This is the first car I’ve ever driven that necessitated a training course before taking delivery. By now you’ve heard what an “electronic marvel” the fourth generation 7 Series is, especially its iDrive control system. Yet iDrive was just part of the orientation process. First I had to learn how to start it. Yes, start it.

Starting the car entails taking the electronic “key” (which looks just like a normal car’s remote entry fob) placing it in a receptacle on the instrument panel, and pushing it in. Then you must put your foot on the brake and push the stop/start button before the car comes to life. Getting into gear requires pulling the little hockey stick-shaped shifter toward you and pushing it up for reverse, or down for neutral or drive. More often than not, drive. Hitting neutral normally takes the touch of a safecracker. Putting the car in park means pressing the button at the end of the stalk in. When the “P” in the center of the gauge cluster lights up, you’re parked. Press the stop/start button again, and the engine shuts off. Oh, and don’t forget to push on the key to release it from its receptacle. It sounds complicated – God knows it takes a lot more steps than “insert key and twist” – but it quickly becomes second nature, though the number of steps could be reduced.

Next there’s the multitude of adjustments available. Take the front seats. Press the pictogram on the front arm rest – it’s a seat divided into sections – move the knob just ahead of it, and that section of the seat moves. If you can’t find a comfortable position and setting in this car, you haven’t tried hard enough – or you’ve run out of either patience or time. On hot days, press the button with the fan icon, and cool air is forced through the seat (there are three speeds). On cold days, press the seat heat button and your backside is gently warmed. Should you want extra comfort – and a strange sensation – press the lowest button and wait a few seconds for the seat bottom to start moving. It’s like sitting on a tilt table with each corner of the seat cushion rising and falling in turn. Everyone who tried it laughed and smiled when the seat started its gyrations, but no one left it on for more than a few minutes. On a cross-country drive, however, this motion probably would prove priceless.

Too bad the same can’t be said of the iDrive system. A large, fluted silver knob sits on the leading edge of the climate controlled center console (you read that right), and works in tandem with the color LCD screen in the pod at the top of the instrument panel. It has two main axes (front-to-back and side-to-side) and two minor ones (right and left diagonals), rotates, and is pushed straight down when making a selection. Tactile feedback changes each time you change menus, or enter a different section of a menu. For example, pulling the knob straight back pulls up the “Entertainment” menu, which gives you access to the sound system. Muted detents are felt as you turn the control to the left, which takes you down the left side of the menu through the FM, AM, and Weather bands. Turning to the right brings you back up the menu, then across to the stations stored in memory. Now the controller’s feedback is short and sharp, and you move through the twelve stations one at a time. When you find the one you want – either by counting the number of “clicks” or looking at the screen – press the controller down to select that station. Easy, huh?

The same holds true for the navigation menu, climate control menu, vehicle settings menu, and so on. I found myself marveling at how intuitive the control was – the changing feel quickly became second nature – but found myself spending too much time traversing menus looking for the controls I wanted to access, and not enough time driving the car. Granted, no navigation system out there operates quickly and easily, but changing the air distribution or entering radio stations into memory is easier and quicker with dedicated buttons. Which BMW must have realized as it left some of the climate controls – not to mention the combined volume control/on-off button for the radio – on the dash, and included a voice activation system.

Hit the voice activation button on the steering wheel and a loud chime sounds, and a display lights up inside the circle described by the tachometer. I found it impossible to switch bands simply by telling the system the frequency of, say, an AM station while the radio was set to the FM band. And telling it something it didn’t understand – like asking for the “climate” menu – would cause the voice to reply, very politely, “Pardon me?” Persisting in asking it for something it doesn’t recognize will cause the voice to rely with something like, “Your request is unclear,” before it shuts off. (I honestly don’t know the exact words because I was laughing too hard when it answered.) Perhaps BMW can add some different responses. Like “Huh?” and “Yeah, yeah, yeah” when asked to do something. Or, “Danger Will Robinson!,” when the parking sensors mounted in the front and rear bumpers detect an object in the “red zone” near the car.