III: Game Changer: the E32 750i/750iL
By the mid-1980s, rumor alone had already done half the work. A German V12 road car, the first since before the war, was coming from BMW. By Geneva in March 1987, BMW had more than 3,000 advance orders for the new 750i and 750iL. That sort of demand was not supposed to accrue to a BMW sedan, let alone one priced at the top of the class.
When the covers came off on March 5, the E32 V12 did not merely meet expectations. It made them look timid. The M70 was a 5.0-liter clean-sheet engine with Alusil construction, twin Motronics, twin throttles, twin air meters, twin distributors, and full bank-to-bank redundancy. Lose one side and the car could still run home on the other. BMW even delighted in noting that it could still exceed 120 mph with half the engine effectively asleep.
The famous coin-standing demonstration at Geneva was almost too neat, but it made the point. The engine idled with so little visible disturbance that even skeptical German and British journalists had to concede the obvious. At speed, the numbers reinforced it. Period tests recorded around 67 dBA at 70 mph, quieter than a Rolls-Royce Silver Spur and quieter than the outgoing Mercedes benchmark.
The M70’s details show where BMW spent the money. Hydraulic lash adjustment. A simplex roller chain driving the cams via an intermediate shaft. Matched heads to simplify production and service. Tuned intake runners for midrange torque. With 296 horsepower and 332 lb-ft, it matched or exceeded its direct rivals while retaining remarkable manners. It would even tolerate regular fuel. BMW wanted performance, but more than that it wanted effortlessness.
Against the E23 it replaced, the E32 was a total advance. The old 7 Series had been competent and occasionally quick, especially in turbocharged 745i form, but it was not yet a true class leader. BMW executives once would have blanched at comparing it directly with a W126 S-Class. The E32 no longer needed that caution.
The 750iL combined the V12 with long-wheelbase form, multilink rear suspension, self-leveling, Servotronic steering, and a serious electronics suite: ABS, airbags, traction control, onboard computing, phone and fax options, even a refrigerator. This was no longer an upgraded 7 Series. It was a new definition of the job.
BMW matched the engineering with substance inside. Automatic climate control, power rear seats, dual-zone air, soft-close doors, dense leather, real wood, and that particular late-1980s German conviction that the cabin should outlive the finance department.
In Highline form, the rear compartment leaned openly toward Rolls-Royce and Bentley territory: individual seats, a refrigerator with crystal glasses, folding walnut tables, rear climate and communications, and enough equipment to make the standard car feel almost restrained. BMW understood that the 750iL was not only a driver’s car. It was also a rear-seat argument.
Factory-armored High Security cars extended the brief further. They were discreet, heavily engineered, and quickly found their way into the service of heads of state and other people with reason to distrust the surrounding traffic.
Competitors were blindsided. Mercedes delayed the W140 and developed the M120 to answer. The 750iL offered a kind of combined power and refinement that had previously been split between British limousines and Italian exotics. BMW had collapsed that distance into one car.
At a time when Mercedes, Rolls-Royce, and Bentley still relied on V8s and Jaguar’s XJ12 was the only other 12-cylinder sedan, the 750iL stood apart. Even electronically clipped at 155 mph, it outran the Jaguar and the Bentley. Derestricted, it pushed deep into territory usually reserved for serious sports cars. A luxury sedan was not supposed to move like that and remain this quiet.
That mattered less as a pub figure than as a cultural fact. BMW had shown that a flagship sedan could offer supercar-adjacent pace without surrendering refinement or dignity.
BMW’s engineers, being BMW engineers, were not finished. Project Goldfisch turned the M70 into a 6.6-liter V16 and stuffed it into an E32 in 1988. Output rose to about 408 horsepower. The first prototype needed its radiators moved aft and ventilated through the rear quarters, which gave the car a faintly absurd rear profile and made the whole exercise impossible to ignore.
The V16 could still reach about 174 mph and carried only a modest weight penalty over the standard V12. BMW had demonstrated that if 12 cylinders were good, 16 were entirely possible.
A second prototype packaged the engine more cleanly and even previewed the E38. Only the plate, “M GF 1,” hinted at what it really was. BMW had carried the V12 logic right up to the edge of absurdity and then, sensibly, stopped.
BMW even tried the V16 in a Bentley Mulsanne, testing what a future partnership might look like in mechanical terms. In the end, the board wisely decided that a 16-cylinder sedan would turn a rational escalation into parody. Even so, Goldfisch remains one of the clearest signs of how seriously BMW took the idea of mechanical overmatch in this period.
Mercedes got the message. Rumors of Goldfisch helped push Stuttgart into its own fever dream, including an 18-cylinder W-layout concept that sensibly never escaped development. By then the arms race had become more psychological than commercial.
The E32 750iL was not simply a successful variant. It was a global event. From 1987 to 1994, BMW sold more than 50,000 V12-powered E32s, an extraordinary number for such an expensive, technically ambitious flagship. That success justified the 8 Series, paved the way for the E38, and ultimately made the modern Rolls-Royce, BMW-powered story plausible.
More important than the sales was the shift in hierarchy. BMW now led both the engineering race and, briefly, the cultural one. To own a 750iL was to own the newest answer to the question the segment cared most about: what is the best car in the world at any price? The old W126, the twins from Rolls-Royce and Bentley, Jaguar’s Series III XJ12, even the Lagonda, all felt suddenly older. Lexus would soon complicate the landscape with the LS400, but that was a different sort of challenge, aimed lower in price and with less appetite for V12 prestige.
Mercedes eventually replied, and not timidly. The 600SEL met BMW’s SOHC 5.0-liter V12 with a larger dual-overhead-cam 6.0-liter, more valves, roughly 20 percent more power, and a whole car built around the idea of overcorrection. The W140 was immensely capable, immensely delayed, and in Europe often resented for its sheer scale:
In Europe, the W140 S-class can still win you a scowl: Upon its debut in 1991, a critical public believed Mercedes had gone a bit too far. The envious masses had a point. At 231 horsepower, the six-cylinder 300SE/SEL had as much power as the previous-generation’s 500 models, the V-8 400SE/SEL was rated at 282 horsepower, the 500SE/SEL’s V-8 made 322 horsepower, and the range-topping 600SEL, with a 48-valve 6.0-liter V-12, made a whopping 402 horsepower.
Car and Driver, September 2, 2020 S-Class Retrospective.
The W140 was a tour de force, and it immediately made the E32 look older. Mercedes had leapt ahead in mass, equipment, and formal modernity. It also built a car nearly 900 pounds heavier than the BMW and earned the nickname Panzer for good reason. Both Germans were now offering different answers to the same question. BMW built the driver’s V12 flagship. Mercedes built the rolling embassy. Both succeeded. Then BMW replied with the E38, and the argument entered its best phase.