The car’s overall smoothness, its quiet, vault-like cabin and unending powerband make speeds downright deceptive. Eighty miles per hour comes up quickly but feels more like 60 mph, while cruising at 100 feels just about right. So you want for automated speed. But BMW has over-engineered even familiar features like cruise control.

On a stalk on the lower left-hand side of the column, the cruise control allows the driver to not only set a specific speed but to preprogram a selection of speeds. Activate the programmable feature, set a bunch of speeds and a corresponding series of lights pops up on the speedometer. Clicking the stalk this way and that lets the driver cycle through these presets at will. Problem? The stalk has at least eight positions or movements (not counting the neutral position it always returns to), making it easy to get lost amid the “functionality” and difficult to find a way out without shutting the whole thing off and starting over.

You’d think it would get easier with use. In more than 2000 miles logged on a four-day cross-country trek, the confusion never lessened. Curiously, for all its high-tech gadgetry, the 745i does not have adaptive cruise control, that radar-based feature we’ve seen on competitors like the Mercedes S-Class and Jaguar XJ sedan.

It does share the sense of complexity found in the Mercedes cabin, which spills onto so many features of the 7 that finding the BMW underneath can be distracting.

 

Besides the big knob on the center console, the interior looks normal enough. Only when you use the various switches and stalks to you realize how different the 7's driving 'experience' is.

Take the shifter, a short stalk off the right of the column. Pull it toward you, then up and let go. The stalk will pop back to its neutral position but the car will be in reverse. Pull toward you and down, again it returns to center with the car in drive. Push a button on the end to engage park.

Same goes for the turn signal (push up, it returns to center, right turn lights activated), windshield wipers, etc. Most systems on the 745i are actuated through “by-wire,” or electronic rather than mechanical, means. Why this requires BMW to alter the interfaces between driver and car we can’t guess; different for difference’s sake, perhaps?

Throw in iDrive, BMW’s idea for simplifying access to a bunch of operations into a single, mega-multiplexed, mouse-like button. It cleans up the dashboard by eliminating a host of buttons. And even for the Luddites it doesn’t take too long to learn. For some tasks it provides a higher level of customization; you can adjust airflow through individual vents, for example.

But iDrive ultimately falls short of simplifying control of comfort and convenience features by convoluting simple tasks. Often, it requires you wade through several screens of information to access the function you want; only then do you find that you can’t actually make it do what you want it to do.

Case in point: Access the navigation system through the iDrive knob, but if you want to adjust voice command volume, you turn the radio volume knob—on the dash. You can only adjust that volume while the voice gives an instruction... otherwise you just change the radio volume. Weird, huh?

What does this do for the driving experience? It takes serious attention to notice just how fine a car the 745i is underneath all the “value added.” Believe us: It is good. Some of the techno-widgets BMW bolted to the 745i—particularly the stuff you never touch or see—make the driving more enjoyable. Its Active Roll Stabilization system uses engine oil-operated hydraulic actuators mounted centrally on the antiroll bars that twist in opposition to the roll motion of the body. This works remarkably well, keeping the 4376-pound car virtually flat through turns of up to 0.5 gs of lateral acceleration. It also makes the car feel more nimble than its size might suggest. During more spirited cornering maneuvers the ARS system does let some body roll leak in to remind the driver that, as BMW puts it, “the laws of physics still apply.”

The effectiveness of the technology applied to the 4.4-liter V8 is unmistakable. BMW’s cam phaser-based double VANOS variable valve timing system operates both the intake and exhaust valves, producing a flatter torque band while increasing fuel efficiency and reducing emissions by varying valve overlap. On our cross-country excursion, we recorded an average fuel economy of 22.5 mpg—at speeds that most of the time ran between 85 and 95 mph.

Valvetronic lift control boosts power, but it also eliminates the throttle butterfly while quickening engine response. The variable intake manifold uses two intertwined helical elements to vary intake runner length between 8.5 and 23.9 inches. Put together, these systems help give the 4.4-liter 330 lb-ft of torque at 3600 rpm and 325 horses at 6100 rpm (only one pony below last year’s V12 750iL). It’s one of the most robust powerplants on the road today and a joy to operate, especially since it meshes so effortlessly with the 745i’s smooth-shifting six-speed automatic transmission.

All told, you get a lot of content for the $68,495 price of entry—much of which, if you’re like us, you won’t really want. For most, that includes the styling. BMW says that while Europeans have reacted less than favorably to the car’s styling, Americans haven’t had much of an issue with it. While we can’t speak for our fellow citizens, we find some of its styling downright unattractive, particularly the oddly squared-off trunk pressed against the rounded rear taillights. Perhaps we need to live with it a while longer, see it travel in the real world, to recognize the presence that the 7 Series has traditionally enjoyed.

Inside, styling is top-notch. The wood looks and feels real, not like tortured plastic. And the dearth of buttons gives the whole interior a much neater, cleaner feel. Attractive styling, however, is subject to individual taste. Perhaps the same is true for added features and altered interfaces. What it comes down to is this: We understand flagship vehicles need to continuously up the ante, so to speak, in the technology department. After a few years on these top-o’-the-line models, these new technologies trickle down to mass-market cars.

But this is BMW, and we’d prefer that it concentrated its efforts on technologies BMW drivers appreciate—like on the engine—rather than turning the “experience” of driving the car into a computerized affair.

As one editor quipped: “This is the vehicle to which 3 Series drivers are supposed to aspire?”