ED - 650I X Drive (July 9)

Hey guys, I started a link over in the European Delivery section, but since I spend more time over in the 6er site I thought to add one here too. Things have been hectic, but what an amazing experience so far! And even more so an amazing car, so happy. I only have a few pics from the factory uploaded right now. We're leaving Switzerland tomorrow so I'll have more car pics, driving, stops etc. Hope all is well back in the states....it was worth the 6 month wait! Southern....Xdrive + rain + autobahn = Thought you'd appreciate it.

Cheers

Beautiful...

Damn!!! Looks awesome... especially with that shadowline - not that I'm jealous or anything

Have a fun trip!

Originally Posted by gehmjc21

Southern....Xdrive + rain + autobahn = Thought you'd appreciate it.

Glad to have another person on board singing its praises

Very nice! Can't wait to go there as well. Congrats.

Thank you guys!
Finally had a stretch on the autobahn before we entered Italy and got it up to 125, she had a lot more to give

Originally Posted by gehmjc21

Thank you guys!
Finally had a stretch on the autobahn before we entered Italy and got it up to 125, she had a lot more to give

I'm not sure if I'm more jealous about you getting to take your 6er on the Autobahn or the fact that it was just this little thing you did on your way to Italy...

Nevertheless, have fun and race a Ferrari for me

Hey guys, well I'm back after an amazing trip. Tough coming home, even more tough going to work today, but the worst part was leaving the car behind! I finally have some time to give a high level review of the car. I'll upload some pictures later when I'm back home. Please feel free to give me some tips - as I didn't have much time to learn the ins and outs of the car, as we usually got in and hit the road and then parked.....

Overall the Welt experience was simply awesome. We arrived at 830am for our 1030am delivery. Hung out at the lounge and had breakfast and relaxed before our BMW virtual tutorial. Of course I asked about the upgraded engine in the 2013s and the gentleman had a half-a$$ed response that the engine was not ready in 2012 and I didn't really get into it with him. At that point I really didn't care, sorry As they drove the car around the delivery showroom I was amazed, it was the first time I've seen an M sport or carbon black in person! Wow. We walked down the stairs and I quickly realized why you guys are in love with the shadow line trim, I'm so glad I opted for that! As I sat in the car I anticpated the first start up.....the exhaust note from a cold start was absolutely intoxicating. I wish my wife got a picture of my face, I couldn't believe the sound!

Our German autobahn experience was limited and the traffic kept me around 100 mph - 110 mph max. Italy believe it or not I found faster drivers, but they were German funny enough. As I posted before, I lead a 640d for quite a while, and a short sprint with a Porsche Carrera. I hit 138 mph at one point and it had a lot more to give, but I had to slow down for traffic a head.

City driving in Munich and Florence were incredibly stressful. Narrow roads, crazy drivers and driving the 6er v. my S4 was night and day. I wasn't totally comfortable yet. My wife's blood pressure was awful high those days.

We had two close calls, both made me realize how well these cars are made.....first we were in traffic driving to Lake Como. As traffic started to break up, I was driving around 80 mph and the freeway had a left curve to it, the traffic was completely stopped and I had to fully slam the breaks from 80 and luckily I turned the hazards on at the same time. The car behind me stopped immediately but the MBenz behind him had to cut over three lanes to avoid hitting us....I almost sh*t myself, and well my wife might have! but I was amazed how such a heavy car handled that situation. The other incident....I saw an tractor trailer up a head driving in the right lane and a camper merging from the on ramp. I took the cruise off as I approached the truck at 95mph and glided around 75 when I was going to pass him....he didn't see us and came into our lane. Again I slammed the breaks and pulled off to the shoulder at about 25-35 mph. Luckily there was no one behind us. But he waved at me after and apologized. At that point my wife was ready to get the hell out of the car and onto the beach - with a large drink of course! Needless to say I was very impressed with the stopping/handling ability at high speeds.....now to my pro's v con's.....without beating a dead horse from previous posts.

PROs

Engine - although we didn't get the upgraded engine tune, I was more than pleased with the power of the car. I was surprised about the minimal turbo lag coming from a supercharger, but the torque was amazing. I didn't often use the paddle shifters, but did drive mostly in sport. Going from 85-110+ was instant and the torque was awesome. The M sport exhaust - enough said, I love it!

