BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe revealed

It’s taken a long time and a lot of provocation, but BMW has finally decided enough is enough
prestige new cars  » Get the best price on a new BMW After years of watching Mercedes-Benz steal its design and sporting thunder (not to mention customers) with its CLS and then suffering Audi jumping in with the A7 as well, BMW has finally built its own swoopier, sexier version of the 5 Series.

Dubbed the 6 Series Gran Coupe, the car BMW calls its four-door coupe, shows that the Bavarian company has finally conceded its clean, neat, evolutionary 5 Series sedan is just no longer sporty enough for some of its traditional customers.

Where premium buyers once went to BMW for sportiness and agility, Mercedes-Benz for solidity and Audi for interior design, the CLS turned that on its head and, as a more radical body design dropped on top of the existing E-Class, made Daimler a pot of money as well.

In fact, the only surprise about the 6 Series Gran Coupe is why it took BMW so long to build it – it’s already seven full years and tens of thousands of sales behind the CLS.

It uses the same strategy as the CLS and the A7, with BMW simply taking the 5 Series architecture and dropping a swoopier bodyshell and interior on top of it. In this case, though, it’s a strategy that’s even closer to Audi’s A5 plan, because it gives the 6 Series a full three-model range.

Squeezed between the 5 Series and the 7 Series, BMW will use the 6 Series Gran Coupe in a long-plotted strategy to re-target the customers who think its 5 Series looks too conservative.

Built on the same production lines as the 5 and 7 Series, the 6 Series Gran Coupe will start with a TwinPower turbo-charged in-line six-cylinder engine with its 640i, then move through the super-strong 640d diesel and will be topped by the 650i twin-turbo V8. But BMW can insist all it likes that the Gran Coupe is a 6 Series, not a 5 Series, but with the 6 heavily based on the modular 5 Series architecture, they are, essentially, the same car.

Due to arrive in Australia mid-year, the Gran Coupe brings with it BMW’s full electronic ensemble, including adjustable suspension systems, electronic steering, start-stop and eight-speed automatic transmissions across the range.

They will all be somewhere between urgent and fast, with the thumping V8 capable of sprinting to 100km/h in 4.6 seconds (just 0.2 seconds slower than the mighty new M5), while both the 640i and the 640d reach the mark in an identical 5.4 seconds.

But the real key to the Gran Coupe is its design and, like Benz has done with the CLS, BMW’s design boss, Adrian van Hooydonk has had his team designing the living daylights out of every single panel.

BMW made the job easier by giving the Gran Coupe a 2968mm wheelbase – just 4mm longer than the standard 5 Series and 113mm longer than the 6 Series Coupe – then the design team stretched it to make it lower and longer. At 5007mm, it’s longer even than the M5 and, as if to accentuate its more overtly sporting nature, it’s also much, much lower. At 1392mm, it’s more than 60mm lower than the 5 Series, too.

It takes the 6 Series Coupe’s basic long-bonnet, short-tail proportions and adds a cabin that BMW calls a 4+1, which means it’s got five seat belts, but good luck if you’re the piggy in the middle. That’s one better than the CLS, which offers four seats as standard fare and a three-seat rear bench as an option.

Very clearly a BMW from any angle, it’s arguably BMW’s most beautiful offering in in van Hooydonk era, especially from its full profile angle. It’s almost as though the length of the bonnet and the shortness of the boot, both of which can look slightly out of sync from certain angles on the coupe, were originally designed with this car in mind.

It carries over the coupe’s dash largely intact, though the changes get serious behind the front seats, where the front centre console extends back to the rear seat bench. There is as much legroom in the rear as there is in the 5 Series, too, though BMW is coy on the details of the headroom.

The Gran Coupe has about the same luggage capacity as the new 3 Series and it scores both poke-through rear seats and both rear seats also fold flat to create a massive cargo area.

The V8 650i will take all the headlines, but few of the sales, and it also has an even bigger brother, with a heavier all-wheel drive xDrive version (designed, largely, for the north-eastern corner of the United States) that almost certainly isn’t Australia bound.

The odd thing is that the xDrive’s added grip makes is a tenth quicker to 100km/h, but the extra 75kg needed to twist the front tyres (which seems at least a touch excessive) makes it nearly half a second slower across a standing kilometre.

With the rear-drive 650i chiming in at 1865kg on the DIN scale, that means the xDrive is a full 1940kg – or over two tonnes in the heavier EC scale. That hurts its economy significantly and where the 650i posts a combined figure of 8.6 litres/100km, the xDrive is 0.6 of a litre worse.

Still, raw, effortless performance is its forte, and the V8 has variable valve timing and lift, plus direct fuel injection and a pair of twin-scroll turbo-chargers, all of which helps it to belt out 330kW of power between 5500 and 6000rpm.

It’s not just power, though, because the 650i steams out 650Nm of torque from 2000 revs all the way through to 4500, promising a seamless stream of gristle from idle to the redline.

But the big seller will be the 640i, with the sweet TwinPower in-line six-cylinder motor and its 245kW of power and 450Nm of torque. The beauty of the six is that its torque peak arrives at just 1300rpm – earlier, even, than the diesel can deliver – and it holds its plateau until 4500rpm.

A 5.4-second sprint to 100km/h will be enough for most, and it benefits from its 7.7 litres/100km fuel consumption figure being almost a full litre more frugal than the V8. It’s also more than 100kg lighter, at 1750kg, which promises greater agility, even though it rides on smaller 17-inch standard wheels.

That just leaves the diesel, which could be the sleeper of the trio and, quite possibly, the pick of the bunch. With 230kW of power at 4400rpm, it doesn’t trail the in-line six by much. It doesn’t trail it in straight-line speed, either, whipping across the standing kilometre three-tenths of a second quicker and hitting 100km/h in exactly the same 5.4 seconds.

But its real strength is in its mid-range, with its 630Nm just trailing the V8 petrol motor and its weight besting it by a full 75kg. That lighter stance helps it to the astonishing fuel economy figures of 5.5 litres/100km and CO2 emissions of 146 grams/km.

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