The BMW Hydrogen 7: a Lab Rat Your Pap Kinda Likes!

The Fans will recall your Pap’s dislike of the 7-Series as discussed in a prior posting. The main reason we don’t like the 7-Series is because it looks like a hideous alien ship and can never come close to being what a Mercedes S-Class is (the primary competitor of the 7-Series). But when BMW introduced the Hydrogen 7 a couple years ago, your Pap eased up a bit on the criticism, giving this hideous thing a chance. After all, it seems appropriate for a car that looks like a crazy science experiment to be a science experiment.

The Hydrogen 7 isn’t publicly available, but rather has been a test mule driven by celebrities for a couple years now. Of course, BMW chose high-profile individuals to drive the Hydrogen 7, making sure the car shows up at red carpet events, movie premieres and the like. Below, your Pap has found some pics of several participating celebrities. About a dozen Hydrogen 7s are in L.A., and eight more in New York.

So why is the 7-Series acceptable as a Hydrogen vehicle? – because the gasoline 7-Series (2002-2008) is a true failure and will go down in automotive history as one of the ugliest, gimmicky and controversial BMWs. So while this generation 7-Series never cut it as an executive luxury sedan, why not turn it into a lab rat. They did, and now you have the Hydrogen 7…a cool science experiment!...maybe Jack Nicholson was onto something when he conducted such an experiement by in the 70s.



It’s not that your Pap has a vendentta against the environment, it’s just that environmentally friendly cars currently available are all dogs! – as a car-lover, you give up way too much when you drive a Prius, for instance. And it’s not that we don’t want to do good things for the Earth, it’s just we’d rather write our donation checks to Greenpeace, Heal the Bay, The Nature Conservancy and the like in the comfort of our Bentley Continental GTC; our Lamborghini Gallardo; or our Aston Martin Vantage. Driving a hybrid is not the only way to help the environment, thank you.

But back to the Hydrogen 7. Well, at least it’s a properly equipped BMW; it’s comfortably sized; it has luxury amenities; and it’s a much more substantial car than the tinny Prius and other cheap “green” cars. If they gave one to your Pap, we’d gladly take one – great car for tooling around Venice, making Whole Foods runs and picking up take out from Real Food Daily…if you’re into that kinda stuff!