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BAFFLED by buttons? Stumped by switches? Confused by computers?
If I’d had the new BMW 640i GT for just a couple of hours you’d be reading a completely different report to this one.
Luckily, though, I didn’t. BMW loaned me the car for a week and the only time I got really angry with it was when I had to hand it back.
Here’s a car that’s so complex it really is capable of driving owners right round the bend. Its computer system is divided into six separate sections which then divide further into separate sub-sections, which will take owners into a giant-sized library that will, quite simply, blow up your brain.
Even its so-called key is more like an iPhone. My advice,? Get bigger coat pockets then spend half an hour switching off everything. And by “everything” I mean its monumental and absurd obsession with safety.
Mighty
Once you learn how to stop its steering wheel from continually shaking and vibrating, trying to physically pull you away from various conceived and imaginary crash situations, then stop the alarm warnings that all add up to being so distracting they’re the real danger, you’re left with the fabulous car that you wanted in the first place?
Oh well, its 373-page handbook is coveniently buried in the boot to make owners use its planetary-travel sized computer with the book on it.
The whole safety obsession is a joke. Try watching where you’re going instead of looking at a screen. You’ll find it makes a nice change from having a crash.
So, having dumped the whole lot, what’s the 640i GT like? On the road it’s a true sensation. On the inside it’s a vast, ultra modern palace. It’s a very, very good car.
Open the door and you’ll immediately notice its white-striped, double-stitched, quilted leather seats and the thin strips of blue lights which run across the width of the dashboard and across the tops of the doors from the front to the rear of the car.
Sit in them and they’re astonishingly comfortable. I took the 640i GT on a 450-mile day return trip from Essex to Mighty Macclesfield and felt just as good when I got out of the car as when I first got in. Its seats are the total opposite of the racing style slabs of rock you’ll find in the new 5 Series M-Sport.
Monstrous
Once you’re sitting comfortably inside the car, your eyes are drawn to its superb dashboard, with touch sensitive switches, strips of silver set in piano black, 10-inch sat-nav screen, foot-wide computerised instrument display with red needles for its four silvertrimmed dials, all surrounded with soft leather trim. To say its impressive would be a monstrous understatement.
Once you’ve got the engine running it’s so quiet that the only way to be sure it’s still switched on is to look at the rev counter.
Mind you, put your foot down and you’ll instantly be aware of its power as it leaps away with a mere twiddling of the toes.
Choose from three driving modes, eco, comfort and sport. Once selected each can be individually tailored so the 640i GT can be anything from a luxury yacht moored on a pond to a motorised bullet. To be honest it’s the sort of car that lends itself to comfort mode, rather than comfort plus.
Open the boot and you can’t fail to be impressed by its huge near four feet deep sea of space which stretches to six feet with the rear seats folded flat. BMW have even remembered decent-sized fold-out shopping bag hooks on each side.
It really is a car tailored to suit every kind of driver, but we all have to go shopping at times. In my case I get sent to the shops, but who cares when I’ve got this to go in?