Gracefully sporting proportions and a progressive interpretation of luxury mark out the exterior design of the new BMW 7-Series. Its alluring bodywork reflects the supreme dynamics and exclusive comfort that shape the luxury sedan’s unmistakable driving experience. The latest edition of the 7-Series features neatly judged exterior flourishes, which underline its status and advanced technology even more intently. The design updates reach every area of the body and strengthen, above all, the confident presence with which the new BMW 7-Series sedan advertises its position as the brand’s flagship model. The far-reaching exterior redesign accentuates the cultured elegance of the BMW 7-Series and takes in the front apron, bonnet, headlights, front side panels, rear bumper trim and rear lights. The BMW 7-Series will continue to be offered in two body variants. The longer version of the luxury sedan has a wheelbase extended by 14 centimetres over the standard car – to 3,210 millimetres – and gives rear-seat passengers the extra space to match. The standard 7-Series (5,120 mm) and its long-wheelbase twin (5,260 mm) are both 22 millimetres longer than their respective predecessors. The new model’s width (1,902 mm) and height (1,467 mm / long-wheelbase version: 1,479 mm) remain unchanged.
The extensive design refresh at the front end plays a particularly prominent role in giving the new BMW 7-Series its more powerful visual presence. Catching the eye most vividly is the significantly expanded surfacing at the front of the car, which now rises around 50 millimetres taller at its foremost point. The result is a verticality that projects the prestige and status of the luxury sedan. The dominant force of the front-end design is the BMW kidney grille, now framed by a single-piece surround whose surface area has grown by some 40 per cent. The grille has active air flap control with adjustable vanes which only open when the need for cooling air is increased. The bars of the kidney grille come in Aluminium satinated as standard and in High-gloss Chrome on cars with Design Pure Excellence specified. The fronts of the air vanes between the kidney grille bars are likewise in High-gloss Chrome – or black if the M Sport package is specified. The new BMW M760Li xDrive has a kidney grille surround and kidney grille bars in Cerium Grey.
The new design of the super-slender headlight units provides an attractive visual contrast with the significantly enlarged BMW kidney grille, adding a new strand to the character of BMW’s luxury-class models and lending the front section of the new BMW 7-Series an expressive and highly distinctive flavour. The modern take on the BMW’s signature four-eyed face combines with the efficiency and lighting power of LED technology, whose sophisticated functionality is brought visually to the fore by the design of the light sources. Standard equipment for the new BMW 7-Series includes Adaptive LED Headlights with variable light distribution, adaptive and cornering light functions, and the BMW Selective Beam non-dazzling high-beam assistant. BMW Laserlight can be ordered as an option. This system employs a BMW Laserlight spotlight with Selective Beam to optimise the high beam function, whose range increases to a maximum 560 metres as a result. Blue elements inside the hexagonal light sources make a distinctive visual statement.
Also among the striking changes made to the front of the car is the re-designed bonnet. It extends right up to the higher-rise BMW kidney grille and displays even more sharply cut and powerfully sculpted contour lines. Another feature of the car’s sophisticated yet unshrinking looks is the upsized BMW badge on the bonnet, whose diameter has grown from 82 to 95 millimetres. The lower section of the front apron draws the eye with an all-new design making its debut in a BMW model. The outer air intakes are now overlaid with large air deflectors. These guide the onrushing air efficiently to the brake air ducts and the Air Curtains, which help to minimise turbulence around the wheel arches. These plates – painted in body colour – and the newly designed decorative chrome strips lend the bumper trim a sense of sophisticated elegance, imbuing the car’s nose with additional visual impact. L-shaped trim strips in High-gloss Chrome border the Air Curtains on their outer edges and below. Another trim strip runs along the lower edge of the central air intake, before kicking upwards to form the top line of the side plates. This strip is Pearl-effect Chrome as standard, but switches to Cerium Grey for the BMW M760Li xDrive and High-gloss Chrome on cars specified with the Design Pure Excellence option and on the BMW M760Li xDrive V12 Excellence.
The arrival of the new BMW 7-Series takes the driving pleasure experience in a luxury sedan to new heights. This is down in no small part to the array of innovations that have been incorporated into the car’s powertrain technology. The new BMW 7-Series is available with petrol and diesel engines using six, eight and twelve cylinders, as well as a plug-in hybrid drive system with a brand new design offering an increased electric range, enhanced performance and lower consumption. The eight-speed Steptronic transmission fitted as standard on all model variants has also undergone further improvement, as has the BMW xDrive intelligent all-wheel-drive system that can be combined not just with the petrol and diesel engines but with the hybrid drive too. All the engines fitted in the new BMW 7-Series share a number of common denominators: an aluminium construction, optimised thermodynamics and the very latest BMW TwinPower Turbo technology. The technology package for the petrol engines comprises twin-scroll turbochargers, High Precision Injection, VALVETRONIC fully variable valve timing and Double-VANOS variable camshaft control. The diesel power units, meanwhile, feature a turbocharging system with up to four turbochargers and common-rail direct injection. To minimise particulate emissions, both the newly developed V8 unit and the V12 under the bonnet of the new BMW M760Li xDrive are now equipped with a gasoline particulate filter. The system of emission control for the diesel models employs BMW BluePerformance technology including a particulate filter, an oxidation catalyst, a NOx adsorption catalyst and an SCR catalyst with AdBlue injection to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. Thus equipped, all model variants of the new BMW 7-Series meet the requirements of the Euro 6d-TEMP emissions standard.
The luxury sedan’s traction, agility and handling stability can be given a further boost with the addition of BMW xDrive. The intelligent all-wheel-drive system is networked with the Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) system and employs an electronically controlled multi-plate clutch to swiftly and precisely distribute the drive torque between the front and rear wheels in a fully variable ratio as the situation demands. This means the engine’s power can always be directed to the wheels with maximum purchase for loss-free transfer to the road, even in extremely dynamic driving situations or in adverse road and weather conditions. To increase the system’s efficiency, all of the drive torque is channelled to the rear wheels in situations in which all-wheel drive is not needed, while an optimised system of oil supply also serves to increase the internal efficiency factor. All-wheel drive comes as standard on the V12 and V8 petrol models and the two most powerful diesel models, while it is available as an option for the BMW 745Le, the BMW 730d and the BMW 730Ld.
2020 BMW 7-Series
