Sunshine superstar
BMW’s numerologists named its new GT coupe and convertible 645Ci, though 90210 would have sufficed, for if ever there were a car aimed at Beverly Hills’ sunshine-loving, pink-in-the-pate pashas, this is it.
Not for nothing was last week’s U.S. press introduction for the 6-series based at the Beverly Hills Hotel -- where old money goes to recuperate from plastic surgery.
Beautiful, fast, gorged on technology, mostly savant with a dash of idiot thrown in, the BMW 645Ci convertible is an objective correlative for Hollywood itself, a splendid bit of sun-drenched solipsism, a guilty Left Coast pleasure. Above all, it gives good meeting.
The good news is that this is the most satisfying car to come from Munich’s hive-brain in many years (a car guy’s aside: the E36 M3 was the last Bimmer I loved so well). The bad news is that so much of this car will be wasted on Brentwood Brahmins and other no-driving parvenus who wouldn’t know a camshaft from a camcorder.
But before we get to the anatomy, a word on morphology: The 6-series is a two-door, four-seat GT (“grand touring,” though you can use the Italian “gran turismo” without embarrassment). These are big, powerful cars with a certain cosmic extravagance about them, great Dionysian temples of speed and intimacy. BMW’s last big GT was the under-appreciated 8-series CSi super coupe (1989-1995) and before that the classic 6-series CSi (1976-1989). Neither of those cars came as a convertible. A well-preserved mid-’80s 635CSi -- say, black with red-leather interior -- is one of the world’s most-bitchin’ rides, a connoisseur’s choice that to this day guarantees superior valet parking placement.
In the prestige luxury coupe segment, the new 6-series ($69,995 MSRP for the hardtop) squares off with the likes of the Mercedes’ CL500 ($93,400), the Maserati Coupe ($82,363) and the Jaguar XK8 coupe ($69,330). In terms of sheer technological tonnage, the Bimmer -- obsessively equipped with several pages worth of features and conveniences (adaptive headlights and taillights?) -- outpoints its rivals handily. This car is the screaming motherboard of all GTs.
When it comes to four-seat alfresco hair-straightening, the 645Ci convertible has only two rivals: the Jaguar XKR convertible ($74,330) and the Lexus SC430 ($62,575), cars found in abundance around Beverly’s Bikram and Botox studios. The Jag and the Lexus are rather more conspicuously styled than the BMW. The Jag’s priapic profile recalls the old E-Type; the Lexus was styled with Riva speedboats in mind.
While the open-top Bimmer lacks this kind of visual poetry, it is still an exceedingly handsome car, with a fine, resonant energy about it. Its volumes (cab rearward, with a long hood and short front overhang and comparatively long rear overhang, huge wheels) are just right for a big GT. The canvas top roughly follows the overhead profile of the hardtop, but the trailing edge connects to the deck lid by way of two triangular buttresses. Between them, the rear window is nearly vertical and can be lowered and raised like a power window. With the top down, the raised rear glass acts as a nearly invisible wind deflector. Very nice.
The design’s animating features are ruler-straight swage lines at the belt line and sill line, streaking back from the front wheel arches like Art Deco streamlining, pulling the eye through the fuselage. The design seems to freeze-frame the moment when Adrian van Hooydonk, head of BMW’s Designworks USA studio, first took marker to paper with a bold, gestural flourish, full of speed and spirit.
This is a serious car, and that intensity is conveyed in the car’s face. The headlamp assemblies, with the turn-indicator LEDs banded across the top, make the car look heavy-lidded, with an air of casual menace. The triangular frames around the fog lights turn down at the corners as if the car’s chin were set in defiance. You are about to be passed ... oh, never mind, it’s ahead of you already.
BMW’s recent styling efforts have suffered from a serious case of design-school hangover. The so-called “flame-surfaced” styling of the Z4 roadster and the 5-series sedan leaves me ever colder as the months go on. The 5-series sheet metal, in particular, has less the leap and flicker of fire than the loose billowing of damp sails in mid-luff.
In contrast, the 6-series styling tries half as hard and achieves twice as much.
The 6-series does, however, share the widely derided molded trunk lid of the 7-series, the so-called “Bangle bustle,” named after BMW design chief Chris Bangle. This feature doesn’t really bother me, though if you stand away from the 6-series and cover the trunk lid with your thumb, what you see is a kind of elongated Porsche 911.
In any event, what counts is not the angle of the Bangle but the muscle in the bustle.
From sight to sound: our 6-series convertible test car was equipped with the optional Harmon Kardon Logic7 audio system (420 watts driving 11 speakers, including two subwoofers under the front seats) and it is certainly one of best systems I’ve ever heard. Yes, it is loud enough to set Richter scales atwitter in Palo Alto, but what gets you is the fidelity, the 7th-row-center verisimilitude. Wow! Only a few car audio systems really stay with you. One is the Lexus’ Nakamichi system, before they cut a co-branding deal with Mark Levinson Audio. The Harmon Kardon in the BMW is easily the best in the field today.
