Gadgetory

the diesel education of America continues and this is BMWs latest lecture let's drive to 2015 BMW 740il D the most prestigious u.s. BMW to yet get a diesel and check the tech now first off all seven diesels are long wheelbase and all-wheel drive it's the only way they come I'm big on the long wheelbase part because to my mind all sevens ought to be I don't get buying a car of this size and cost then you take out some guests for dinner or something and they're on the back going it's kind of tight in here you got to move your seat up it defeats the purpose of this now the heart of the matter on any car that has a D at the end of its BMW badge is the D here it is this is your 3 litre inline-six turbo diesel moving a nearly 4,700 pound car this is relatively petite displacement for that job but because the diesel the torques there to get it done 255 horsepower but 413 pounds eat of torque that's the magic number here the 60 despite all this weight is just a little over 6 seconds your mpg is 23 31 as I mentioned all these diesel sevens are going to be all-wheel-drive and they all go through an 8-speed conventional but very refined automatic now this has twin power turbo that is not the same as a twin turbo typically you wouldn't do that on an inline this is a twin geometry turbo actually can have multiple geometry because it can change the way the veins inside it operates so it works better at lower or higher rpm notice that red line on the tach is not typically diesel low this guy can run high rpm or grunt down low now inside there's not a whole lot changed here from a slew of other BMWs we've reviewed so I'm not going to spend too much time in here let me call out some highlights though the instrument panel on this car is now all LCD including those two ancillary gauges on the far ends although they mimic a traditional dial gauge as do the two in the middle but notice an interesting trick the needles visually pass behind the numerals we know the iDrive system and of course the seven puts it on a nice big screen with the big controller the current generation has a handwriting touch pad on the top and you know I gripe a lot about BMW nickel-and-diming you on the Alucard option sheet for so many things that cheaper cars include standard but they're getting away from that a bit 7 Series now has BMW online and BMW apps standard high-end Bluetooth kit and USB jack for audio are now standard now the driving controls are familiar paddles on the wheel this spatula shape shifter here and then of course your drive mode controls what might surprise you in a 7 with a smallish diesel is that you've got not only in Eco mode - comfort modes and - sport modes including a Sport Plus you can see it changes up the instrument panel rather markedly something the old dial gauge car couldn't do the first thing you notice about 740 d is it's got a certain note or a tone to it different than the gas engine cars that are smoother and less intrusive right there sporty actually I don't think anybody can object but it is a different sound in the gas engine vehicle now the real fun comes when you get into the Sport Plus you also see that it indicates that Stability control is off I assume that means it's mostly off why in god's name would you want to have no stability control on a giant luxuries 50 you're never taking this thing to the track and if you are you need a new hobby or another one but I gotta tell you this car gets around a corner and uses that torque nicely the nice thing about a diesel of the turbo is you don't have the same turbo lag as a gas engine because you've got diesel grunt at the bottom to get you going even before the turbo spools up I guess you can tell this is probably favorite 7-series there is nothing wimpy or downmarket feeling about it even though it's got a smallish inline-6 that's a good sounding car and by the way what's not hurting its handling is a near-perfect 50:50 weight distribution I was surprised to see that okay a 740 LD is about 83 5 bass I'm not going into details CNET style because we're really focusing on its diesel nough supplies to say you can spend 12 even 15,000 more pretty easily getting it done our way now the real story here are the numbers around the diesel the diesel engine in this car adds 1500 above a comparable gas engine 740 it also adds four miles per gallon more efficiency average looking at today's price of us diesel fuel versus us premium per gallon you're not saving a ton of money per year at the 15,000 miles average your payoff on this car's diesel engine would be like 17 years so it doesn't make total sense financially to pick up one of these diesels however if you appreciate its everyday luscious diesel torque as I do especially this kind of a car that's a small premium to pay on a car that's expensive secondly this is a good hedge against the expected and perhaps pronounced spike in those u.s. fuel prices I'm comparing diesel now against almost historic lows on gas at the pump that may not stay that way in this car and its owners man up having the last laugh