2009 BMW 7-Series

PriceRange: $77,000 - $125,000

Body Style: Sedan

Sum Up: The big guy fights back

BMW insists that the current 7-series is the most successful 7 ever, but we're not sure we believe it. With awkward styling (and that's being very nice) and a dreadful user interface that was inscrutable to twenty-year-old IT geniuses, much less the sixty-year-olds the 7-series was supposed to appeal to, the current 7-series had some big problems.

And despite the company's continued, arrogant insistence that it had done nothing wrong, BMW has fixed the 7-series. Introducing the all-new 2009 7-series (known within BMW as the F01). It will be sold in the United States with only one engine, the twin-turbocharged 4.4-liter V-8 that debuted this summer in the X6. With 400 hp and 450 lb-ft of torque, the blown V-8 renders the old 6.0-liter V-12 obsolete. The V-12 made only marginally more power -- 438 hp - and about the same torque, at 444 lb-ft. If BMW does introduce a V-12, we can be sure it'll be twin-turbocharged, just like the V-12s found in the Mercedes-BenzS-class, the biggest competitor to the 7-series.

And though the 750i and the 750Li don't appeal to our eyes, visually, the way that the S-class does, the new 7-series has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. With more gadgets, gizmos, bells, and whistles than your average electronics megastore, the 7-series is as much about its electronics as it is about driving. The dreaded iDrive is gone at last, replaced by an all-new system that will let the 7-series driver actually concentrate on driving his or her Ultimate Driving Machine.

We had the chance to spend a day with a pre-production, engineering mule of the new 7-series at BMW's testing facility in France. Click through the next few pages to find out what we learned about BMW's new flagship sedan.