The unusually shaped BMW 550i Gran Turismo provides incredible long-distance touring comfort for four passengers. It's like being in a private jet, especially if you order the business class seating in back, then pile on the entertainment and driver assistance options.  Costs like a private jet, too.

Between BMW's two hatchback-like recent offerings, the 550i GT is the better vehicle than the two-year-old BMW X6. The GT will be even more desirable once BMW in the spring adds versions with a 300-hp six-cylinder engine and with all-wheel-drive. Only two things require acclimatization: the view from the outside looking at the side and rear, and the view from inside looking out the rear window. 

I put nearly 1,000 effortless miles on the 550i GT in a long, single-day trip down the Eastern seaboard during a gloomy, damp winter day and night, the kind of day that inspired Edward George Bulwer-Lytton to take pen in hand and proclaim, "It was a dark and stormy night." With a price starting at $65,275 and topping $90,000, the 550i GT represents excess, just not Bulwer-Lytton's wretched excess. Virtually every one of the $1,000-here, $2,500-there options has a reason for being in the car. As with other high end BMWs, there are more than a dozen entertainment, performance, driver assistance, and pampering options. For the comfortably affluent car fanatic, I cannot imagine a better vehicle for hauling four adults and their luggage long distances. An Acura ZDX, Audi Q7, BMW X5 / X6, Porsche Cayenne or Panamera, Lexus LX 570, Cadillac Escalade, or Infiniti QX56 all lack that ultimate luxury of rear seat comfort equal to the front seat.

Great for the Driver

Slide behind the wheel and you're in the best seat in the house. Vision systems help you in front (night vision, parking sonar, swiveling xenon headlamps), in back (backup camera, parking sonar), and to the side (side cameras, lane departure warning, blind spot detection). A $1,300 head-up display (photo left) puts only the most important information in a virtual window at the base of the windshield, reducing driver distraction. The $4,200 sport package helps the car bank through turns and the suspension and drivetrain can be set for comfort, normal, or sport-calibrated ride. So you order the sport package if you want the best ride, not just sportiest, ride.

Navigation comes standard, on a 10.2-inch 1280 x 480 display that can be split to show, say, navigation and entertainment details. The current iDrive cockpit controller is much easier to master. Order the $1,950 premium seats and you get a massage feature that raises and lowers the left and right seat bottom halves just enough to keep your butt from falling asleep. The $1,750 active steering package changes the steering ratio at low speed for easier parking lot maneuvers and the rear wheels also steer slightly, opposite the front wheels at low speed for sharper turns, same direction as the front wheels at high speed for smoother lane changes.

The engine is a 400-hp twin-turbo V8 with an eight-speed automatic transmission (BMW's first). It gets to 60 mph in 5.4 seconds and passes most everything on the highway except gas stations. On my mostly highway trip I got 21 mpg and saw 23 mpg level-ground cruising at 70 mph; the EPA rating is 15 mpg city, 21 mph highway, using premium fuel. That's not bad, but the coming 300-hp six will still be cat quick and probably manage 25 mpg loping along the interstate, and you won't get the feeling, "Maybe we should top off the tank," at every bathroom break.

While it's not a hybrid, there is a brake energy regeneration system. The oversize battery is charged primarily by power generated when you apply the brakes. This is part of what BMW calls Efficient Dynamics.

Great for the Passengers Front and Rear

Once you've tired of watching the scenery float by, you've got six ways to be entertained:

• AM/FM radio
• HD Radio (standard)
• CD player
• iPod adapter ($400 or $1,400 in premium audio package)
• Satellite radio ($350 with one-year subscription)
• Rear seat entertainment (photo right, $2,200) with a DVD player, two seat-back LCD screens, and separate left and right input jacks so you could play video from an iPod.

Reclining Rear Seats with Hot and Cold

For the best rear seat experience, step up from the standard bench seat for the $3,650 rear seat package. The seats move fore and aft, recline, and have heating elements and cooling fans. And there's plenty of legroom as well as headroom (unlike the BMW X6 where the sloping roofline affects taller passengers). The package includes side sunshades, which run $500 separately if you stick with the stock bench seat, and zoned rear climate controls.

Better View of the Sky Above Than the Road Behind

The BMW 550i GT comes standard with an enormous two-section panoramic sunroof that stretches back to cover the rear seats. The sunshade is solid unlike Audi's translucent screen, which in Audi's case makes for an airier cabin if that's what you want. What's less than enormous on the Bimmer is the rear window, or rather the view out the back window. Combine that with smallish side mirrors and you really should get the blind spot warning system that's part of the $1,350 driver assistance package (blind spot detection, lane departure warning, automatic high beams).

The constricted rear view is not uncommon to hatchback-looking crossover vehicles. The Honda Accord Crosstour - essentially the BMW 550i GT for half the price without all that back seat room, over-the-top luxuries, or BMW logo on the hood - also doesn't have much of a rearward view. It's part of the price you pay for the design.

What Is It: Hatchback? Crossover? Coupe?

BMW now offers two hatchback-looking crossover vehicles: the BMW 550i GT and the BMW X6. Despite the 5 in the name, which designates a midsize BMW, the V8-powered 550i GT and pending six-cylinder 535i GT draw their dimensions less from a BMW 5 Series and more from the BMW 7 Series that is our reigning Digital Drive Car of the Year, and that explains why it's so roomy in back, as well as why it's tough to park in your garage. It's big outside: 197 inches long, half a foot longer than the BMW X5 and X6, only half a foot shorter than a Cadillac Escalade.

