2010 BMW 750Li xDrive Long-Term Road Test by Car & Driver

Car & Driver, one of the most respected automobile journalists lives up to their reputation and delivers an unbiased review of the 2010 BMW 750Li xDrive. They discuss the good features and weighs it with the not so good characteristics and gives us a final verdict about the vehicle. With a long-term road test, they surely became a lot more familiar with the car. Here is an excerpt of their review:

Like a big shiny Christmas present, BMW delivered our long-wheelbase 750Li xDrive in late December 2009 for a 40,000-mile evaluation. Our love of huge back seats and mobile status symbols notwithstanding, we requested a 7-series for a higher purpose: to see if the new car was indeed a return to form after the notoriously troublesome, overly ­complicated, over-the-top, overwrought, fourth-generation 7-series. Is that chapter of 7-series history over?

It didn’t take long to realize that we didn’t like or want most of the extras. For the majority of the test, the blind-spot-detection and lane-departure-warning ­systems that come as part of the Driver Assist­ance package remained off so as to silence their pestering beeps. For the same reason, we typically turned off the collision warning that comes bundled with the radar-based cruise control. A few drivers switched off the head-up display after realizing that it disappeared behind polarized sunglasses.

Night vision, here an infrared camera that looks in front of the car for pedestrians or animals, allowed us to see in the dark, but it required the driver to monitor the screen at the center of the dashboard instead of the road. Deputy editor Daniel Pund called it “spectacularly distracting.” Another editor asked, “With xenon headlights this good, who needs infrared?

Read full review at Car & Driver