LEDs - were stunning. I didn't get to drive at night, so I'm excited to see how they are in the dark.

B&O - so glad I opted for this upgrade. The sound and clarity were amazing, however navigating through songs (idrive) was extremely disappointing...more in the cons

ARS - I had the sports differential on my S4 and I was unsure how the heavier 6 would handle. I was very pleased. We drove through a lot of twists and turns in Switzerland and the car hugged the road in the corners. I'm sure X drive helped too, Southern very happy with ARS.

M Sport - love the look, sound and headliner.

CONs -

Steering - I was very disappointed with the steering from comfort to sport. The steering did not feel any tighter in sport. I checked the setting in I drive and it said everything was in sport. At 75 + I didn't feel any difference in the steering. My S4, comfort v dynamic was night and day, I expected more on the 6er.

Navigation - the european directions worked pretty well. However I'm very disappointed in a few things. The route is highlighted in white, and so are the other roads!! A few times we couldn't tell what road we were supposed to turn on and it was extremely frustrating, especially in the cities. The route should be highlighted in a different color.

My HUD worked great, except when you're on the freeways and you're approaching an exit and the colorful image of the lane/exit pops up on the main navigation screen - the looked great. However on my HUD, a white box with random colors and pixels popped up and covered the screen. My guess is it needs to be recoded, but none the less I wasn't too happy having to turn off/on the HUD each time.

Also I miss the Audi MMI navigation feature that lists the next four turns on the navigation screen. This is something I wish BMW did....

Idrive - I had a tough time navigating the idrive to play songs from my iphone. (please comment if I did something wrong)
I know I could scroll from the steering wheel and that worked great. However, when my wife wanted to browse the music it was a mess. First when I plug the phone in it automatically played on song on repeat. I guess I needed to search 'all music' and push play. And then from there go back into browse? I can't quite remember but I was incredibly frustrating. Does anyone else experience this at all? Maybe I was doing something wrong, again I didn't have much time to play around when I was driving.

That's all I have for you. The car is simply amazing and I'm so happy we could experience european delivery. I really can't imagine what it would be like driving the M6 after driving such an incredible machine. Maybe I'll pony up for the Dinan next summer!

Cheers

Great review! Thanks for sharing. Sounds like you had an amazing time!

Originally Posted by gehmjc21

Steering - I was very disappointed with the steering from comfort to sport. The steering did not feel any tighter in sport.

I couldn't feel much of a difference at first, but there is a difference if you really look for it. The wheel is a little tighter when you switch to Sport. Try setting cruise at 45 to 50 mph in Comfort and do a little zig-zagging (obviously without anyone around lol). Then immediately switch to Sport and do it again trying to replicate the same amount of steering effort. You can feel the wheel being a little tighter, and the swerving isn't quite as obvious (the amplitude of the sinusoidal patterns is slightly less with the same steering input). I agree the difference between the two settings is pretty small, but you can feel it if you go looking for it or if you're used to Sport but forget to switch DDC from Comfort. The throttle response is the biggest difference though (aside from the exhaust ).

Originally Posted by gehmjc21

ARS - I had the sports differential on my S4 and I was unsure how the heavier 6 would handle. I was very pleased. We drove through a lot of twists and turns in Switzerland and the car hugged the road in the corners. I'm sure X drive helped too, Southern very happy with ARS.

Gotta admit though, death by flying off of an Alp in a 6er is a good way to go. Bonus points if you do it backwards and upside down in a ball of fire. The RWD is probably the better vehicle to pull off this stunt. Nevertheless, that's how I want to go out

Originally Posted by gehmjc21

Navigation - the european directions worked pretty well. However I'm very disappointed in a few things. The route is highlighted in white, and so are the other roads!! A few times we couldn't tell what road we were supposed to turn on and it was extremely frustrating, especially in the cities. The route should be highlighted in a different color.

My HUD worked great, except when you're on the freeways and you're approaching an exit and the colorful image of the lane/exit pops up on the main navigation screen - the looked great. However on my HUD, a white box with random colors and pixels popped up and covered the screen. My guess is it needs to be recoded, but none the less I wasn't too happy having to turn off/on the HUD each time.

