BMW 6-Series GC takes on the rivals

Do any of the bosses of the top-end German car companies actually possess a passport? To judge by their cars, they spend all day, every day twitching their curtains to see what their neighbours are up to, rather than lifting their eyes to the global horizon. The limit-free autobahn sections would net you about a one-and-a-half hour time to get from Stuttgart to Munich. Munich to Ingolstadt is a lot less. And in this little southern German neighbourhood, BMW and Audi and Mercedes have a comically obsessive habit of keeping up with the Müllers. They match each other on specs, on technologies, on suppliers. If any one of the three builds a new niche car, the rest follow. Mercedes made the CLS, and inevitably BMW and Audi followed.

Words: Paul Horrell
Photos: Matt Howell

This feature first appeared in the July 2012 issue of Top Gear magazine