Take a look at this weird Proto-E65 7 series that BMW just unearthed

I am a big fan of the BMW Group Classic YouTube channel where Iment, the The German automaker was remove the covers of unreleased prototypes that inspired the production Bimmers we all know today. Over the past two months, we have witnessed a E36 M3 Compact And one X6 predecessor, and today’s topic is even stranger.

It’s called the ZBF 7er, and if you looked at the previous video on the top-of-the-line X6-type coupe called ICE, you might have seen this quirk lurking in the background.

The ZBF 7er was introduced in 1996, two years after the start of production of the E38 7 series, but five years before the polarizing E65 7 series hit the market. As such, it represents a strange in-between, a sort of gap between the reserved, stoic and utilitarian BMWs of the ’90s and the Bangleisation that would follow.

“ZBF” is actually a German acronym which translates to “future BMW family” and “7er” is literally “sept-er”. The prototype is fully controllable, and BMW designer and creative director Joji Nagashima notes that the creative processes were remarkably old-school.

The tires, for example, were cut by hand, and Nagashima himself drew the pattern for the tread. No exact diameter size is shown in the video, although the designer says the 19-inch tires were the largest available on the market at the time and the rubber for the ZBF had to be specially ordered from Dunlop. Even the body was hammered metal, an old body technique for which BMW had to visit a store in Italy.

Next, we move on to the interior, which might be my favorite aspect of this car. It is very much in line with what would have been considered a trendy luxury at the time, with lots of aluminum and light wood accentuating the beige leather upholstery.

I won’t say it looks modern again, with its big dashboard and long, unbroken slatted vent running almost the entire width of the interior, but it still feels like a very refreshing place. Just below the small infotainment screen is a dial that would eventually turn into an iDrive system – with an accompanying dial for rear passengers. IDrive haters, you can direct your contempt for this concept. It started here.

While eagle-eyed viewers will notice the ZBF 7er lacks side mirrors, that doesn’t leave you without a way to check out your surroundings. Instead, there are A-pillar mounted cameras. I shudder at the image quality these optics would have produced 25 years ago, but looking inside I also wonder how you would see flows from them. There appear to be two rectangular cutouts at each end of the top of the dash – they may have contained screens that flipped over while driving.

Oddly, at no point does the video recognize the thing you probably first noticed about the ZBF – it’s very, shall we say. bold frontal design. Refer to the references of the current 4 series with this elongated grille. The headlights are also odd, in the way they are angular and blocky despite the rest of the exterior not being angular and blocky at all.. They clash against the rounded kidneys, creating a goofy, dated face that contradicts the car’s forward-thinking ethics. Oddly enough, we never see the rear of the sedan either.

But it’s this jarring juxtaposition of the old and the new BMW that makes this prototype so interesting to begin with. The seeds of the E65, the big BMW sedan that everyone feels in one way or another, started here.