BMW’s 2013 ActiveHybrid 7 EPA Numbers Released: Infringing on 3-series Territory
October 19, 2012 at 6:05 pm by Justin Berkowitz
It’s counterintuitive, but even BMW 7-series shoppers worry about fuel economy. Dealers and company management alike have told us that sales of the six-cylinder 740i are driven by its gas consumption, not entry-level price. That’s good news, then, for BMW’s ActiveHybrid 7, which carries an all-new hybrid powertrain as of this summer and has just received an EPA rating of 22 mpg in the city and 30 on the highway. That gives the hybrid version of BMW’s largest sedan an EPA score that rivals the Bavarians’ 3-series offerings. Not too shabby at all.
The larger a hybrid car is, usually, the smaller its sales—you can call it the Rule of Disproportionate Futility—and the first generation of BMW’s ActiveHybrid 7 bore this out. BMW sold only 657 of them in in the U.S. in 2010, 2011, and the first nine months of 2012 combined, meaning that only two of every 100 7-series buyers bought a hybrid. The old car followed the (ill-calculated) Lexus LS model of V-12 power with V-8 fuel economy, pairing a big V-8 with an electric motor. It slammed buyers with a $ 98,000 price tag and an EPA rating of 17/24.
Updated for the 2013 model year, the new ActiveHybrid 7 dumps out the old hybrid setup completely, and now shares its motivation with the hybrid versions of the 5- and 3-series. Instead of the eight, these cars match a turbocharged inline-six with an electric motor; in the 7er, total system output is 349 hp and 367 lb-ft of torque.
24 Hours of LeMons American Irony: Winners!
The third annual American Irony 24 Hours of LeMons race, held at Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, Illinois, is in the books. It was a rainy, blustery, guardrail-bashing affair, with plenty of surprises for the spectators. Let’s take a look at the teams that went home with trophies.
Working as Chief Justice of the LeMons Supreme Court in the American Irony penalty box was even more grueling than usual, with 103 vehicles a-slippin’ and a-slidin’ around in the rain. Most teams had between four and eight black flags during the course of the weekend; the cleaner ones had two or three. One team, however, had zero bad-driving busts: Skid Marks Racing. Each visit to the penalty box costs a team at least a lap or two, the Skid Marks Dodge Neon won by four laps, and the P2 team caught three black flags. How is it possible to go fast and avoid spinning, crashing, sliding into the weeds, or passing under a caution flag? Watch this in-car video that showcases the way the Skid Marks drivers back off when things start getting dicey ahead, then go back to being the quickest thing on the track when the coast is clear. On top of all that, the team donated their prize money to the Alex’s Lemonade Stand childhood-cancer charity.
Know Your Roots: Matthew Waln’s VIP’d E38
We all had a starting up point a reason for getting into the scene. For numerous, it started at a youthful age with a passion for automobiles possessing been passed down from a father or grandpa who tinkered about in the garage or took them to automobile exhibits. A greater percentage identified their roots by means of friends who had “sick” autos when they have been in substantial college or school (depending on your age, it could’ve been the physique-kit/underglow inspiring “Fast and Furious” Era) and wanted to turn their vehicle into an extension of themselves and their type, not just some thing to get you from A to B. For as numerous of us who have wandered from the very first scene we became a part of (Euro, JDM, Domestic, etc), there are just as several who have stuck with the same make for many years. Matt Waln is one particular of these who stayed correct to his roots: BMW. The auto you see prior to you as the topic of our characteristic is really his fourth Bavarian creation, so he understands them like the back of his hand.
A year and a half ago, Matt had his E36 M3 torn down in his garage (a car he nonetheless has) and decided he wanted a everyday driver. Not just any everyday, either. He needed to do the auto up VIP style so naturally, he started searching at companies this kind of as Lexus and Infiniti, traditionally recognized for their VIP prospective. Soon after looking for a while, he decided to stick with something a great deal much more familiar and began his search for large physique BMW. He had usually been a fan of the basic and stylish entire body of the E38 seven-series, knew how to function on them, and given that the cost was in his budget, he began searching locally and bought this beauty in October of 2010.
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