BMW Korea’s first facelifted 7 Series cars aren’t trims. They’re 45 build slots, split three ways at 15 apiece, sold online in a single afternoon and gone when the counter runs out. Every one of the three First Editions leads with surface and cabin rather than an equipment list, and that’s the correct instinct for this car. The 7 Series sells its presence first. These editions admit it.
The three cars are a 740 xDrive M Sport in matte Frozen Space Silver with a Tartufo Merino cabin, a 740 xDrive Two-Tone split between Oxide Grey II and Sapphire Black, and an i7 60 xDrive Two-Tone that carries the two-tone idea into the electric flagship. Regular facelifted 7 Series deliveries in Korea begin the same day.
They’re sold through BMW Shop Online at 3 p.m. on November 10, Korea time, online only.
Matte silver, warm leather
Start with the M Sport, because it’s the boldest surface here. Frozen Space Silver metallic comes in a matte finish, and matte paint forgives nothing. There’s no gloss to hide behind and no reflection to break up a panel, so the surfacing has to carry the car on its own. The facelifted G70 helps it: long unbroken flanks, a front end sharpened around the kidney grille, nothing on the surface that isn’t load-bearing.
The result looks machined rather than decorated.
Inside, the M Sport pairs that cold silver with Merino leather in Tartufo, the warm tan BMW usually reserves for its most expensive cabins. Cold outside, warm inside is an old luxury trick, and it still lands.
At about $145,600, the M Sport is the priciest of the two petrol First Editions, roughly $12,500 above the most expensive standard 740 xDrive in Korea.
Two-tone is the dress code
The 740 xDrive Two-Tone splits Oxide Grey II against Sapphire Black metallic along the shoulder line, the dark upper body sitting over the grey like a roof laid on top of the car. It rides on 21-inch multi-spoke wheels that fill the arches without shouting. Two-tone paint went out with the fifties on ordinary sedans. On a car this long and this formal, it works as tailoring.
Here’s the odd part. The Two-Tone costs about $141,400, less than the matte M Sport car. The paint scheme that takes two booths and a masking crew undercuts the single-color car, because the matte finish is the expensive surface here. Rarity pricing runs on its own logic.
The i7 60 xDrive Two-Tone wears the same two-tone treatment and costs about $168,300, roughly $6,500 above Korea’s priciest standard i7 60 xDrive. Same dress code, electric underneath, and its cabin hardware is the richest of the three.
Two drivetrains under one long hood
Both 740s run BMW’s inline-six with a 48V mild-hybrid system, rated at 400 PS in Korea, about 395 hp. That’s the drivetrain this car has always wanted: a straight six doing its work quietly, the mild hybrid smoothing the edges in traffic, the whole thing tuned for the unhurried surge a flagship owes its rear seat.
The i7 swaps the six for a motor at each axle and 544 PS combined, about 537 hp. BMW hasn’t published battery or range figures for this edition, so the spec sheet stops at output and equipment. Silence is the i7’s party trick in any case, and in a car bought for its back seat, silence is a feature the petrol car can’t match at any price.
What unites them is the brief. Both petrol First Editions get Executive Lounge seating with massage up front and in the rear, because the facelifted 7 is designed for two kinds of owner: the one who drives it and the one who gets driven. The last 7 Series this desk obsessed over was the Alpina B7, a car that treated speed as the luxury. These editions make the opposite bet.
The cabin closes the argument
Every design argument this car makes ends in the back seat. The two petrol cars carry the 31.3-inch BMW Theatre Screen that folds down from the ceiling, turning the rear cabin into a screening room with Executive Lounge chairs for seats.
The i7 goes further: an 8K version of the Theatre Screen and a Bowers & Wilkins system with Dolby Atmos. The screen isn’t a gadget bolted into the cabin; it’s the furniture the whole rear interior is arranged around.
Set against the standard range, the First Edition premium is smaller than the theater suggests. Regular facelifted 7 Series prices in Korea run from about $120,200 to about $174,500, so the editions sit inside the band the car already occupies rather than floating above it. You’re paying for the paint, the leather and the certainty of getting one, not for a second sticker shock.
Editor’s take
Forty-five cars is a rounding error in a production run, and that’s the point.
BMW Korea runs a fresh set of online-only editions every month, and the facelifted 7 gets the fullest treatment of the year: three cars, three surfaces, one afternoon. The M Sport is the one to have. Matte paint exposes every decision a design team made, good and bad, and BMW signed its name to it anyway. If one of the 15 is still sitting in the online shop after 3 p.m., it won’t be for long.
