BMW i7 xDRIVE 60 M SPORT
£120,340/£154,395 as tested
MERCEDES-BENZ S580e L AMG LINE PREMIUM PLUS EXECUTIVE
£121,295/£121,295 as tested
It’s got a face on it, the BMW i7. Iron Man’s face. Narrowed eyes in an impassive metal mask bleak and tough enough to batter through brick walls. Handy, in a pursuit situation. It comes across not so much a luxury car as a modernist object. Rolling architecture, a mobile monument to controversy. You don’t even notice the grille. In M Sport guise it’s been absorbed into a mouthy morass that incorporates a full width biker’s tache.
It’s the anti S-Class. Finally. At long last. I mean how many years, decades, has it taken BMW, Audi et al to realise that mimicry doesn’t work? That merely copying the S-Class, the plutocrat’s totem-in-chief, isn’t enough? OK, BMW has done controversial before. The 2001 7-Series was a square, chiselled Bangle block. That was the car that introduced iDrive to the world, and set the tone for all in-car infotainment until the touchscreen came along. Its influence was massive,
