Thanks! Well, for starters, the head up display is awesome. I know that description blows, but on mountain roads in the snow, I was glad not to have to glance down. The 4-wheel steering makes the car feel much, much smaller. I doubt that'd be needed on shorter wheelbase cars, but you never know. The Night Vision display that highlights living things at night and warns you when they're close was a gimmick I was ready to write off, until I experienced it. We were driving to dinner and they had actors jump in front of the cars at night. We saw them on the night vision display long before the headlights showed them to us. Very cool safety feature - I can imagine it'll do wonders with deer. There's a bunch of other stuff that goes on behind the scenes of the car that are pretty extraordinary, too. More on that later when I have my notes in front of me... - Marc
You're already starting to see a lot of stuff on less expensive cars the multi-zone accident avoidence systems from the likes of Volvo and others uses a bunch of sensing technologies to watch the periferies and take action. Auto cruise control that maintains a safety margin. The IR stuff has been available for a while, but the camera itself is so expensive that it will be quite a while before it becomes available on cheap cars (this isn't so much economies of scale, but more having to do with IR sensing in general). But you can add it to your car for about $4k now (FLIR systems sells a kit. I asked for one to write about but they thought the Mini market was too small to justify the budget to give me one.) There's a lot of neat heads up stuff coming out. I looked at doing one based on a scanning laser system that had much better contrast than the current back-lit LCD system, but the dev kit was $7k! Would take a lot of sales to really make a business out of it. But these are coming out in less expensive cars even now. On the engine side, this is the first motor that has a new DI injection system that from Bosch that offers even more gains and emissions improvements over the current offerings. This will trickle down to more cars, like DI has already. And my personal favorite, power vented seat uphostery! Matt
If you all want a Heads Up in your vehicle why not just make sure your spouse is riding with you? Mine manages to give me the Heads Up about things I am doing wrong long before I do them.
The spouse option is a LOT more expensive than just purchasing a 760i solely for the Heads Up feature.
:lol: Well, they didn't tell us they were actors. But when we took the scenic route to the restaurant two blocks away, and then when there happened to be two joggers who just happened to jog right in front of us, I used my keen journalistic skills, scratched the ole forehead, and said, "Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyy wait a minute - this is a setup!" In my defense, I was the first one in our car to figure it out, and I refuse to reveal who else was there. - Marc
Just got the latest Motor Trend... Here's a direct quote "It's a little hard to spot the point of the BMW 760Li. does anyone cosider the current top Seven, the twin turbo V-8 750Li too slow? Too unrefined?" Paul Horrell goes on with some good points about the car, both pro and con. Sorry I couldn't find the article on-line. I did summarize more of his review here. In the comments at the end. Matt
Okay I change my mind - two people said it. Just kidding. I was going to quote Satch Carlson from his feature, but typing someone's writing is damn annoying, so I won't. I will say that I think it's hilarious that automotive journalists, like the one mentioned above (Horrell?) can call a car, ANY car, unnecessary, when it's the very existence of ridiculous cars that makes magazines like Motor Trend survive. Yea, let's all go to perfectly practical electric cars and call the magazine "Battery Trend," and let's see if Mr. Horrell still has a job. Does that mean his analysis shouldn't be honest? No, of course not. But come on - you write for MOTOR TREND which has a picture of the Corvette GranSport on the cover last month. Yes, that's the ticket - let's all buy Corvettes because they're so necessary. Things that make you go hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Here's another: why begrudge a brand a genuine flagship? Seriously, why? Care to detail the necessity of the Corvette ZR-1? How about Rolls Royce as a brand? Sorry - I just don't buy it. I can't be convinced that a car is unnecessary. That's like taking some water out of the ocean and saying, "HEY - what the hell! This water is WET - get it out of the ocean!" Sorry again, I never said I could conceive good similes. - Marc
I'm not going to defend the many hypocracies of auto mags... But Paul did make some good points. Engines take a while to develope. In the good times when the V-12 TT was approved it may have made more sense. In current times of contraction, not so much. He didn't address the point that it was really designed for the new small Rolls, and using it more places makes economic sense in that the dev costs get spread over more units. (but then the V-8 TT isn't used in as many units, diluting some of the savings.) His other criticisms seem valid. Comfort mode for the suspension is too soft for the power available, and sport didn't seem good to him for real world roads. He had some criticism of the programming of the 8 speed, and also said that the aim of many of the sporting features didn't really suite the real market of this car: Autobahn cruiser. Some of my German friends have also echoed this mixed intent message: too much sport trappings for what's not a sports car. Anyway, Pauls was an honest critique (it seemed to me) where he said that for whatever reason, the flagship 7 is a really nice car that has a bit of a confused market message. But you misconstrue the Gran Sport review seriously. They said that GM dug in the parts bins to give quite a bump to the regular Corvette line with almost no new parts (three body panels if I remember correctly). And they created a car that competes with others that cost a lot more. They didn't call it nessesary, but did call it very good value for money if that's the type of performance you're looking for. Matt
