BMW M760i ..448kw..0-100km/hr 3.7secs...

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"Nobody has really noticed it, but BMW has built the fastest, most powerful car in its history, probably because the speed is wrapped in an outrageously opulent limo. Truth be told, the sprinting advantage over the M5 and M4 is all because this limo has all-wheel drive and the M cars only have rear-drive. Still, the M760i — which arrives Down Under in the second quarter of this year priced at almost $420,000 — is very good at hustling in corners, being brutal in a straight line and wonderfully comfortable everywhere else, but it’s still not at M7.

M fought very hard to stop this being called an M7 and it must have been some fight.
With a sprint to 100km/h in 3.7 seconds, it’s more than half a second quicker than the current M5. The brave-driver versions have a limiter that stop them accelerating at 305km/h. At 448kW, no BMW production car before it has even approached this much gristle.
Yet it’s a big car, and a limousine first and foremost. There is, M President Franciscus van Meel insisted, no market for a true M7. Any attempt to justify an M7 badge by bringing up AMG’s S 63 and S 65 aren’t valid, he reasoned, because the S 63 and S 65 aren’t really AMGs in the way an E 63 is. They’re softer because the customers won’t buy anything else.
The clear, unspoken implication is that the main difference between the V12-powered S 65 AMG and his M Performance Automobiles-badged M760i xDrive is that BMW is more honest about pitching its powerhouse midway between the standard family range and the harder-core M machinery.
So don’t decry this as a waste of your time just because it’s a 2180kg, four-seat cabin carried by a 5.2-metre body. It’s stupendously fast and, at the same time, unrealistically bloody good at what it does.
The headlines will go to the V12 (which is a relatively ancient thing at heart but gets a smattering of new bits) but they should go to the car’s understuff, which does a brilliant job at cancelling out the mass.
Most big limousines don’t feel like sports limousines (think: sports sedan, but a lot bigger, because that’s the era we are being ushered into). Most big limousines meander their way into corners because their heavy engines contradict any steering inputs by preferring to simply keep going straight ahead. Then their soft springing encourages the body to roll, which isn’t conducive to mid-corner pace, but at least their long wheelbases make everything progressive and easy to correct.
The M7 err, the M760i xDrive isn’t like that. You can feel it trying to be sometimes, but there are bits and pieces underneath that stop all of that just as it starts.
There’s rear-wheel steering for one thing and then there are active anti-roll bars. They don’t turn it into a racing car, for sure, but they make what could have been a big, floppy fast bus into a big, composed, unshakeable corner muncher.
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But you don’t notice that at first. You see the V12 badges tacked all over the place in a way that BMW has never done before. They work, with the ones on the C-pillar breaking up the eyeline enough to give the M760i xDrive a different profile and a stronger rear end than the standard car.
In case you missed that, there are four exhaust tips and two enormously wide kidneys in the grille. It’s more about walking the line between class and subtle menace, rather than about in-your-face in any way.
The 6.0-litre, all-alloy V12 has been bumped up to 6592cc and fitted with a pair of mono-scroll turbochargers, direct fuel injection and variable valve control and lift. It’s stronger in every way, including being reinforced down low to reduce vibrations at middle and low revs. Fancy pants twin-scroll turbochargers? Not necessary, but could be fitted one day to extend the V12’s lifespan yet again.
It reaches its 448kW power peak at 5500rpm and backs that up with 800Nm of torque from only 1500rpm. Not many holes in that performance curve, then.
If you have an interest in such things the BMW M760Li xDrive guzzles through 12.6L/100km, but not many people in the target market would give the remotest of glances at that.
Instead, it uses its all-wheel drive traction to leap to 100km/h in 3.7 seconds and it runs on to a 250km/h top speed. There’s also a driver’s package that will see M lift the top speed to 305km/h, but that’s still limited. Van Meel insists the V12 is strong enough to pull eighth gear at the 305km/h limit.
The next fastest version of the 7 Series is the 750i xDrive, which has 330kW and 650Nm from its turbo V8 and gets across to 100km/h in 4.4 seconds.
Over at AMG, the S 65 AMG V12 eats it for torque, with 1000Nm, and just bests it for power, with 463kW. On the flipside, the BMW motor revs higher (its power peak hits at 5500rpm, while the three-valve AMG motor gets to its figure at 4800rpm) and it is six tenths of a second quicker to 100km/h.
It’s not just about speed, though. If it was, it would be an M7 and even fewer people would buy it. It was considered critical that the big rig be as comfortable as it was fast.
