BMW pours heady cocktail of power and price with X7

A SEVEN-seater luxury SUV with a big diesel engine and a starting price of around €150,000 is bound to raise criticism and hackles in the current “green” climate.

It hits all the “wrong” buttons: price (my test car version cost €176,027), SUV and diesel in one package goes very much against the grain.

So you’d wonder why BMW went to such great rounds to regenerate its X7 three-row, seven-seat SAV (they still insist it’s a Sports Activity Vehicle) with its 340bhp six-cylinder diesel engine (there are two petrols as well).

Why did it not just let the previous model fade gracefully from view at a time when there is such concentration on electrification?

Well, it seems to firmly believe there is niche demand for the likes of this 2023 offering. So it undertook one of the biggest revisions of a BMW in a long time.

The big-change factors at play are visual and tangible. There’s the front. The grille is huge and controversial – they certainly like their big grilles at BMW these days. This one echoes the new 7-series saloon’s front look as well. I liked it on my test X7.

The rear gets some treatment too. But it’s just as well they did little in terms of design bravado along the sides. We can only take so much.

This is such a big car. I really shouldn’t have been surprised that sometimes I felt uneasy at the wheel on narrow urban roads.

It was a totally different story on my motorway drives. The 340bhp six-cylinder diesel and suspension were made to float over the kilometres.

But regardless of road size or location, it was agile all the time and had deep-down bite.

It can sprint from a standing start to 100kmh in just 6.1 seconds. For the record, there is 48-volt mild hybrid technology, but I refuse to call that electrification.

The first X7 I drove was in America some years back and it felt quite at home in the land that embraces the big motor. Here? It’s now a different matter entirely. Big motors are being squeezed and with them the pockets of those buying them.

For their big-money outlay, they’ll find a cabin benefitting greatly from a slew of changes. Significantly upgraded are the digital end of things, most noticeably the curved display. This is already on other models so it simply had to be included on the X7 to portray brand cohesion.

It comprises a 12.3in information display behind the steering wheel and a central display with a 14.9in screen stretching to the centre. The two screens merge into one hi-res display behind a single glass surface.

There is a lot of info and icons on-screen but the head-up display was all I needed most of the time.

While the display curves towards the driver, the front-seat passenger can also see it and operate the system using touch control and voice control (don’t bother with the troublesome gesture control).

Thankfully they have retained and refined the iDrive Controller wheel in the centre console (wherein also lies the start/stop button, electric parking brake and air suspension settings). Driving Experience Control buttons and the new gear selector lever also nestle within the console.

Say what you like about how suitable or relevant the X7 is, there can be no denying how much the effort has benefitted key areas – from the fine-tuned suspension to the excellent updated eight-speed automatic transmission.

For all the technical achievements, of course the reality is that most of the time you’ll just be tiddling along, so comfort and space in the cabin are tantamount. Comfort seats, merino leather, four-zone automatic climate control, ambient lighting and a panoramic glass sunroof all get you sensing luxury and brightness. But is it different enough?

You can order a second row of two seats rather than three, with armrests and comfort cushions. Second-row seats slide back and forward by up to 14.5cm. Getting into the second and third row was made that bit easier as the rear doors are longer than the front.

Sadly, with all the seats in place, there are just 326 litres of boot – supermini volume really. It expands to 2,120 litres with the second and third rows flattened.

The air suspension can be lowered at the touch of a button to help loading. And there is an electric split tailgate.

I really tried to put myself in the shoes of a potential buyer (not easy).

The big plusses are the looks, the cabin, the ease of travel and the drive technology.

It is a big step up on what went before, but for all its endeavours, I struggled to justify the outlay.

It just didn’t feel “special” enough for me to part with so much money.