Is it a whir? Or a purr? Or is there nothing to be heard at all? As we all know, sensory information can be deceptive: sometimes we see what we want to see, or hear what we want to hear.
So we periodically have to fall back on the rational faculties. We rely on reason to unpack a world of experience and build it up again, in a logical fashion, so that we can understand our empirical information a little bit better.
We go through the gears, in other words, which is exactly what BMW’s new flagship – the long-wheelbased 760Li – has been doing on our recent test drives: going through eight of them.

More about Munich’s brilliant new auto box in a minute. First though, we have to get a grip on what’s behind what’s been happening out on the road with a huge five metre-plus barge ripping the countryside apart like Mike Tyson nailing a few hamburgers.
To get that right, the mind has to travel back to the plant in Munich where the company’s V12 engines are assembled; back to the slightly undersquare 6.0-litre aluminium block in its raw, unadorned shape, as it arrives from the Landshut foundry not far from Munich. Back to the TwinPower Turbo plumbing, comprising a Garrett and an intercooler on either side of the big V. Back to forged connecting rods and iron-coated aluminium pistons neatly stacked up on an assembly bench, ready for implantation. And back to valves (sodium-filled on the exhaust side for optimum cooling), forged cams and piezo-injectors (the latter for second-gen direct petrol injection, known in BMW speak as High Precision Injection).
All of this is relevant, and not to forget the engineers who so diligently wipe sleeves before installation and who so precisely insert bolts on main bearings, adding an additional connection via threaded support bushes plus extra bolting to side panels, to reduce the influence of lateral crank forces on the block.
Then the robots take over and BMW’s latest and greatest V12 is built meticulously, bit by bit, from the ground up, until we’re faced with a beaut of a monster, or a monster of a beaut: two straight sixes, in essence, interlocked at an angle of 60 degrees for optimum refinement and smoothness plus effortless power and efficiency, with plumbing hanging off the flanks like the entrails of a dragon turned inside out.