Most cars in this field have adjustment modes that go Comfort, Sport, Sport+/Race/Really hard. The M760i xDrive has Comfort and then Comfort Plus as well as the Sport mode. And the Race mode, which you can hook up to a smartphone app via Bluetooth to record all your lapping, throttle, acceleration, braking and cornering data. Because you would, wouldn’t you?
This is all built around the what BMW calls its carbon-core for the 7 Series, which is a series of integrated carbon-fibre parts built into the core chassis to reduce weight and lower the centre of gravity. At 2180kg, it makes you shudder to think what it might have weighed had the chassis been made from something else.
The M760i xDrive turns out to be 310kg heavier than the 750i xDrive, and that isn’t just the extra four cylinders. It’s a big car, casting a 5238mm noon shadow, and it’s 1902mm wide and 1479mm high, with the axle lines sitting 3210mm apart. And yet, it’s a dedicated four seater, with its rear centre armrest containing a fold-out table, a tablet and the electric seat controls.
The rear seat is both huge and comfortable. As it should be. There are comfy add-on headrests that your head falls into like the softest pillow. You can push the front passenger seat forward to boost the legroom (assuming nobody’s in it, obviously) and the seat adjusts electronically for backrest angle and the base’s location.
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The table folds out for the rear seat diagonally opposite the driver and it’s surprisingly solid and stable. It doesn’t bounce with impacts (or these hard keyboard impacts), which is something of an engineering feat in itself.
It’s also quiet in the business seats, with very little wind and engine noise, though there’s more road noise from the tyres than you’d find in the S 65 AMG. Further back, there is space for 515 litres of luggage capacity and that’s it, because the complex rear seats don’t fold down.
Move up to the front and it’s everything you expect of the 7 Series, complete with thick carpets, soft leather seats and that hideous multimedia screen that looks tacked on. In an era of slick Audi units and Benz’s ultra-wide two-screen setup, it looks more out of place here today than ever before.
Still, there is a lot going on inside it, plus the instrument cluster is digital, touchscreen, controllable with gestures and the head-up display is both clear and easy to use. There are separate buttons for Sport, Comfort and Eco Pro modes, plus another to turn off the skid-control systems. It also has the best key in the car industry today, capable of doing more than just locking and unlocking the car and it has its own screen with three different displays. As a piece of jewellery to put on the table with mates, it has few equals.
And it helps fire up 12 cylinders of fury. Sure, the engine can be calm, gentle and progressive, and it actually doubles as a fine luxury limousine. Just as well, really, because that’s going to be its lot in life most of the time.
It doesn’t take a lot of throttle to get it going anyway at a reasonable clip and the ride comfort really is quite sublime. The engine note sits happily in the background, the steering is easy and beautifully weighted and the shifts are sublimely silken. The audio system is brilliant and it’s just a lovely place to be, sitting still or moving.
The interesting bits happen when you forget it’s a luxury limousine and start hurling it at the scenery.
It’s a traffic light Grand Prix champ, and plenty of people will be embarrassed at the lights if they are unwary of what lies beneath that acreage that passes for a bonnet.
The launch control is as simple as traction control off, sport mode on, step on the brake and throttle at the same time, then release the brake. And then it explodes, with 12 full cylinders of symphony trying to be both bass and treble all at the same time.
It’s raucously loud and incredibly strong, at any speed, from any revs, in any gear.
But the strange part is the way it handles. It actually handles well. It’s not exactly a linear expression of increased enthusiasm, though, but it gets the job done.
The thing is, you feel it start to do all the things that big, ungainly limousines have always done in corners. And then it just stops itself from doing them.
You can feel the understeer starting on low speed corners and then the rear-wheel steering chimes, turning in the opposite direction to the front wheels to stop it. You can feel the body beginning to roll and then the active roll bars stiffen up to stop it. You can feel the high-speed understeer beginning to set in and then the rear steer (at speed, turning in the same direction as the fronts) and the anti-roll bars stop that, too.
It’s not quite freaky and it’s not quite intuitive, but it’s effective and it’s astonishing. For a car this size and weight, it can bounce between corners with V12 fury, then whip through them with concentrated intent, like it narrows its own focus for each effort, then relaxes again in a straight line.
It does sometimes come across as more of an exercise in engineering achievement more than driving achievement, but that’s missing the point. It’s a limo than can attack the bends with surprising competence when it needs to, rather than a sports sedan tied down to the point of discomfort.
And it walks the line superbly.
2017 BMW M760i xDrive pricing and specifications:
On sale: April 2017
Price: $419,000 plus ORCs
Engine: 6.6-litre twin-turbo V12 petrol
Output: 448kW/800Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 12.8L/100km
CO2: 294g/km
Safety rating: TBC" https://www.carsales.com.au/editoria...ampaign=buffer