H ow long is eleven centimetres? Think of it as a bit longer than a pack of long cigarettes—not much in the grand scheme of things. But that’s the length BMW has added to their new eighth-generation 5-series sedan, now available in ‘Long Wheelbase’ guise. This means all core sedans in BMW India’s lineup—the 3-series, 5-series, and 7-series—are now ‘Long Wheelbase’ models.
The wheelbase, by the way, refers to the distance between the centres of a car’s wheels. While luxury car manufacturers have always offered longer variants of their most luxurious sedans, such as the 7-series and Mercedes-Benz S-Class, Mercedes-Benz brought this concept down the line with the E-Class in 2017. You might wonder, what difference would a few centimetres make? Well, the added length is almost always for rear passenger legroom.
If you’ve flown economy class recently, you know how even an extra inch of space can be a game-changer. The difference in seat pitch between economy and premium economy on a particular airline is only three inches, but it feels like a world apart. It’s the same in a car.
A few weeks before BMW India officially unveiled the new 5-Series, I had a short drive with the new model. Driving and being driven in the back seat, I found that eleven centimetres, though only a third of an average male foot, significantly enhances comfort. It’s not a massage seat where you can fully recline—that’s a feature for the next level up—but it’s still a very com.