BMW 7-Series. Travel Blog. Russian Around in St Petersburg

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About two hours late, we arrive for lunch on the beach overlooking the Gulf of Finland. The beaches are packed and it’s hot. We spot a Ferrari 430 cruising the boulevard. Welcome to modern Russia.

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Stomachs filled, we’re off again. Surely now our bad luck with traffic is over, right? Wrong. Barely five minutes away from the restaurant, there’s gridlock. We stay there for close to an hour. It turns out the main three-lane highway back towards St Petersburg has been closed for works, but there’s no official diversion. We follow the traffic only to find it’s headed down a cul-de-sac and with thousands of cars crammed into a small housing estate, there’s nowhere to turn around.

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In the end we follow the train across a park and over rough ground, before ending up on a sidewalk and bumping back down onto the road. This is more like the Russia I expected.

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From this point on, the traffic eases. We’ve sadly missed out on country thrash, but now there’s almost empty motorway, and we blast across the huge St Petersburg Dam spanning the Gulf. Here’s where the 750Li excels. A button on the transmission tunnel flicks the car from Comfort mode to Sport, which stiffens the steering and suspension, holds revs for longer and turns the digital dash to an angry red. It might weigh two tonnes, but the 750Li willl hit 100kph in 4.8 seconds, and that means very rapid progress indeed. It’s undramatic and smooth in its delivery but extremely quick and remains completely stable at speeds that would probably have us sent to Siberia if any police were around.

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Half an hour later we’re at the final scheduled stop of the drive, the quite ridiculously ostentatious Catherine Palace in Pushkin. As the name suggests, it’s a big palace that used to belong to someone called Catherine. No, not even the Great one. This sprawling Rococo mansion, clad in gold and blue paint, is home to more staggeringly luxurious rooms and artwork and gives a hint at just how extravagantly the aristocracy of Tsarist Russia lived. No wonder there was a revolution.

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This marks the end of the drive, and as we’re shuttled back to the Astoria in the back of the car we’ve just driven, I’m left to reflect on it. Sadly, the ludicrous amounts of traffic on the drive mean that dynamically I’m unable to offer a full picture of the new 7 Series, but the short blasts suggest it to be at the least very capable. Body roll is controlled admirably without compromising comfort, especially in the rear where air suspension keeps things wafty.

I’m not a fan of the new electric power steering though. Although there’s a flow of information coming through the fingertips, it feels overly filtered and artificial – like I wasn’t alone with the front wheels but rather being passed on messages about what they were up to. It’s a shame, but a necessary evil in these days of economical priority.

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The drive to reduce emissions and get more bang from your buck hasn’t affected the car’s speed though. It’s capable of monstrously fast velocities, a proper German bahn-stormer getting drivers and passengers from one place to the other quick-sharp, but without raising the pulse rate. And sitting in the back, as the sun starts its decline towards the spire and dome-lined St Petersburg horizon, with the seat fully reclined and the flat screen monitor ahead of me displaying journey information, I conclude that it’s a mode of passenger transport worthy of this luxurious and very beautiful location.

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Oh, I also conclude that I want a Volga. Slammed, rims? Amazing.

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