First Drive Review
Memo to prospective luxury-car buyers: Before visiting the BMW store for a test run in the new 745i, please practice the following tasks. Set your VCR to tape a month's worth of Wall $treet Week; program your cell phone to speed-dial a foreign telephone number using a calling card; reformat your PC's hard drive. Persons lacking the technological chutzpah to perform these tasks risk embarrassment in front of the salesperson. At the press launch of this car, journalists who've driven zillions of different cars without help were given a half-hour crash course in how to operate the 745i. Most needed an hour.
Practically everything the driver touches is new and different. For example, just to get under way requires the driver to (1) insert the key fob into the dash slot, (2) depress the brake, (3) press the "start/stop" button, (4) pull the stubby shift lever toward the steering wheel and up past the spring-loaded detent for reverse or down for drive (it returns to center when you let go), (5) press the parking-brake button to release and, finally, drive away. When you're finished, press a button on the shifter for park.
The weird shifter has company. The steering column bristles with four such electronic stalks, the others controlling the cruise, the wiper and washer, and the turn-signal/high-beam functions. Each will feel peculiar in its self-centering operation, its ergonomics, or both. These stalks merely relay your wishes down to a computer that considers and in many cases grants them.
Much of the car is controlled like a computer, particularly the 700-plus functions operated via the central rotary-push-knob iDrive system. Learning to point and click through the eight main menus and their various submenus is reasonably easy. Mastering the system so it can be operated without diverting too much attention from the road takes longer than a day and a half--even with tutoring. We'll reserve further ergonomic criticism until we've had a longer drive and a chance to try the voice controls, which hadn't yet learned English.
Crash course completed, mirrors aimed, seats adjusted (via new and somewhat fussy switches), we drove off into Italy's Apennine Mountains in test cars fitted with BMW's optional electronic-damping-control (EDC) infinitely adjustable shocks that offer the driver a choice of sport or comfort programming.
We set off in comfort mode and were struck by the car's incredibly smooth ride, even on the optional 19-inch low-profile footware (the base 18-inch tires were even cushier but squealed more). This smoothness came at a cost of excessive float over dips and rises that seemed rather uncharacteristic of a BMW. We also found the new rack-and-pinion steering to feel somewhat inert and disconnected in comfort mode--not at all as in previous 7-series.
