Test drive BMW 7 E65 E66 2001 - 2005 sedan

BMW 745LI /5000 km

It is known that a good car should meet the landing formula and drove. However, the BMW 745LI class cars are full of things, they have nothing to do with driving. We’ll talk about them.
They say that over time, a person will be surrounded only by smart things. Let's say a smart coffee maker will be connected to a smart alarm clock, and he, in turn, with the center of road information. The coffee maker turns on five minutes before the alarm works, and he does not call until he calculates how much time - taking into account traffic jams - will need the owner on the road.
Of course, it's nice when someone thinks for you and does it for your good. Alas, at the level of household appliances, everything turns out the other way around. You have to strain this to understand how to defrost 750 grams of fish in the microwave, connect a mobile phone with a laptop or program a video recorder to record. The loss of the description for the washing machine at the initial stage of its development faces that you will never reveal the secret of eight delicate wash modes.
The BMW 745LI car is an audiovideopler, a mobile phone, a radio receiver and a lot more in one bottle with inscriptions in foreign languages \u200b\u200band with Russian instructions. And the instruction is a 310-page volume in soft binding. Only a story on how to use a mobile phone consisting of two wireless tubes, a retractable number of the Hands Free system takes 90 pages! Naturally, you can remember at least a part of what you read can only be fixed in practice - that is, poking your left hand in a line of text, and the right one in the right button.
+ - We got a car for the test in almost a top configuration. In the middle of the front panel is a CD player that can be loaded with one hand on the go. As an option, in its place there may be a player of mini-disks and cassettes. Basic equipment - a vibrant radio receiver with RDS. Above the clothing box is a CD changer for 6 discs. In the trunk-the DVD chamber of the same container. 745LI, like all the long versions of the new seven with engines 4.4 and 6 liters, is equipped with a second LCD monitor for the rear passengers.
All this equipment can be configured by volume, bass, upper frequencies, brightness, contrast, in the corner of the camera, titers, priorities of road information messages ... Do you need the effect of the volumetric sound of Professional Logic7? And with what degree should the sound power increase with the growth of the car speed? The manufacturer believes that sooner or later these damned questions will be faced with the user.
In this, the limousine looks like a washing machine with 48 washing and preliminary soaking programs. If you call the BMW service and ask, for example: how to set up a TV in my seven, I can't do something? -The specialist most likely-so, in any case, we would ask-asks a minute to get to exactly the same car in his center, and will give advice in ON-line. If he could keep the entire amount of information in his head about the settings of the seven, he would hardly work on the service.
By the way, one of the employees of the service, who communicates with clients about such troubles, shared his suspicion with autopilot: many users relate to a smart system with apprehension. They put them up sound parameters on the service or set up radio stations - so they will not climb into the menu once again, so that, God forbid, do not knock down.


The service is explained by this phenomenon by the fact that the owner of the seven, as a rule, is not interested in the settings, and his driver is a person who goes to the dealer for advice is to combine the inscriptions with the inscriptions in the monitor in someone else's language is not able to .
- The quality of receiving television programs in our seven is very average: as if they were caught on a room antenna in a country house 50 km from Moscow. The setting of the TV is provided only by automatic, and the location of the channels is set without the participation of the operator. Moreover, even auto-building did not work in our seven-that is, some programs were originally scored by someone, but to conduct a new search-maybe the quality of the picture would not have happened: the menu lacked the right point-autostor . They could not even find it at the service: we checked the flash of the on -board operating system (since the seven of them, seven have been written from the moment of the seven, with the necessary corrections and improvements) - everything is fine. And you could not configure the TV there! The car was given to us with a promise to figure it out. We wait.
+ - switch radio stations, leaf through the tracks to CD and DVD, you can adjust the sound without using the IDRive washer, separate keys - they are duplicated on the steering wheel, instrument panels and on the rear armrest.
There are no complaints about the sound: the sound is powerful, clean, voluminous. The quality of the video is more modest. The rear monitor is low, and the adjustment of the slope is limited - turn the screen so that it looks strictly at you, it will not work. The installation of two separate monitors for the rear passengers in the head restraints of the front seats specialists of the AM-STIL company (it works in cooperation with the AutoDom-the closest BMW dealer) was estimated at about $ 4500. Although so far there were no such orders. There were others: those who got the seven without an entertainment complex for the rear passengers asked him to install.
The non-native design from the LCD monitor at the site of the standard, CD-DVD chamber in the trunk, television and radio tuner, amplifier, new acoustics in the area of \u200b\u200bthe rear passengers and the remote control cost $ 9200. It works separately from the native kit (TV, tuner and CD-changer), accessible to the driver.
+ The possibilities of mobile telephony BMW are limited by conversations and sending SMS messages-to work with email or just connect the computer and you will not be able to go to the Internet.
The SIM card inserted into a special nest is recognized for quite some time. With a noticeable delay, the numbers introduced through the retractable nomeronabrifier appear on the monitor. But talking about Hands Free is a pleasure. Your interlocutor will not guess what you are saying in a speakerphone: neither extraneous noise, nor a characteristic distortion of sound.
One inconvenience: in order to use Hands Free, you must either rearrange the SIM card from your apparatus for each landing in the car, or do not forget to turn on the redress so that the calls to your mobile arrive at the number assigned to the car. Such a fashionable thing as Hands Free based on the Bluetooth module would save the problem.
Let us explain what is about. You buy a mobile phone that supports the Bluetooth standard (from $ 250) and install a Hands Free set in the car, also having this module. Actually, everything: as soon as you get into the car, your pocket device is connected to the car system on the radio channel, and you can speak without rearranging any SIM cards, without risk to forget the phone in the car. Such a system can be put on any car today, but not on the new BMW of the seventh series. It is almost impossible to crash into electronics made on a fiber and put a set from a third -party manufacturer, well, unless you install individual microphones and loudspeakers, what to do quite stupid, having a standard system. But, they say, native Bluetooth complexes have already been developed and will fall into Russia in the foreseeable future.
And then everything with the owners of the BMW 7th series will be very good.
Text and photo Sergey Sherestnikov
 
Costs (April 15 - May 15)
Mileage city/highway - 1000 km

Gasoline A-98 (160 l) $ 65
Moika $ 30
Washing liquid $ 20
Disks for summer tires, set $ 2655
Front tires, Pirelli P Zero Rosso 245/40 R19, 2 pcs. $ 1245
Rear tires, Pirelli P Zero Rosso 275/40 R19, 2 pcs. $ 1425
Tire admontent work $ 140
Total $ 5580

 

Source: "Autopilot"