The E65: progress asks for your attention
BMW’s next 7 Series presented a harder case for anyone inclined to equate technical ambition with better luxury. The E65 and long wheelbase E66 appeared in 2001; the N73 powered 760i and 760Li followed later. The new car replaced the E38’s low, continuous forms with a taller body, a more emphatic rear volume, and a cabin organized around a different control philosophy. It was possible to admire what lay beneath the surface and dislike almost every encounter with the surface itself.
Under Chris Bangle’s design leadership, Adrian van Hooydonk’s exterior broke decisively with the preceding car. The raised deck looked applied rather than smoothly continued from the body beneath it. That visual interruption made the car memorable, but memorability is not the same as grace. A buyer who preferred the E38 did not necessarily misunderstand progress. He might simply have preferred proportions that did not require an explanation.
The later Mercedes W221 also acquired a pronounced rear volume, though the treatment belonged to a different overall design. Large sedans were becoming taller and more visually emphatic. BMW’s break was particularly abrupt because the E38 had made so few demands on the eye. The new car announced its difference before anyone had encountered the electronics responsible for much of it.
Inside, iDrive moved many functions from dedicated controls to a high screen and rotary controller. The dashboard no longer wrapped itself around the driver in the old manner. A column mounted selector freed the console for iDrive. Information appeared on a high screen, while the hand worked a controller lower down. This separated viewing from reaching, a sensible objective in a moving car. It also separated familiar actions from the controls people already knew how to use.
Software itself was not the liability; burying frequent adjustments in menus was. Navigation and communication functions already required displays and menus. A rarely adjusted setting can reasonably live several steps into a menu. A frequent adjustment should not require the driver to reconstruct the current state of the interface while traveling at highway speed. Visual tidiness in the dashboard is not free when the displaced complexity moves into the driver’s attention.
The engine makes its case
Mechanically, the 760Li made a far stronger case. The 6.0-liter N73 combined double overhead cams and four valves per cylinder with direct injection, variable camshaft timing, and Valvetronic. Direct injection placed the fuel in the combustion chamber. Valvetronic varied intake valve lift to control the air charge, reducing reliance on throttling the intake. These were separate systems addressing different parts of the engine’s operation, not three marketing names for the same device.
The U.S. launch rating was 438 horsepower, rather than the 445 metric horsepower often quoted without qualification. The new engine’s greater breathing capacity supported substantially more output than the M73, while variable valve control helped it remain tractable below full load. BMW had moved from a comparatively conservative V12 valvetrain to a remarkably elaborate one. The improvement was real; so was the increase in mechanisms, actuators, and diagnostic work around it.
The six speed automatic had already appeared in the V8 7 Series before the V12 arrived. Its additional ratios helped reconcile acceleration with a low engine speed at cruise. Dynamic Drive active anti-roll control addressed another longstanding compromise: a car could resist leaning in a bend without depending entirely on stiff passive roll bars. Electronic damping and rear air leveling completed a chassis that attempted to distinguish a corner from a bump rather than responding to both with the same firmness.
Mercedes’ move to a twin turbo V12 supplied a less intricate route to very large torque, while BMW pursued natural aspiration and valve control. Neither solution made the other unserious. BMW could offer a progressively building response without boost; Mercedes could produce greater output and effortless thrust at lower engine speeds. The debate was becoming one of method rather than whether a luxury flagship should be fast.
The W12 was a different packaging solution again. Its two groups of narrowly staggered cylinders allowed a shorter engine around a common crankshaft. That mattered when a large engine had to coexist with a front differential and the surrounding crash structure. The resulting intake, exhaust, and cylinder head arrangements were complicated, but calling the configuration less dignified explains nothing. A crankshaft has no opinion about the social standing of the cars sharing it.
Shared architecture did create a branding problem. A Continental and a Phaeton could not sell the same experience at the same price, however useful their common engineering might be. Shared architecture made brand differentiation depend on the complete vehicle rather than exclusive hardware. BMW faced the same obligation with Rolls-Royce, and the existence of a conventional V12 did not automatically make its solution purer.
Toyota’s Century further weakened any claim that 12 cylinders belonged to a uniquely German idea of the flagship. Its priorities centered on the rear passenger, smooth operation, and continuity rather than a sporting public identity. The configuration could serve that purpose as well as BMW’s. It was a mechanical resource, not an instruction to design every surrounding car alike.
When the interface gets in the way
iDrive’s first execution gave the broader BMW argument a necessary test. The M70 had used electronics to make the engine easier to live with. An interface that made a routine action harder moved in the opposite direction. Both might be technically ambitious. Only one reduced the occupant’s workload.
There was a genuine advantage to having one place from which to manage a growing number of functions. There was also a genuine cost when the same knob changed meaning according to the screen. Physical controls can be learned spatially: the hand knows where a function lives. A menu requires the eye to confirm where the software has taken it. Familiarity can reduce that cost without making it disappear.
Later central displays and rotary controllers show that BMW correctly anticipated the need to organize growing digital functions, while shortcut buttons, faster software, and retained physical controls show how much the first execution needed refinement. Those changes were revisions to the concept, not evidence that frustrated early owners had been wrong all along.
Nor did the excellent engine cancel the interface. A car can accelerate beautifully while making its driver irritated before leaving the driveway. That combination is especially damaging in a flagship sold on the removal of effort. The E65’s significance lies partly in exposing a distinction the industry would keep trying to obscure: a larger technical capability is not necessarily a better interaction.
The 745i placed third behind the Lexus LS430 and Jaguar XJ8 despite strong performance. The magazine objected sharply to its controls. These were not V12 engine judgments, but they were judgments about the same generation’s approach to luxury. The machinery could win at the track while the car lost points for dealing badly with people.
The car found customers despite the objections, and the facelift moderated its appearance. Neither development made the initial control problems disappear. They show instead that buyers could value the engine, chassis, space, or newness strongly enough to accept the irritation. A car does not need to be a commercial disaster for a particular design decision to be wrong.
The E65 left two legacies. Its engine and chassis showed how much could be gained from coordinating increasingly sophisticated systems. Its interface showed what happened when the coordination stopped at the occupant. BMW’s next V12 sedan would preserve the first lesson and make a visible attempt to absorb the second.
