BMW stepped out of the box when it launched the current 7 Series as a 2002 model. The objective was to boost its luxury sedan's presence and curb appeal. Indeed, the 7 Series looked more agile and muscular than the previous-generation models, which had aged, and to some, not so gracefully. Though the trademark twin-kidney grille and long hood remained, making it clear that this was still a BMW, the design was a dramatic departure from past BMWs.

That the styling has not pleased everyone is evident by the fact it's still a widely discussed topic. The overall design, and particularly the rear half, have generated continued controversy among design critics and automotive media. BMW claims its buyers love it, and sales tend to support this. And other manufacturers, including Acura and Lexus, are beginning to use similar design solutions on the rears of their cars to manage airflow.

In the past few years, BMW has tweaked the styling here and there, softening some of the more dramatic cues and returning toward more traditional BMW styling cues. For 2006, there are some welcome refinements.

The grille on the 2006 models is now slightly larger and consistent on both models; it was slightly wider at the top on the 2005 760s. The hood has been re-contoured, losing some height, with a less prominent power bulge, and sloping more quickly to the new grille and headlight housings, themselves re-shaped to parallel the grille's outline and wrap farther around the fender, ending in a sharper point.

Set relatively low, the headlamps are trimmed by turn signals above them, looking like the eyebrows of a hawk. An extractor vent straddling the hood just forward of the cowl looks out of place on a car in this class. The lower air intake is reshaped and partitioned, looking more like a smile than a frown, with fog lamps housed in separate indents. A sliver of chrome adorns the bumper.

The side view shows the faster hood flowing into the nicely proportioned glasshouse. BMW's trademark dogleg in the rear side window continues as the longest-running, brand-specific styling cue in the industry. Door sills and rocker panels are fuller, more pronounced, breaking up a stretch of sheetmetal otherwise featureless except for an understated character line creasing the doors beneath flush-mounted door handles. The exterior mirrors can be retracted inward with the touch of a button, reducing the parking width by more than a foot. It's a great convenience for drivers with narrow garage entrances or when parking in a crowded city garage. Tires fill circular wheel wells placed where they should be to balance and support the body's visual mass. The contentious trunk has been softened, rounded off a bit and in general, just stylistically relaxed with a slicker transition between the backlight and trunk lid.

New taillight clusters bridging the seam between the rear fenders and the trunk lid and reaching halfway to the license plate recess draw the eye across the back, making the car look wider. The lights employ a feature BMW calls adaptive brake lighting. Under normal braking, the outboard and center-mounted, third brake lights illuminate as usual. Under hard braking or when ABS is activated, secondary brake lights in the trunk-lid elements join the outboard brake lights for a significant increase in visibility of the brake lights. The distinction is intended to warn following drivers that you are stopping very quickly. A monitoring system indicates when a bulb is burned out. And while waiting for you to have it replaced, the system will commandeer other bulbs in the taillamps to fill in as brake lights. The thickened, less-pronounced, spoiler-like lip across the top trailing edge of the trunk lid casts less of a shadow across the rear bulwark. A chrome rub-strip on the bumper mirrors the treatment on the front end. An diffuser panel beneath the lower bumper tucks up into a recess running the width of the car.