If you can bring yourself to turn the stereo off you will hear the car’s other audio system, a “variable-effect resonator” inside the exhaust system that works like a woodwind’s reed. Romp the throttle and the dual-exhaust note changes from a throaty purr to an ardent snarl within the space of a couple thousand rpm.
The business end of the 6-series is BMW’s 4.4-liter V8, producing 325 horsepower and 330 pound-feet of torque. This all-aluminum, dual-overhead cam engine dispenses with conventional throttle bodies and instead modulates power through a complex synchronization of valve timing and lift and intake manifold geometry. Take it down to your local mechanic and watch his head explode.
Thanks to its optimized breathing, the motor doesn’t really have a torque curve, generating near maximum torque from just off idle to near its 6,500-rpm redline. So the car’s choice of three flavors of six-speed transmissions -- a manual, an automatic and a sequential manual -- is a little bit of overkill (Mercedes offers a new seven-speed automatic transmission, which is about three ratios more than its torque-rich engines can use, but what the heck).
Boot the automatic-equipped 6 convertible and life gets very interesting. The smarter-than-thou traction and stability systems keep the 9.3-inch wide Bridgestone Potenzas firmly glued to the asphalt, and the car surges forward with an escalating inevitability, as if you were being drawn toward a black hole’s event horizon. Zero to 60 mph hovers around 6 seconds, which is not overwhelmingly quick in this class of automobile, but it’s a lush, voluptuous acceleration. This is a sensation to be wary of, because you can lushly and voluptuously reach 150 mph without really trying.
This is my first time in a BMW with Active Roll Stabilization, and I can believe how good it is and how self-evident it seems now that I see it. The problem with high-performance cars is that when you stiffen up the suspension so that the car corners flatly, with controlled body motions, you almost inevitably make the ride harsh and unforgiving. Rather than coping with the weight and complication of adaptive suspensions -- like Audi’s and Cadillac’s magnetorheological dampers -- BMW uses a lightweight system of adaptive anti-roll bars that tense up asymmetrically as the car corners, transferring load as needed to maintain an even keel.
It all happens with such cybernetic fluidity that you don’t even notice it. The car just feels great. The highway ride is pliant and well-damped, even cushy compared to the leather-stiff ride of some big Mercedes, but in the corners the thing just arcs like a speed skater. The system is so good, in fact, that at first you are tempted to overdrive the car, exceeding the tires’ grip, because your inner ear’s vestibular system is not getting those vital “we’re rolling” signals. But after a day or so, it’s hard to go back to conventionally sprung cars.
The 6-series has all the nerve endings and reactions of a BMW but because of its reliance on electronics lacks the satisfying connectedness of previous cars; at times the fun of driving is lost in a kind of joystick numbness. The Active Steering in the sport package varies steering ratio according to speed and other sensory input. At high speeds the steering effort gets heavy and artificially twitchy. The feedback through the thick padded wheel rim feels remote. Then when it comes time to park the car, the steering ratio goes through the roof. I spun the steering wheel around once and found myself on the steering lock. When it comes to steering, less complication is a good thing.
The 6-series is a wonderland of technology and much of it works exceeding well. The fully automatic top plies gracefully.
When it’s up, the cabin noise levels are comparable to a closed cockpit car; when it’s down, there’s almost no wind buffeting. When all the windows are up, the car creates its own microclimate -- although you do look like rich guy under glass.
There are still some unfriendly corners in this car. Exhibit A, of course, is the widely loathed iDrive system, BMW’s computer-driver interface controlling the audio, climate, navigation and communications systems. The iDrive -- also known as the iGive-Up -- requires users to drill down through various menus by way of the system’s master control knob, which functions as directional toggle, a mouse, a rotary control, a floor wax and a dessert topping.
The previous generation iDrive could send Gandhi up into the bell tower with a rifle. The new iDrive, found in the 6-series cars, is equipped with a “menu” button, which allows operators lost in the heuristic thickets to return to the main menu. The menu button, along with some other simplifications, makes a vast improvement.
It still takes a Nietzschean act of will to pre-set a radio station (if you don’t double-click and hold “set” the audio system will go back to the previous station). The parking assist system -- which displays a graphic model of the car surrounded by colored force fields indicating nearby obstacles -- continues to howl even after you have parked the car (compare that to Infiniti’s system that shuts up as soon as the car is put in Park).
Sometimes I think these kinds of technical impasses are on purpose, examples of the Germans’ legendary sense of humor. These are the same people who put the “funk” in Telefunken radio.
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
2004 BMW 645Ci Convertible
Wheelbase: 109.4 inches
Length: 190.2 inches
Curb weight: 4,189 pounds (with automatic transmission)
Powertrain: 4.4-V8, 32-valve DOHC, naturally aspirated engine, with variable-valve timing and lift, variable intake geometry, electronic throttle control system; ZF six-speed, dual-mode automatic transmission; rear wheel drive.
Horsepower: 325 at 6,100 rpm
Torque: 330 pound-feet at 3,600 rpm
Top speed: 150 mph
Acceleration: 0 to 60 mph in 6 seconds (5.5 for coupe)
Price, base: $76,995 ($695 destination charge included)
Price, as tested: $85,195
Final thoughts: Eternal sunshine of the mindless spot