I think you'll be happy once you get your HUD fixed. The nav. display on the HUD is brilliant. It is by far the best nav. set up I've ever used given how it displays the road in front of you, which lane(s) you need to be in, and how far away you are from the next turn/merge. I think HUD turned on prevents most of the directions from showing up on the main screen, and for this reason I'm not as familiar with the graphics on there. Hold out hope until you get the HUD functioning properly, and I think you'll be happy. The HUD is the best $1300 I've ever spent.

Originally Posted by gehmjc21

Idrive - I had a tough time navigating the idrive to play songs from my iphone. (please comment if I did something wrong)
I know I could scroll from the steering wheel and that worked great. However, when my wife wanted to browse the music it was a mess. First when I plug the phone in it automatically played on song on repeat. I guess I needed to search 'all music' and push play. And then from there go back into browse? I can't quite remember but I was incredibly frustrating. Does anyone else experience this at all? Maybe I was doing something wrong, again I didn't have much time to play around when I was driving.

I always look for songs through the playlists menu. I've got one called "All Songs" (excludes Christmas music, classical, etc.) if I want it to shuffle through my normal songs. Most of the time I just use my 10 or so playlists, set it on shuffle/random (in the external devices/USB/iPod screen, select "option" --> three clicks clockwise then tap --> "random" --> push controller to the left to return to main entertainment screen).

If you want to be able to search for specific songs, then I'd use the hard drive as you can search with voice commands. If I want a particular song, I typically know which playlist it is in, and then I go find it as I keep my playlists organized in ABC order by Artist name.

As you said, once you have a playlist (find all playlists under the graphic of a song note) selected you can scroll through it from the steering wheel roller wheel, you can switch to the next song (either next on the playlist or next random song if "random" is selected) by keeping the iDrive selector on the "next track" arrow (very bottom graphic - triangle pointing to right - on the iPod/iPhone menu), or you can scroll through all of the songs on the big display using the iDrive controller by selecting the top graphic - picture of a speaker.

I find navigating the iPhone's music to be pretty straight forward and easy to do while driving without ever having to look down for most things. The only problem I ever encounter is the song information (track name, artist, album, etc.) doesn't always update when you select another song, but the album art does change. Not really sure what's going on with this, but it's not really a big deal.

southern, thank you so much! awesome stuff. I'm going to check everything out once I get her back to the States. I'm finally uploading some more pics....

pictures....munich fussen

swiss, como

florence...nice

monte carlo contd...

Can someone please tell me if there's an easier way to upload pictures from your computer than going into Manage Attachments, Browse, and clicking on the picture each time?!?!

You have no idea how excited I was looking at your photo gallery. It combined my love of European history, architecture, and art with Italian food some of the finest motoring exotica in the world.

I think if I came across an SLR and a SLS right next to each other driving down the road my heart would probably give out... and I'd be okay with that and die a happy man. I don't think I could return to my pokey, southern town and live a happy life after seeing that Rapide, 458, 430, 458 Spyder, RR, and Lambo.

Looks like a truly amazing trip, and my jealousy of your B&O and shadowline, while still present, is being forgotten until the effects of these cars and other photos wear off

Btw, I do the same with pics. I don't know a better way

I put mine on flickr and then just upload the link... great shots!

Thanks guys. Southern, we were pulling into Chianti/Panzano for a lunch reservation. I pulled around the corner to those two beauties! My wife was like, "what's the big deal?" haha I followed them going the opposite way we needed to, just to get some pics!! Unreal

Beth, I'm going to upload more pics over to ED this weekend!

I think I would have spent the entire trip just going around looking at cars. It's good that you had your 6er so when the owners of these beasts saw you creepin' around they knew you were (mentally) drooling all over the cars as a fellow enthusiast :thumbsup:.

I'm waiting for someone with a nicer car than mine to see me to see if they check out my car. I unfortunately haven't witnessed this yet. 750Li, S Class, XJL, and XK are pretty much all I ever see - at least above the 5er/E Class level. There are a couple Ferraris, a Maerati, a Bentley, a Gallardo, and a SLS I know of, but I haven't seen these since I've had my 6er. They don't get out very often, unfortunately

I did see a CL the other day, but the guy didn't look all that interested in anything. He looked like he fit into the car's typical demographic, if you know what I mean

Awesome.. Congrats...

Great looking pics, thanks for sharing, looks like you really had a great time!

Originally Posted by Elias

Great looking pics, thanks for sharing, looks like you really had a great time!

Thanks guys! Hopefully we'll get back for my wife next summer.