THE NEW BMW X7 BIG ENOUGH TO LIVE IN

THIS IS BASICALLY A BMW 7 SERIES LIMOUSINE WITH ALL IMAGINABLE EXTRAS. HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.

- STEPHEN CORBY

Deep down, you know that your beloved children will move out eventually – perhaps you’ve even reached the point of praying for that day – but it comes as a bit of shock when they threaten to up stumps at the age of eight.

To be fair, my shock was also tinged with admiration when my delightful daughter announced that she was taking her favourite stuffed toys and some apples, and moving into the BMW X7 that was not so much parked out the front of our house as totally obscuring it.

I was pleased that she’d fallen so hopelessly in love with a properly classy car – the X7 is basically a BMW 7 Series limousine that’s been injected with a metric tonne of cheek filler and then placed on stilts – and I could also respect her logic. The X7 is so vast, inside and out, that it’s actually slightly bigger than the inner-city house I force my daughter to live in.

(I had seen her this madly enamoured with a car just once before – the Tesla Model X – but that was a simple case of a child being hypnotised by a giant touchscreen bigger than her pillow.)

It’s also a lot plusher inside, with lashings of beautiful smelling and wonderful-to-touch leather on the seats, all of them heated – even in the third row. This is the X7’s big advantage over a mere 7 Series, of course: the ability to carry seven people.