2012 BMW 7-Series vs. Its Competition

Bengt Halvorson Senior Editor

The BMW 7-Series has its biggest beefs with the likes of the Audi A8 and Mercedes-Benz S-Class, but the Jaguar XJ, Porsche Panamera and Aston Martin Rapide are all legitimate prey, too.

The S-Class still looks imposing in its last years of life, and its AMG-gone-wild editions are numerically superior to BMW's Alpina-tuned 7er.

Double the rear-seat room, and add on impossible amounts of tire-smoking performance, and you arrive at the rather lumpy-looking Porsche Panamera, which obliterates all these cars with a 0-60 mph time of about 3.3 seconds for Turbo models.

The new Audi A8 looks less convincingly different than we were promised, but it's a swift, stable performer with a marvelous interior--despite our serious reservations about its Palm Pilot-like controller for audio and navigation.

The Jaguar XJ sexes up the class with an aero body and a swinging interior, but the new shape zaps rear-seat room and not all of the new interior bits feel rich and expensive.

Remove half the backseat room from the XJ, make it even more gorgeous and expensive, and you have the utterly fantastic but impractical Aston Martin Rapide.