Recently revealed, BMW’s brand new X7 is one big, beautiful luxury car. Baroque Ground takes an in-depth look
BMW’s new flagship X-line SUV is a large 7-seater that will be in the same league as luxe SUVs like the Range Rover when it goes on sale next year. It not only boasts plenty of space and top quality, it’s also very beautiful to look at.
It measures 16,9 feet wide and 5.9 feet tall, with a wheelbase of around 10 feet that should allow a powerful stance on the road, large interior cabin and all. To give an idea of its length, it’s about nine inches longer than the BMW X5. The new design’s most striking feature is the tall new double-kidney grille in the front that dominates the car. BMW calls it “the largest kidney grille ever designed for a BMW model”. The front also features Adaptive LED headlights, fog lights and extra large air intakes.
The view of this beautiful beast from the side offers a tall boxy frame with excellent head room. The rear of the car is as gorgeous as the front – it’s broken up by a horizontal chrome strip and offers a metallic skid plate between the two exhaust pipes. The car sits on 21-inch light alloy wheels. It boasts a standard 3-part panoramic glass roof with glass elements at the front, rear and in the middle. Top end models feature LED lights spread so that they illuminate over 15,000 graphic patterns and generate a display that looks like a sky full of stars.
The interior of the new BMW X7 is refined and well-finished. The dashboard comprises a 12.3-inch digital instrumentation panel as well as a large infotainment screen in the center. Numerous controls fitted into the center console include the iDrive Controller, drive control buttons and a recently designed gear selector. There’s a 10-speaker HiFi with an option of the more luxurious Harman Kardon surround sound system with 16 speakers. Another option is the Rear-Sat Entertainment Professional system that consists of two 10.2-inch full HD touchscreen displays, Blu-ray compatible DVD player two USB ports, a couple of headphone jacks and an HDMI socket.
Climate control is 4-zone automatic and comes as standard. There are also additional air vents for the third row of seats (Car seats allow space for 7 adults with 2 full-size seats in the third row). The interior lighting system has a choice of 6 different color options – they also change color when the door is open or when a phone call is coming in.
The car is powerful, with a choice of a 6-cylinder in-line petrol engine for the BMW X7 xDrive40i or 2 6-cylinder in-line diesel engines to power the BMW X7 xDrive30d and BMW X7 M50d M Performance models. Each unit is turbocharged and paired with an 8-speed Steptronic transmission, and comes with the xDrive all-wheel drive.
The new X7 will be available to purchase in dealers from March 2019, although one can already pre-order it and order a customized version. Prices start at almost $75,000 for the xDrive40i, and the xDrive50i starts at around $94,000.