We automotive journalists can be an argumentative, not to say idiotic, lot. We bitch and moan about the lack of individuality in today's car designs. Then along comes the new BMW 7-series—which, like it or loathe it, at least looks different—and suddenly everybody starts making like BMW disrespected their mom on Mother's Day.
As you may have noticed, car magazines are not always the ones to trust in matters of automotive style. Fortunately, it's an area in which we've traditionally tended to let the customer decide. A publication can say an engine lacks satisfying quantities of midrange torque a hundred times without riling up an advertiser. But call his car as ugly as the rotting carcass of a dead halibut just once, and you may find you've shot yourself in the (advertising) rate card.
So, most times, we make a policy decision to measure our words. We rarely step out on limbs. After all, what is automotive style but a matter of opinion? And what if mine is wrong? Better to keep one's trap shut.
There are exceptions. It didn't, for instance, take especially much in the way of cojones to make light of the crisp, clean lines of the AMC Gremlin and the subsequent Levi's Edition. Nor was it long before someone had the courage to stand up and call the Pontiac Aztek less than profoundly beautiful. What we saw in those instances was the liberating effect of the pack, the protective camouflage of the herd in action. If we all said something, it must be true, and even if it wasn't, at least it was safe to say.
Which is more or less what has happened to the new jumbo sedan from Bavaria. Some European journo somewhere felt bold enough to slag the 7-series' looks, and now it's a pile-on free-for-all.
Only problem is, the pack and its criticism are misguided. We should be celebrating the 7-series, not deriding it. Let me go out on a limb. I actually like the look of the new 7. There, I've said it. But even if you don't agree, surely you have to admit it looks the role of bad, mean, and serious. Which is the whole point of a large, German sedan, no?
What's more, having just spent a week with a 745Li, covering the ground between Florida and New York at a pleasingly unaverage average speed, I'd rate this car to be an unparalleled long-distance driving tool. Even if I hated its appearance, I'd say the same. It's the king of king-size high-performance sedans thus far revealed to man. Sure, its iDrive secondary control system can be an annoying time waster, but what computer or computer-assisted device in your life isn't at least as adept, initially, at consuming your time as it is at saving it?
Frankly, the hubbub over the new 7 reminds me of nothing so much as the Mercedes-Benz S-class launch in 1991. Coming in the midst of one of Europe's especially sensitive tree-hugging periods, der grosser Benz was reviled at first by the German press and then by the rest of Europe for its in-your-face hugeness. (As if the world's fat cats really wanted a petite S.) This criticism was then parroted by American journalists, most of whom during the previous week probably had celebrated in print the wieldy ways of some micro-machine like the Chevy Suburban. Needless to say, the S-class ended up being the most successful S to date. And, of course, we all miss the lovable old steamship dearly.
The fates of these German top-of-the-liners are usefully considered together, for they are intertwined. The bold style of BMW's new grandee marks the route Mercedes deliberately didn't take with the latest S-class. Instead of marching to the idiosyncratic beat of its own time-forged, engineers-on-top drum machine, Daimler chose to move its S-class into the aesthetic and marketing mainstream.
Ironically, we can trace a major branch of modern Mercedes style back to BMW and the 5-series that debuted in Europe in 1988. Influ-ential though it was, BMW's sleek sedan design didn't really spread around the world like Velveeta in a Flagstaff heat wave, until Mitsubishi brazenly lifted it for the Diamante. Bland and a little bit boring, an obvious 5-series ripoff, it—not the 5—became the miraculous exemplar for dozens of autos that followed. Including the latest Mercedes S-class. Criticized as derivative, the Diamante managed to became a style setter in its own right. Weird.
One of these two Teutons remains a bank vault, and it's not the Merc. Not only does the new 7 look braver and more distinctive than the S, but it's the better-built car. As a driving proposition, the BMW is second to none. The new 7-series takes up where the last one left off—no bad place to start.
In fact, there's only one negative thing you can say about the 7 just departed: It depreciated like nobody's business. But rather than feeling sorry for some swell who lost forty large in depreciation on a loaded 7 during the course of four years' enjoyable ownership, I prefer to revel in the knowledge that out there today lies the opportunity to buy a wonderful and hugely competent Bavarian flier with less than five years' service for a hair over twenty grand.
And if the press on the new 7-series doesn't get better, maybe the media will succeed in creating yet another spectacular used-car bargain. We're talking sleeper-of-the-century stuff here.
You know, maybe we journalists are not so stupid, after all.