I’ll be honest — the previous BMW 7 Series wasn’t easy to like. Not aesthetically, anyway. The front end was aggressive in the wrong way: sharp angles competing with each other, split headlights that didn’t know whether they wanted to be the main attraction or a supporting act, and a kidney grille that was enormous but somehow still forgettable. Oversized without being imposing. Bold without being coherent. The rear end told the same story — too many creases, too many splits, too many design elements that felt borrowed from different cars and assembled in a hurry. A Lego game, as some would say.
The facelift changes that. Not completely, not in every area, but enough to make this good looking 7 Series.
Front End: A Cleaner Face, With a Familiar Ghost
The biggest shift up front is restraint. BMW has dialed back the sportiness and leaned into luxury — and the result is a car that actually looks like it belongs in the segment it’s trying to lead.
There’s a bit of Rolls-Royce in this front end, and that’s not an accident. Domagoj Dukec, who was the head of BMW design before leading Rolls-Royce, left his fingerprints here. The hood lines rise slightly above the kidney grille and fade toward the windshield in a way that immediately reads Ghost. The kidney itself is now more upright — almost flat — which is very Rolls-Royce territory and a complete departure from the raked, chamfered grille of the old car.
That grille is the most important change at the front. It’s slightly slimmer than before, but more crucially, the corners are now soft squares rather than the odd rounded-polygon shape of the previous generation. That one change does a lot: the car looks friendlier, more premium, more considered. Visually, rounded square corners read as warm and approachable rather than aggressive. The vertical slats inside the kidney now align with the surrounding planes of the front end — there’s actual precision there, and a subtle 3D effect that rewards looking closely.
The headlights have been redesigned too, now featuring 16 crystals and slimmed down to connect once again to the grille — something BMW used to do well and then abandoned for a generation. That reconnection matters because without it, the front end reads as a collection of individual parts rather than a unified face. The old i7’s DRLs had zero relationship to the grille’s angles. Now they do. One detail that’s worth noting: the DRLs are no longer the visual stars of the front — they’re there, they serve their regulatory purpose, but they don’t demand attention the way they used to. That’s the right call.
The lower intake area is softer and cleaner, without the aggressive black cladding that was actively hiding design detail in the previous car. The air openings in the front splitter are more in line with classic BMW design language. And the V-shaped hood crease surrounding the logo? That’s a nice touch — it creates a valley that you can see from the driver’s seat, and it gives the car a purposeful, road-focused look from the outside too.
One thing that still doesn’t fully land: the headlights feel like they’re slightly hidden rather than showcased. The headlights are the eyes of the car. They should be visible, not apologetic.
Side Profile: If It Ain’t Broke
Not much changed here, and that was the right call. The three-box silhouette of the 7 Series is close to a textbook sedan — greenhouse sitting near center, equal-feeling front and rear overhangs, a shoulder line that runs clean from front to back. If you want to understand how to sketch a large luxury saloon, the side view of a 7 Series is genuinely useful as a starting point. Make three boxes, connect them with a greenhouse, sort out the rear deck — that’s it.
Rear End: Finally Cohesive
The rear is where the previous 7 Series most obviously fell apart. Too many angles going in different directions, too many surface breaks with no relationship to each other. It wasn’t ugly exactly, but it was restless in a way that a car like this shouldn’t be.
The new rear is much more settled. The tail lights are slimmer, with two LED bars running across the trunk lid and flowing into a valley-type graphic that frames the logo, the trunk release, and the rear camera. It’s a cleaner read — one strong horizontal line rather than several competing ones. The reflectors at the rear corners are smaller now too, which is welcome. The old ones punched too hard visually and distracted from the tail lights. Now the lights can do their job without competition.
Interior: Trade-offs
The previous 7 Series interior worked. It was unambiguously about the driver — premium materials, a clear logic to the layout, and a sense of occasion that felt appropriate for a car at this price. The facelift had to bring the Neue Klasse design language inside, partly for cost reasons, partly for lineup consistency, and the result is more mixed.
The curved display from the previous car is gone, replaced by a 17.9-inch central iDrive X display. There’s now a dedicated passenger screen as well, and a Panoramic Display projected across the windshield. That last one is interesting — the 7 Series actually has enough windshield real estate to give the widgets breathing room, which is something smaller cars in the lineup can’t claim. Whether it works while actually driving a long car that requires careful management of that front nose is a real question.
The steering wheel is quirky — the 12 and 6 o’clock spoke arrangement looks strange and feels like a choice made for autonomy-ready interiors rather than for actual driving. Thankfully, a conventional design is available as an alternative.
The center console is simpler now, with the iDrive controller gone. The crystal quality looks better than before, which helps justify the deletion. The rear seat is largely unchanged — the 8K Theater Screen gets a resolution bump, a Digital Mirror is now available for when the screen is blocking the rear window, and the new headrest cutouts with integrated ambient lighting add a premium touch without screaming for attention. The rear lounge remains excellent. The front end of the interior is the part that will divide opinion.
An Improvement, Without A Question
What the facelift gets right, fundamentally, is graphic unity. Every line now has a relationship to the lines around it. The old car looked like it was assembled from a parts bin. This one looks designed — considered, deliberate, and appropriate for what it’s supposed to be.
The concern looking ahead is the Neue Klasse takeover. The next-generation 7 Series will almost certainly carry the new design language wholesale, and whether that direction can preserve the stately, composed quality this generation has finally achieved is an open question. For now though, this is a good looking 7 Series, and that’s not nothing.