M7? I won't be surprised. Remember, flagship = trickle down. Or, trickle up as the case would be! There are two things you can never have too much of: SPORT and COWBELL! I didn't even READ the Grand Sport review - I just mentioned that it's on the cover. There are few cars I care less about than parts-bin Corvettes. To me, the car is unnecessary. :lol: Here's a better example: XXX-horsepower McLaren! I've read a few reviews of the 760, and none ignores the driving aspect of the car more than Horrell's. Not sure why. These are cars we're talking about here, not toaster-ovens. It bored me, to tell you the truth. I'm certain that driving that car would not bore me. It might kill me, but it wouldn't bore me as his writing did. In his defense, he was obviously limited by space/word count. Okay, enough of this. What'd you like to argue about next? 'Tis fun! - Marc
Marc, your BMW bias is showing! I'm a car guy, don't really care about the brand or the focus. The Gran Sport is really quite a feat because of what it does at the price that it does it at. If Porsche owners weren't so brand loyal Porsche (now VW) should be scared, very scared. But since they are so brand loyal, they'll still sell at the same levels and I don't think there will be a lot of cross-shopping of the two cars. You really should read the article because how well the car does for it's intended mission with the resources GM had at hand was really good. And wonder if Paul's page would have board you if it had just sung praises? Matt
Brand bias? You're damn right I'm biased! I write for a CLUB magazine. I write for the magazine because I'm passionate about the brand. Guilty :ihih: I do hope people don't turn the pages of Roundel looking for perfectly objective appraisals of vehicles in their CLUB's magazine. I won't read the 'vette article because I really don't care at all about the car, no matter how well it does. Is it bad to be honest about it? Trust me, I'm much more "car guy" than journalist. It's like a 95% landslide. And the % of my "car guy-ness" that is really MINI/BMW-guy-ness, is up in the 90s as well. I'm also a contrarian by nature. You can knock BMW all you want, but do it well. Do it with emotion. Do it with feeling. Don't do it by saying a flagship vehicle is unnecessary because it has a big engine and lots of technology. Please - how about some damn creativity? But enough about me. I know you didn't intend that as a knock on me because I know you understand audiences and the intentions of such publications - you know, because you write for one, too. And if such a publication purports to be "objective," it's a silly joke. And so is any effort to be so in the writing therein. But maybe that's just me? - Marc
This is were I step in and remind everyone to keep cool. But to address the "necessity" of things. I prefer to wear my Breitling rather then my Seiko, even though Seiko is more accurate. Know what I mean?
Somewhere I wrote how to read a car magazine and it really is a guide for pretty much any enthusiast publication. You have to "discount" enthusiasm a bit, because biting the hand that feeds you is commercial suicide. So for the most point, damming with faint praise is is usually as negative as it gets. Just a fact of life. So, for an enthusiast car mag, I read reviews and tend to accept stories of things like club outings pretty much on face value as written. Car features are a perk to the readership. Who doesn't like to see thier car in print! (And it pretty much garantees a lifetime subscriber). Product reviews are a mix of a review and an plug for a paying advertiser. Car reviews tend to over emphasis the good and under emphasize the bad. And adds are pretty much shameless commercial plugs, but at least everyone knows it. In Rondel the most negative stuff is definantly in the letters. There are some in there that are downright nasty toward the changes in the brand or how they've been treated by BMW. Some of the tech writing points out obvious weaknesses in some versions of the cars vs others. I'd be pleasantly surprised to see a real panning of a new BMW model in it though... But really, Rondel is somewhat insulated from some of the conflict of interest, as it's funded out of club dues. You might want to reconsider the notion of objective reviews in the mag, as really, is it there to serve the interests of the readers or to just sing the praises of the rondel and kidney grill independant of the real value of the offerings? I'd vote for the first, but really, other than being a club member, I don't get to say anything about what's in Rondel. I'm lucky. I mostly write about how things work, usually from first principles. I also answer peoples questions about problems that they have with thier cars, and in both of these I get to point out failings of the cars (like the front control arm bushings, my least favorite part in the entire New MINI history, or the totally unacceptable factory front camber settings). But for sure it's a tough line to walk. Be too nice to vendor products or the cars (not even nipping the hand that feeds you) and you risk pisssing off the readers for going soft on what eventually will come out. Go to hard on those very same hands and loose all the reveneu. I don't envy the editors. Matt
goaljnky - was this not on the up and up? If it didn't read that way, my apologies. Everyone who reads Roundel has an opinion about its content/direction/etc... The cool thing is everyone can write a letter and it will be published. Be the change you wish to see in the world! Or do what I did - get lucky and stumble into a column you don't deserve. In sum: of course the 7 series is unnecessary, but to me, that is not the point. That assessment misses the point. I can appreciate the stance, though. Matt - good on you for writing your mind. Do you know where else my brand loyalty shows? In my screen name...:idea: - Marc
But Nathan... that's just like shouting "Don't Listen To This!" It just doesn't work... Matt ps, what's funny is that Marc and I actually agree. I said I'm sure it's a nice ride. Marc says it is. I say it's excessive, and Marc does too. It's more the tone than the content that creates the stir.