BMW 6 Series Gran Turismo review

Lounging around in the 6 Series Gran Turismo makes you feel pretty good about yourself.

Whether you’re in the front or back seats, you've got space and lush comfort, the seats padded and shaped like body gloves. Electric front seats are standard, and optional extra-comfort chairs adjust in a galaxy of extra directions.

A back-seat option pack gives you rear entertainment screens, electric backrest adjustment (which doesn't actually adjust very far) and heated back seats. In a car that prioritises its rear passengers so generously, this pack doesn't seem like overkill.

Ahead of the driver, the dash has familiar sections from the 5 and 7 Series, but fresh shapes too. Woods, leathers and metallics looks and feel like items of quality and craft.

The instruments are synthetic graphic impersonations of real clocks, but well enough done that you'd think they are real. So what's the point? Well, they do allow a certain flexibility of layout but in the end it seems like wasted effort.

BMW has also gone a bit overboard on control inputs for the iDrive system. You can use the twist-push-nudge controller as usual. Or you can write letters and pinch/zoom by caressing its top surface with your fingers. Or you can use the main screen as a touchscreen. Or there's always voice input if you don't mind talking to your car.

Or finally the ridiculous and flaky gesture control system. Why is making a silly circular motion in the air more convenient or less distracting than turning the volume knob? We have the answer: it isn't.

But don't let that distract you from the fact this is a superbly designed and relatively easily learned way to use the immense number of car functions. The traffic-aware sa -nav is excellent. The communication apps are harder to fathom and clunky to connect, and often unreliable and crash-prone.

BMW's portal will now mine your diary for events, programme them into your nav and remind you by phone or smartwatch when to leave home. It'll even predict where you're going this week by seeing where you went in the past. Or it does when it works. All without your intervention. If you find that spooky or irritating - and we do - turn it off. But remember, you paid for its development.