Welcome to the BMW ‘land yacht’, it carries 7 in comfort, is heavy at over 2.5 tonnes, and yet the BMW X7 is incredibly nimble to drive. It’s obviously spacious and extremely luxurious. People complain about the size and safety, so it also has a long list of useful safety systems including cyclist detection, door impact sensors, rear and front sensors and cameras to help detect any moving object around the car. There are park assist features as standard as well. There’s also rear wheel steering to get you into/out of tight spots.
Special mention : Most obviously it has a spacious interior, high spec materials, great graphics, intuitive infotainment, Harmon Kardon stereo worth the extra, extreme road presence.
Needs work : The side view mirrors while big, somehow aren’t big enough. Miss having a proper gear selector, the paddles are fine but it’s nicer to knock it into manual using the ‘gear shifter’. What’s the opposite of inconspicuous?
| BHP 352 hp | Diesel / Auto |
| 0-100 km/h in 5.9 seconds | Road Tax €1,250.00 |
| Price: from €156,514.90 As specc’d €167,977.40 | Boot Space 326 – 2,120 litres |
The X7 is loaded with up-to-date active safety and driver assistance systems including adaptive LED headlights, automatic emergency braking (AEB), cruise control, a speed limiter and a driver attentiveness monitor, active cruise, lane-change and departure warning, lane-keep assist with active side collision protection and many more sophisticated systems.
While you’re out adventuring, you can store lots of necessities about the cabin. There are large door bins, big centre cubby and cup holders dotted throughout the cabin for all 7 occupants (some of which can keep your drink heated or cooled). The boot is perfect for small bags with all the seats in place and if you need to lower them, you don’t have to go hunting around each bench for the seat pull, you simply push/pull the indicated seat button in the boot and each row will (at its leisure) raise or lower for increased boot space.
There’s plenty of room for passengers on the second-row seats to stretch out and fit three adults sitting side-by-side relatively comfortably. The second row even gets a climate control zone, sunroof and window blind functions for each side of the car along with heated seats for the outer passengers. The seats can be moved forwards and backwards electrically in a 60/40 split, or folded in a 40/20/40 split. With all seats up you get around 326 litres of space, increasing to 750 litres for the third row and fold down the middle bench and you get a whopping 2,120 litres. The boot gets a split-folding tailgate layout with flip out lower section which will easily take the weight of someone sitting on it. There’s space for a couple of suitcases even when the third-row seats are in use. If for whatever reason you’re carrying something that doesn’t fit in all this space, you can tow up to 2,200kg for a braked trailer or 750kg unbraked.
The X7 is gunning straight for the Mercedes GLS and Range Rover end of the market. An opulent interior confirms the buyers money has been well spent. It’s all kitted out in the right places with plush feeling materials some of which now come with a vegan option. There’s a new dashboard and user interface, quality is extremely impressive with models fitted with BMW’s Marino leather finish. The crystal-finished interior controls can be a bit sparkly in the sunshine especially with the impressive sunroof which covers the three sections of the cabin and an incredible Bowers and Wilkins sound system.
The infotainment is built around a curved display, connecting a 12.3” digital instrument panel and a 14.9” touchscreen central infotainment using the latest BMW iDrive 8. It’s really easy to use, and can be operated using the intuitive rotary controller positioned beside the central armrest, touch screen or by using the BMW voice control system. When you’re driving, both scroll and voice methods are less distracting than stabbing away at the touchscreen. Functions such as climate control have their own fast access touch point, but no physical buttons, just the ability to change the air direction via the vent. So it’s disappointing that the best methods to adjust the interior temperature are either by using the touchscreen or voice commands. When you do use the screen there are a multitude of options and features available, it’s usually easier to just ask via voice control to adjust the temperature and fan speed.
The pilot of this land yacht has a commanding SUV driving position. You get electrically adjustable front seats that have multiple ways to fine-tune to your seating position and are also available with massage function (this also has numerous massage options). Visibility is excellent for most areas except in the side mirrors, while they are large, they don’t seem to cover enough of an area for full rear side visibility. For a car this size, manoeuvrability is made easy via the host of cameras and warning sensors which generally activate appropriately. Fortunately, front and rear parking sensors, all-round cameras and a self-parking system come as standard. When you’re in geteway mode, the xDrive40d with 347 bhp six-cylinder diesel engine moves it from 0-100 km/h in a smooth but express 5.9sec, leaving the Mercedes GLS 400d and the Range Rover D350 hunting for gears to catch up. The engine is so silky and rumbly, it would leave you wondering if it were in fact a diesel, until you glance at the 1,100 km range in the tank, making it perfect for any long haul journey. I’ve already planned in my head a hundred journeys I’d love to take it on, fully loaded, in abundant luxury. For now, it’s done an admiral job of navigating from the city to the sea. It is still a very large car and is surprisingly agile if you use one of the various air suspension settings, particularly the Sport setting which can only tighten things up so much but for a large car it can make itself seem as ‘small’ as an X5 when it wants to.
We didn’t find the opportunity to test its off road capabilities and yet it has them. The X7 is able to tackle rougher terrain than most people will ever want it to. You can select the optional xOffroad package on the 40 engines, which offer drive settings for topography you would usually find around farmlands and it adds underbody protection.
If you plan on driving dignataries around you can spec captains chairs for the middle bench, otherwise it’s a spacious 2,3,2 layout. The X7 is a blend of luxury, versatility and space for which you pay handsomely and will gain the much needed patience for hunting out large parking spaces into which it will fit (manoeuvrability isn’t really an issue).
Toyota’s Land Cruiser has, for many years, been the go to for rough n tough land yachting. It’s big and yet Toyota have taken a very long time to update it. So BMW have developed the X7 but there’s something about the BMW that edges out the Landcruiser. Is it that it’s much more ostentatious? Or seen as being too much perhaps? The Landcruiser has been held in high regard for its off road capabilities and is regularly seen in city’s but somehow goes under the radar. Not so the BMW. It stands out and is immediately recognised as quite the impressively large vehicle. But to drive it you don’t notice the size until you try and put it into a corner. Even then, considering its size, it handles quite deftly.