5/10: 1988-1994 BMW 750iL. The last outpost of rational extravagance. Beyond, there be dragons.
So thoroughly overengineered that it was less a product launch and more a provocation. The first German V12 since the war, worn by BMW as a badge of honor and a standing dare: bet you can’t burn through Deutche Marks faster than we can. Panic racked Stuttgart and Coventry. Even Crewe broke into a cold sweat. The 750iL’s wiring diagrams made grown technicians reconsider their life choices. Its debut sent Jaguar’s boardroom into overtime and left Mercedes planning a response with extra cylinders. (Seriously, Mercedes counted to W18 before both sides declared a truce.)
BMW’s V12 was, in a callback to its history as an aero engine manufacturer, full of redundancies. It was essentially two straight-sixes joined at the crank, with dual ECUs, dual fuel pumps, and dual distributors. “Highline” European models added such executive essentials as a fax machine, a rear fridge, a second alternator to run it all, and electrically deployed writing tables. Those last items were for when the service receipts required immediate signature.
Mercedes, of course, escalated. The BMW V12 so thoroughly rattled the gates in Stuttgart that Mercedes may have set a world record for the fastest development of an all-new V12. They shoehorned the resulting M120 into the (now two years late) W140, a sequence of events that redefined the phrase “arms race” for the executive set. It all made for spectacularly expensive theater, the kind only Germany in the late ’80s could produce, and whose ripple effects are still being audited. More on that below.