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Hi AP, I was interested as I've had Active cruise control on my Ford Galaxy for nearly 5 years and that is brilliant. It was one of the reasons for choosing the 5 series. The Ford had the limitation that it was a manual (shift stick) which meant if the speed every dropped below 40 on the flat or 45 on an incline the cruise control would ask you to change gear which would of course trip it out and you would have to re-engage it. So I was looking forward to the F11 with the auto and active cruise control. In my opinion if you are using cruise control its because you want a relaxed drive. If you want to push it you would not use Cruise control. So why as soon as you engage Active cruise does it ignore the settings of Sport, Comfort and Eco Pro and select sport for the gearchanges?
Example you have the cruise set at 70 and are following traffic at 55 mph quite happily in 8th gear. If the car in front leaves the motorway at a exit slip, why does it then drop down a couple of gears and acceralate fast and then slow down again. The Ford will just gently close up the gap. Also if you are travelling at 70 mph and someone overtakes you , when they pull back in front of you the Bimmer slows down to make a sufficient gap. The Ford on the other hand behaves like a typical driver. If someone pulls in front of you and they are accelerating away from you it just keeps a steady speed, if they are not accelerating away from you then it slows down. Much better than the Bimmer and that is 5 yrs old technology. The Ford also has a slightly better range at seeing the vehicles in front and reacts a bit quicker plus it helps it hasn't dropped down a couple of gears and accelerating just to find another car in front and have to slow down.
The Bimmer does have a nice feature that when you indicate to overtake it accelerates. With the Ford you had to either manually accelerate or pull out into the next lane and wait a few seconds before it sees it clear in front then it would accelerate. I got into the habit of pulling out close behind a car that had just passed me and it would then follow that. Do that in the Bimmer and it slows down because you are close to the car in front ahhh!!
One way of improving the relaxed feel of the cruise I found was to use the paddle up shift. This does nothing except keep it in 8th for a while then push the gear shift to Sports/manual and this locks it in 8th which makes for a more relaxed drive when using the cruise control. If you don't have the paddles then when you move it to sports/manual it drops down a gear and you then have to change it back to 8th which puts it into manual, so flicking the paddle up works nicely.
You do of course have the stop and go on the Bimmer but Ive not had a chance to give that a really good test yet (done 2.2k miles). I've been lucky enough to avoid most traffic.
As for the HUD that is very good, very pleased with that. Although I would have liked it a bit higher in my view. Sat in a 6 series with HUD and it was much higher in view.
@Surreybmwdriver I'm very impressed with the DAB but be careful if you have any phone chargers or TomTom plugged in they upset the DAB reception and make it drop out a lot more than it would otherwise - what do you think? I have VDC on the Ford Galaxy and rarely ever use it so didn't bother with it on the Bimmer.
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