Back to Page 1: Introducing the BMW X7 M50i and M850i Gran Coupe

Gran Deft Auto

Swapping over to the M850i GC on the same roads meant immediate fun, since the Gran Coupe is closer to the ground and some 500kg lighter. 

Again, the 8GC and X7, both of these are ‘big’ BMWs, and tight mountain roads are not their forte, but the M850i uses the same tricks as the X7 – adaptive suspension (non air) and four-wheel steering) – which means it ‘shrinks’ even more when the going gets fun. The four-wheel steering, in particular, makes short work tight turns, and gives the car a pleasing responsiveness to steering inputs. 

The 4.4-lite V8 is punchy and sonorous, and at least 500 percent more entertaining than any electric motor even if you are going slower. It doesn’t have a full-on aggressive V8 roar – that’s what an M8 is for – but it’s certainly spicy enough to make any driver’s day. 

It’s long, fast, and sexy, so the M850i Gran Coupe certainly does qualify as a grand touring car, and very at home on the Autobahn.

Germans are very Singaporean, in that they will complain about how bad other drivers are, and that the conditions of their roads are horrible, and so on. This is mostly lies, as compared to Singaporean drivers, German drivers are in line for canonisation when it comes to lane discipline and indicating early. 

That’s particularly pleasing for an M850i driver, where a flex of the right foot brings the car to 200km/h and a bit in very little time indeed. It’s fast enough to push out of the way, or keep up with, anything on the left lane of the Autobahn – except a semi-mad BMW 2002 with what looks like a rollcage and what sounds like a LS crate engine popping and crackling away. 

And that grand touring nature is maximised by its four doors, not the opposite. It’s best used as a 2+2 (see our video for more details), but those four seats are good ones. Sometimes rear room on a GT coupe-styled cars can be an afterthought, but the legroom is excellent and the headliner does not try to sway your hairstyle to a one-sided quiff. And it’s not terribly hard to get into either, thanks to a large door aperture and the car not being too low. 

The Big Grand Picture 

Coming back into Munich traffic and its confusing, tight roads wasn’t the harrowing experience we thought it would be. In fact, the ironic thing is that we’d take the X7 with its great visibility over wrangling the 8GC with it’s coupe-like visibility challenges, but both cars have a far less challenging time in urban centres thanks to all-wheel steering – they make parking and unplanned detours much easier.

But does the 530hp make them unwieldy for Singapore? In a way yes, but now that the Malaysian border is once again open, that point is less important now that the world is less insular. In any case, both are very well-mannered at low, stop-start speeds

When it comes to the upper-end of BMW’s range (anything above a 5 Series fits this definition) we think the M Performance models hit the sweet spot. For example, an 840i is fast, but not quite fast enough to please everyone, while an M8 is perhaps a bit too much for long drives and the inevitable tedium, but the M850i strikes a great balance between the two. 

Only have space in the garage for one car, and it needs to be fast, sexy, and also practical? You could do far worse than an M850i Gran Coupe.  Only have space for one car in the garage and it needs to be fast, practical, carry seven people and a tonne of stuff? The X7 M50i is the thing. 

One has performance high enough to really go to town with speed, the other is big enough to fit a country. But both are comfortable and fast enough to cross a continent with.  

BMW X7 M50i 

BMW M850i xDrive Gran Coupe 

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