The new BMW 6 Series coupe is low, wide and handsome with just a touch of the Aston Martins about it. Thanks to an engine that is roughly the size of Poland, but much lighter, it gets up to very fast speeds very quickly and without appearing to stretch first, or to pause for breath afterwards. It is not as expensive as an Aston Martin, but that is not the same as saying it is not expensive. All in all, though, if you only buy one £50,000 large-scale, 4.4-litre coupe this year, make it the BMW 645Ci.
Before you rush out to the cash machine, however, be aware that the first run of 1,700 new 6 Series, although technically only in the shops from next month, was pretty much sold out a whole year ago, this being the kind of car that encourages people to put a deposit down when it is little more than a doodle on a designer's napkin. If you haven't thought to book ahead, your best chance of owning a 645Ci this side of Christmas is probably to steal one, and that is not going to be easy, given the quality of the build and the factory-fitted immobiliser.
Potential owners should also know that the car is an extremely serious attention-grabber. That might seem a fairly obvious thing to say about a thunderous Grand Tourer, approximately the length of a railway carriage. And presumably very few people invest £50,000 in a coupe in the sincere hope that nobody notices. But it is not possible to exaggerate the extent to which the 645Ci attracts remarks and turns of the head. Its driver must be psychologically ready for the glare of publicity at an intensity and brightness for which possibly only an apprenticeship in the Spice Girls, circa 1997, would be training enough.
Everywhere I went last week in my gun-metal grey 645Ci, I left a trail of pointing fingers and wagging tongues. And because big, pricey cars always boil up an entertainingly rich mix of approval and disdain, sometimes I left a trail of wagging fingers and pointing tongues. Awed schoolchildren walked into the road to congratulate me (I think) on my taste and discretion. Van drivers wound down their windows to say things that I couldn't quite hear above the velvety, lobe-caressing amplitude of the car's stereo system, but which I took to be further compliments along the same lines.
Last Saturday morning, I parked the car, rather unsportingly, outside a Volvo dealership in Surrey, and for the 45 minutes I was there, nobody was particularly interested in buying a Volvo. A complete stranger called at my house in the middle of the afternoon and asked for a tour. That's not something that happened very much when there was a Daihatsu Charade out there. Buy a 645Ci and you may end up needing an agent to handle the media side. That said, there is something very safe, cocooning and other worldly about being behind the wheel, your shoulders relaxed in the comfortable breadth of the no-expense-spared interior, your back and lower parts hugged snugly by the sumptuous hides of rare beasts, your face fanned gently by air flown in specially from Switzerland (or so it feels).
This is above all a vehicle for fans of pampering and self-entitlement. It is no coincidence, surely, that the noise that sounds to remind you to fasten your seatbelt is the strumming of a harp. A bell-like alarm sounds softly when other cars or schoolchildren come too close, and at this point it occurs to you that you are effectively in motoring's version of a gated community. The car is its own entourage of minders and suitably servile hangers-on. There is, at least, contact with the road to awaken you to the realities beyond your windscreen.
Certainly the steering on the 645Ci is not for those who wish to be entirely oblivious to their circumstances. The wheel tugs and twitches slightly beneath your hands and requires you to assert yourself. The acceleration, too, even in the automatic version of the car that I drove, is pin-sharp and has none of the usual executive bagginess. One squeeze and you are in another county.
When you remove your foot from the pedal with the car in sport setting (available at the push of a button), the engine rears back as if you had just double de-clutched. It is a rare automatic gearbox that offers such a free flow of power to the foot. And with so much else about the car encouraging you to enter a sort of privileged trance, this kind of driverly activity can be no bad thing.
Who is going to buy a 645Ci? Or rather, who is going to join the queue for one? BMW's best market research suggests that 6 Series owners will be "40 to 55-year-old successful independent businessmen". Which, unless you interpret "business" very loosely indeed, excludes James Bond. But it is his kind of car too, surely, with the addition of a few explosive extras.
