A 7-Series to match your superyacht? Inside BMW's custom carmaking team commissioned by Leonardo Ferragamo and Karl Lagerfeld
Here’s a story that starts with Karl Lagerfeld in Paris and ends — for now at least — on an 115ft sloop designed by one of naval architecture’s greats names, moored off St Tropez and owned by Leonardo Ferragamo. It is, as you might expect, a story of lush palettes and the most fabulous materials, of craftsmanship, of creativity and some of the most demanding customers in the world.
This is the story of BMW Individual, the Bavarian car maker’s in-house custom team, that has been serving customers who prefer to order off-menu for over 25 years. Individual’s first customer was Lagerfeld who, back in 1972, wanted a BMW 750iL with an interior that matched his briefcase at the time, a monochromatic exterior that complemented his own, and a fax machine.
Individual’s latest commission is another 7-Series flagship model. It’s a one-off M760iL, designed in conjunction with, and to complement, the 115: the current flagship yacht of Finland’s celebrated boatyard Nautor’s Swan.
The first 115s (a slightly less racy 115 with a gently raised salon in place of flat deck) was delivered to its owner last year. Yes, you guessed it, that owner is Ferragamo. Salvatore’s son, who has run the family fashion business day-to-day since 2000, was part of a group that acquired Nautor’s Swan in 1998, which he now also runs.
BMW is heavily involved in yacht racing. The brand was a long-term partner of Larry Ellison’s two-time America’s Cup-winning Oracle team and is a major partner of Les Voiles de St Tropez, the annual regatta for new and classic boats that sails in to the French port at the end of summer, allowing it to regain a little of the class lost to super-yachts and Lamborghinis during the high season.
Car designers tend to enjoy talking about yacht design. This could be because they find themselves regularly rebuffing job offers from billionaire super-yacht owners looking to make their gin palace that little more storied.
Or, more likely, it’s because the luxury-yet-technical-yet-traditional aesthetic of the modern racing yacht chimes perfectly with an industry that’s trying to rediscover its narrative after too many detours into modish technology and materials that have failed to stand the test of time.
BMW Individual’s work with Nautor’s Swan nails the aforementioned luxury-yet-technical-yet-traditional aesthetic of boats like Ferragamo’s 115s, Solleone: yachts with hidden technology that allows them to sail with the smallest of crews and which provide stunning accommodation for guests without compromising on performance.
The M760iL itself is a car I like anyhow; it is enormously fast, still the second-fastest car that BMW makes (a fact it telegraphs only to those in the know). It comes with everything, yet the interior doesn’t present itself like an old laptop you have long forgotten how to operate. A good place for the BMW Individual team to start.
Individual’s customers, remember, like to order off-menu. But that’s very different to dining somewhere else completely. Most of what’s in this M760iL is available somewhere on one BMW model or another, just not this one.
But not everything. The most striking modification is the adoption of inlaid slatted floor mats, manufactured with thin rubber caulking and a Carib substrate for strength and weight saving and shaped to fit in Nautor’s trim shop. Inside the car they’re in oak (as it is inside Solleone) while in the boot of the car it’s teak, as it would be on the deck of the boat.
The balance of the wood inside the car is also in oak, albeit shaped by Individual’s own craftsmen who were also responsible for fashioning the M760iL’s interior in a mix of Criollo Brown and Smoke White Merino leather.
Embroidered Nautor’s Swan logos abound. Over-abound if you ask me, with the exception of the ones on the brake calipers which have been created by a prototype ‘additive manufacturing’ process, better known as 3D printing.
Breaking new technologies is part of the brief at Individual, which has been asked in its time to re-trim BMWs with everything from diamonds to salmon skin. Yup, you read that correctly: salmon skin (the customer made handbags). And no, it doesn’t smell.
The bread and butter of the business meanwhile - all models, not just Sevens and altogether less esoteric trim choices - mean Individual is a growing part of the BMW business. And one that’s primed to take up the slack as new models like the upcoming 8-Series and the X7 Luxury SUV move BMW’s flagship models upmarket into the clear blue water between where the range currently ends and where its Rolls-Royce models start.
Not entirely uncoincidentally, this is roughly the same clear blue water where you’ll find Nautor’s Swan yacht owners.
