Car & Driver: 2010 BMW 750Li xDrive – Long-Term Road Test
Car and Driver delivers their final report on the 2010 BMW 750Li xDrive long-term rental. Here is excerpt from an unbiased review that points out the qualities and shortcomings of BMW’s flagship.
“Like a big shiny Christmas present, BMW delivered our long-wheelbase 750Li xDrive in late December 2009 for a 40,000-mile evaluation. Our love of huge back seats and mobile status symbols notwithstanding, we requested a 7-series for a higher purpose: to see if the new car was indeed a return to form after the notoriously troublesome, overly complicated, over-the-top, overwrought, fourth-generation 7-series. Is that chapter of 7-series history over?
It didn’t take long to realize that we didn’t like or want most of the extras. For the majority of the test, the blind-spot-detection and lane-departure-warning systems that come as part of the Driver Assistance package remained off so as to silence their pestering beeps. For the same reason, we typically turned off the collision warning that comes bundled with the radar-based cruise control. A few drivers switched off the head-up display after realizing that it disappeared behind polarized sunglasses.
Night vision, here an infrared camera that looks in front of the car for pedestrians or animals, allowed us to see in the dark, but it required the driver to monitor the screen at the center of the dashboard instead of the road. Deputy editor Daniel Pund called it “spectacularly distracting.” Another editor asked, “With xenon headlights this good, who needs infrared?”
Author: Horatiu Boeriu
Source: http://www.bmwblog.com/2011/05/09/car-d ... road-test/