BMW 730d long-term test review

Published: 29 December 2009

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

 

Logbook

Total Mileage

Since Last Report

Overall MPG

Since Last report

Fuel Costs

Other Costs

Highs

Lows

  1290

  32.6mpg

  38.7mpg

  na


   £178.78

   None

   The coolest car on the fleet, bar none. And 32mpg?

   In wedding season, I won’t see it at weekends

 


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