive well at all and tramlined, a lot!

Edited by danb79 on Monday 21st October 11:52

[theicemario]

Love a non-M Sport 7er. Much classier, as they should be. Chrome window trims and kidney grilles certainly help

[Church of Noise]

Thanks for the kind words!
Picked it up on Wednesday and thoroughly enjoyed the 2hr drive back home with the new owner of the car (my wife) following me in the EQE.

Here it is in all its splendour


Absolutely love the way it floats across the distances thanks to the air suspension, how the Driving Assistant Plus tries to take a lot of the dreary, boring motorway work out of your hands and how relaxing the entire experience is. The Harman Kardon system isn't half bad either!

Sadly, the gods of bork have visited us already - when trying to charge the battery last night, the lighting surrounding the charging outlet on the car blinked red. The internet suggests it might be the charging system that has gone haywire - it's a thing apparently. In any case, it's going back to the selling car dealer tomorrow for a check. Let's wait and see...

[Church of Noise]

She's back (she as in, my wife decided to call the car Helga, for those familiar with Allo Allo).

Seems the charging issue was with the locking pin for the charging cable, and was sorted by the selling dealer.
That was 120 miles from home, and before hitting traffic jams around Brussels, it indicated 50mpg, with the end result being at 40mpg. Not too shabby for a luxury barge with the torque of a larger engine when required.

[macron]

Good news it was a simple fix. Are you able to use it just on the electric much?

[Church of Noise]

Trying to! For local things, it seems very feasible.
We live at 1 mile from the centre of our town, my wife works at 7 miles and I think I got about 10 miles out of the battery today.

Additionally, the combination of the electric and petrol motors seems to make for a torquey combination when needed and a rather frugal one when not.

Will report back further on this.