This BMW 7 Series spends 75 hours getting a €14,000 paint job
The refreshed BMW 7 Series lands in Dubai with a two-tone finish that needs more than 75 hours, 12 production stages and over 20 specialists. The paint alone costs €14,000 in Germany.
BMW brought the refreshed 7 Series to Dubai, but the star of the premiere was not the engine or even the lavish cabin. It was BMW Individual Dual-Finish paint, a two-tone treatment that costs a hefty €14,000 in Germany. That is nearly the price of a car on its own.
The show car pairs glossy Tanzanite Blue II metallic with matte Frozen Tanzanite Blue III. So why does paint cost that much? BMW says the answer is almost jewel-like complexity: the process takes 12 stages, involves more than 20 specially trained employees and keeps every such 7 Series in the paint shop for over 75 hours. That is almost six times longer than a standard paint job.
And roughly half of that time is manual work. The body is masked by hand before the coatings are applied, it is sanded by hand, and the Coachline separating the two finishes is also laid down manually. BMW spent two and a half years developing the process. For now, Dual-Finish is produced only at the Dingolfing plant and only for the 7 Series.
After the update, the flagship's personalization menu has become almost intimidating. BMW offers 130 body colors and more than 500 two-tone combinations. And if that still is not enough, factory 22-inch wheels are available on the 7 Series for the first time.
Of course, the update is not just about paint. The refreshed 7 Series gets BMW Panoramic iDrive with Operating System X, while the fully electric versions can now travel more than 720 km on the WLTP cycle. So this facelift is much more than a cosmetic touch-up, even if the €14,000 two-tone body is likely to be the detail everyone remembers first.