In April 1988, Car and Driver recorded a BMW 750iL reaching 60 mph in 6.5 seconds and running on to 158 mph. At a steady 70, the sound level inside was 67 dBA. The significance lay in those figures belonging to the same car. BMW had put serious speed and an unusually quiet cabin around a V12, then wrapped the assembly in a sedan whose most obvious extravagance was extra legroom.
The 750i and longer 750iL appeared at Geneva in March 1987, among rivals that already knew how to make a fine luxury car. Jaguar had a V12. Mercedes had a superbly developed V8 sedan. Rolls-Royce and Bentley offered craftsmanship, presence, and prices that suggested they had never seriously considered competition. BMW’s contribution was a different balance: the smoothness associated with the most expensive machinery, useful performance, and the integrated behavior of a modern production car.
That combination carried BMW through 35 years of 12 cylinder sedans. Its appeal changed along the way. Faster V8s and eventually electric motors acquired abilities once purchased at considerable mechanical expense. The V12 began as a way to obtain an exceptional result and ended as a preference for how that result was delivered.
There had always been an element of preference. A V12 could offer a remarkable absence of vibration, but the buyer also knew what was beneath the hood. 12 cylinders communicated expense even when the engine itself communicated almost nothing. It was a pleasing arrangement for someone who wanted his luxury understood without having to hear about it continuously.
Earlier luxury twelves often carried that expense in enormous, individually bodied cars. BMW installed its engine in a family of sedans with ordinary rear doors, a usable trunk, and six cylinder relations. The 750iL could not ask to be excused from daily duties because of its interesting engine. The engine had to make those duties easier.
The same layout could serve a much louder purpose. In a sporting car, its ability to deliver power smoothly could support high engine speeds and a great deal of theater. BMW wanted the capacity without requiring an audience. The distinction was in the design brief, not in whether one sort of engine had a soul and the other had an accounting department.
More cylinders still demanded accommodation. Engine length, cooling, exhaust routing, weight, and access for service all had to be resolved around them. A small sports car and a large sedan paid those costs differently. In the sedan, space devoted to a smooth engine could improve the very quality for which the customer had bought the car.
Jaguar deserves the credit for keeping that application alive before BMW arrived. Its XJ12 was not an obsolete idea suddenly exposed by a German badge. It was an excellent demonstration of the layout’s suitability, housed in a car whose development history and resources differed markedly from BMW’s. The E32 raised the competitive standard by joining the engine to a newer overall package.
BMW still had to make 12 cylinders behave like an ordinary production powertrain. An engine has to start consistently, settle into traffic, accept a small throttle movement, and cooperate with the transmission. Mounts and intake systems must stop its remaining disturbances from reaching the body. The refinement the passenger experiences is the sum of those decisions, not a property guaranteed by the badge.
The advertisement supplied the coronation. The production car supplied a more useful development: BMW had become a credible choice when the buyer was no longer shopping chiefly by price. It could compete on the quality of the entire experience, including the part that happened from behind the steering wheel.
This was an awkward challenge for a more expensive car whose strongest distinctions were increasingly visible at rest. Wood and leather could explain where some of the money had gone. Once moving, the BMW asked whether the remainder had purchased a better ride, response, or reduction in noise.
Not every luxury customer wanted the BMW’s answer. There was a coherent appeal in a diesel Mercedes, just as there was in a Bentley’s particular cabin and power delivery. The 750iL did not invalidate those choices. It expanded what a buyer could expect from a car that combined comfort with an appetite for speed.
Mercedes’ subsequent W140 made the contest more demanding still. It offered a larger body, a more powerful V12, and formidable isolation. BMW had not established a permanent lead. It had established a position from which the comparison was unavoidable, and from which the next 7 Series had to improve.
The coupe application exposed another side of the proposition. A low body, careful aerodynamics, and a manual transmission could make the same basic V12 serve a grand tourer. Extra cylinders were useful beyond the rear passenger compartment, provided the surrounding car gave them a purpose.
By the E38 era, the V12 BMW was recognizable enough to play the part without explanation. Its appeal was not simply that it looked expensive. It looked like the sort of expensive car in which the equipment might work. Bond’s remote control stretched that reputation rather further than any warranty department would have welcomed.
BMW’s work for McLaren extended its V12 expertise in a different direction again. The racing achievement was not evidence that an ordinary 750iL contained a Le Mans engine. It showed how far the same engineering organization could move when low mass, high output, and sustained competition replaced the sedan’s priorities.
The final sedans would combine performance beyond the original car’s ambitions with equipment beyond its designers’ experience. Yet their appeal retained something older: an engine with enough reserve that ordinary demands scarcely seemed to interrupt it. The increasing difficulty was charging for that reserve when less elaborate engines had plenty of their own.
The clearest measure of the original program’s reach was a supply agreement. Rolls-Royce, once the reference point for this kind of refinement, bought BMW engines. The 12 cylinder BMW had progressed from an expensive challenge to the establishment to a component the establishment ordered for itself.
BMW applied the old V12 layout to modern expectations for quiet, effortless speed. Understanding what 12 cylinders could actually contribute makes the E32 more impressive, not less.
