BMW 730d long-term test review

Long-term test update – 29 December 2009

If you look it up, you’ll see the retail price for our long-wheelbase long-term BMW 730d is £56,790 – amazingly good value for such a superior car. The price list doesn’t exactly lie, but it’s not the whole truth either, as we found when we came to spec the car with ‘essential’ extras.

Dynamic drive (£1575), sport steering wheel (£135), radial spoke lightweight alloys (£1770), integral active steering (£1170), ‘comfort’ seats, front and rear (£3540), ‘professional’ rear-seat entertainment (£2230), night vision with pedestrian recognition (£1470), head-up display (£920), TV function (£890)… all basic essentials, surely?

Arguably, comfort access (£635), soft-close doors (£440), parking camera (£285), side view camera (£285), heated seats (£295), brushed aluminium interior trim (£200), adaptive headlights (£450), lane-change warning (£480), professional speaker system (£600), USB interface (£200), tinted glass (£370) and anthracite headlining (£285) are slightly less deal-breaking, but options boxes are like bombs – once the ticking starts you’ve had it.

Eighteen thousand, two hundred and twenty five pounds is where we got to. Which makes a wallet-wilting £75,015 in total. If you spent our options bill on a brand new BMW 116i SE or Mini Cooper S instead, you might think it a modest sum. And in 7-series world, it is modest. Surely yours would be similarly kitted? I mean, it’s not as if we’ve gone mad…

After all, we didn’t specify active cruise control with stop/go, massage function, oscillating seat function, seat ventilation, auto bootlid, rear telephone, voice control and DAB radio (damn, how did we miss that? It’s only £305 as well. We asked for a retro fit – no dice). We could have bumped the cost up into what cricketers call the nervous nineties, no problem. But no.

And what’s it like to drive? Tell you next time.

By Greg Fountain