Sicily. Perhaps it wasn’t the best place for the folk at Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW, to you and me) to hold the media test drive for their slinky 6 Series 640i Gran Coupé.
Not because the roads weren’t suitable. The winding tarmac twisted its way languidly through beautiful mountain-scapes, past sparkling seas and picture-perfect villages surrounded by fields of wildflowers, swathes of red, yellow, purple and blue, swaying gently in the citrus blossom-scented spring breeze. As drives go, these were so smooth, especially when compared to the rest of the dilapidated, gorgeously decaying island that I did wonder if, before staging the event, the company repaved the route.
No, it was more because culturally, BMW and Sicily weren’t the happiest of marriages. German precision met Mediterranean insouciance. The result was less ‘Progress Through Technology’ (yes, Audi, I know the tagline is yours) and more ‘Cheerfulness Through Lethargy’. “Be very careful,” the tanned blond youth in the impeccably pressed BMW kit (crisp white shirt, name tag and khaki trousers ironed to a razor-sharp crease) warned me, as he drove me to the hotel in old Palermo. “They drive very badly here. No rules. Look! Look! That motorbike! It almost crashed into us!”
To be honest, I hadn’t really been paying attention. I did notice the bike zip out of a side-street and hop in front of us a couple of cars down the line without so much as a signal, but that was more because it did so with a full-throated roar that was part lunar launcher, part jumbo jet. Then again, after all these years in Beirut, I’ve grown accustomed to idiosyncratic driving. These days, as long there’s still enough room to slip a silk scarf between us, I don’t tend to sweat. I was about to utter something light-hearted to this effect, perhaps say that the city, founded by the Phoenicians, was just being true to its roots, when I realised our earnest young representative was genuinely shaken. “Please accept my apologies,” he said, looking back at us with a dejected expression of duty failed. “In Germany, it would never happen like this.”
At the official unveiling in the tastefully minimal Presidential Suite at the Verdura, a Rocco Forte golfing resort on Sicily’s south coast, where events were more firmly under the company’s control, Dr. Herbert Diess, member of the BMW AG Board of Management indirectly explained the choice. “Italy,” he told us after the dramatic video countdown to the press conference had finished, “is the company’s fifth largest market.”
A day earlier, that nugget might have surprised me but after touring Palermo, where almost every other car was a BMW, all I can say is that if Italy isn’t the car-maker’s biggest market, this can only be due to its relative size rather than a lack of enthusiasm. “After all,” Diess continued, “if not in Italy, where is design and the refined life best estimated? It’s a beautiful stage-set for a beautiful car.”
So was the Presidential Suite. Overlooking the sea – as we later discovered when, in a dramatic flourish, the back walls of the suite cantilevered up, revealing a glorious setting sun – the unveiling verged on fashion show, with the matt bronze-coloured Gran Coupé doing a convincing, if static, sashay down the catwalk.
With its ‘serious’ eyes – the Gran Coupé’s adaptive LED Xenon headlight rings are slightly flat at the top, giving them distinctly feline look of determination - this is a car that means business. The aerodynamic curve of its flat roofline emphasises its sportiness, as does the tapering line that links the chrome detailing separating the air intake from the fog lights to the tail lights, via door handles – it’s a subtle speed line that lends the car a sense of dynamism, even at rest.
Low and wide and with the classic long BMW bonnet, when looked at sideways, the Gran Coupé seems to stretch, an impression that continues within, as the gently curving lines of the lavish soft white and sunset tan leather interior continue the impression of dynamism. If the aim truly was to create, as Adrian van Hooydonk, Senior VP BMW Design Group explained, a “coupé with individual personality and yet obviously a BMW”, he and his team seem to have done a bang-up job.
As a card-carrying member of that obscure class of developed world adults who do not have licenses, my impression of how this car drives were gleaned from watching the world whisk by from the passenger’s seat. While this might make my review more ‘Better Homes’ than ‘Top Gear’, I do know a smooth ride when I experience one and as rides go, I can say this one would make silk seem scratchy.
My trip-mate, a considered and sensible driver, drove at a steady pace much of the way (occasionally to my mild frustration) but occasionally let himself have fun with corners, taking them just a little faster than needed, giving us the brief thrill of pulling a little extra ‘G’. Particularly impressive was the eagerness with which the coupé accelerated along straighter stretches of our two-day route.
One thing I will add, having recently experienced the unforgettable thrill of an open-top racer is that this four-door coupé wraps you in a highly insulated cocoon. Spacious too, the wheelbase is 113mm longer than the 6-series coupé on which this car is based. The result is that it is easy (as a passenger, anyway) to forget what one is doing. BMW’s experience in perfecting its driving dynamics and suspension – anti-squat, anti-dive, with double acoustic separation on the rear – make driving more like flying, while noise-levels are so carefully calibrated that even flat out, the thrum of the turbocharged inline-six was rarely audible above the conveniently iPod-compatible Bang & Olufsen surround sound system.
For now the Gran Coupé is available only in this entry-level iteration, meaning the 640i, which does 0-100km/h in 5.4 seconds. If that isn’t fast enough, BMW plans to release an upgraded version later this year, the 650i, which will replace the 640i’s 320hp 6-cylinder engine with a 450hp V8 engine that will do it in about 0.8 seconds less. And if you still need more zip then the M6 Gran Coupé will feature the M Power’s 560bhp V8 and that should be able to hit 100 km/h in around 4.3 seconds. Can you say vroom?
Aimed at a younger, sportier market, the new 6 Series Gran Coupé slots between the more formally styled 5-Series and 7-Series models in BMW’s line-up and the marque expects it to compete most directly with the second-generation CLS, the Porsche Panamera and the Maserati Quattroporte. It has been purposefully designed to not pose too much of a problem to the 7-series, for where the 7 is a proper 5-seater, the Gran is a 4+1, with an auxiliary 3rd seat only really suitable for shorter journeys.
As the company has admitted the car is a considered attempt to set a new trend in the sector. The pièce de résistance in this endeavour is a 460-litre boot that becomes a whopping 1,265 litres when you put the back seats down, making this the kind of genre-bending car that can satisfy most needs. The dynamism of a coupé, the functionality of a 4-door, the 6-series Gran Coupé means you no longer have to choose between speed and practicality. Have your cake. And eat it too.