In comparison, the BMW X6 sports activity coupe with its sloping rear roofline and slightly restricted headroom is based on the BMW X5 sports activity vehicle (BMWspeak for SUV), which in turn is based on the BMW 5 Series sedan and station wagon. The X6 (photo left), like the X5, has a cargo bay (not very big) you can access from the back seat. The 550i GT in comparison has a separate trunk with dividers between the reclining rear seat backs and the trunk. The trunk starts out big, gets bigger if you slide the rear seats forward and the dividers move forward too, and becomes positively huge if you drop down the dividers and rear seatbacks. You can also remove the stiff top partition of the trunk and turn it into a true hatchback.

To my eye, the 550i GT is better looking from the side than the X6, although it still takes some getting used to. From the side, there are some 550i GT hatchback styling cues that might make you think of a Toyota Prius where with the BMW X6 one might think - forgive me, BMW, for this slander - a low-riding Pontiac Aztek. The rear view of the 550i GT is the least pleasing but it's still a taste you can acquire. From the front, it's pure BMW.

Why You Can Pay Almost $94,000: Twofer Bundles Hike the Price

One reason a BMW 550i GT can cost $93,525 and my test car ran $89,875 is BMW's habit of bundling a must-have option with a nice-to-have option. The worst offender is the camera package: In a car with such a restricted rear view, a backup camera ought to be standard the way parking sonar is. Instead, a sub-$50 (likely wholesale price) rear camera is paired with two more cameras mounted in the fenders just ahead of the front wheels (photo left); they look ahead and to the side and help you see when you're pulling out of an alley. Total price: $1,200. Ka-ching.

Women especially like the keyless access system that lets you leave the physical key in your purse, yet the door unlocks as you reach the car and pull the handle and the car starts at the press of a button. Free or a couple hundred dollars on some non-BMWs, comfort access has cost as much as $1,000 as a BMW option and here it's $1,900 in a convenience package with soft-close doors (get them near the doorframe and the pull themselves shut) and a power liftgate.

BMW's closest competitors, Mercedes-Benz and Audi, charge similar prices for similar options and Porsche charges more. One reason the Hyundai Genesisi s so desirable - $43,000 max with a V8 engine -- is that so many options are included or relatively affordable. For now, the Genesis' softer ride makes it more of a Lexus competitor. But Hyundai and Ford are pushing down the cost of technology.

To be fair, the BMW 550i GT's base price of $65,725 ($63,900 plus $825 freight and $1,000 gas guzzler tax) includes navigation, a brake energy regeneration system, xenon headlamps, HD Radio, front and rear parking sonar, BMW Assist (telematics) with four years of service, Bluetooth, and a slew of safety features with three-letter-acronym names: DBC, SC, DTC SRS, HPS, etcetera. That's about $5,000 of options.

Night Vision: Can I See You Now?

My car came equipped with Night Vision, now priced at $2,600. A thermal imaging camera detects heat from pedestrians, bicyclists, animals, occupied cars, car exhausts, and big rocks that were in the sun all day, and projects an X-ray-like image onto the center display. It even detects pedestrians and flashes a warning if they're on the roadway but not off to the side.

Flir Systems, the maker of the second generation thermal imager at the heart of Night Vision, says it has effectively halved component costs from the first generation system. But BMW has actually hiked the price of Night Vision since its debut two years ago. My findings are mixed: At lower speeds on dark roads, Night Vision is great for noticing pedestrians and cyclists before you see them with your headlamps. Driving on a foggy interstate at night, Night Vision doesn't do much to spot slow-vehicles in your lane although a) BMW and Flir don't claim Night Vision is a safety tool for high-speed overtaking so b) you have to fall back to the old standard of driving cautiously when visibility is reduced.

What Makes a 550i GT Worth the Extra Money

If you understand the component costs of electronics technology, you can't help but shake your head at what BMW charges for satellite radio ($350) or why it charges anything for a USB / iPod adapter. Drive one for a year and you'll begin to understand some (not all) of the costs.

BMW iDrive (photo left) finally works well and lets you manage all the features in the car without needed an extra 50 dashboard knobs and buttons. (It still helps if you spend an hour or two practicing after your take delivery.) The 10-inch transflective display is the biggest and brightest currently offered on any car. The backup camera display displays your path, turning lines, wraps color blocks around obstacles and as you get closer, the blocks change from green to yellow to red. BMW foots the bill for four years of telematics and emergency calling (worth $300 a year) and for four years of maintenance (which, since the cars are well maintained, props up their resale value when dealers take them in trade). BMW's crash sensors don't just report an accident, they predict the severity of possible injuries and BMW's call center can report that to the police. BMW's implementation of Bluetooth tends to work with more phones and pass on to the car more calling features.

The seats, even if you don't pop for the premium leather or the comfort seats, are a delight to sit in for long periods and they don't start to fade or crack in five years. In other words, with a car such as the 550i GT, you pay a lot and get a lot.

Should You Buy?

The traditional description of a GT, Gran Turismo, or Grand Touring car is low, fast, sexy, and comfortable for two (with seats for four) and luggage for two if they pack light. BMW makes it comfortable for four and leaves it to you to decide if it's sexy. Fast, there's no question. The only high-end vehicles with more back seat room are the stretch-body versions of the biggest Audis (A8), BMWs (7 Series) and Mercedes-Benzes (S-Class).

If you can live with the reduced cachet of driving a Ford product - what would the neighbors say if you imported one into Marin County or Palm Beach and it wasn't for the maid? -- the Ford Flex and cousin Lincoln MKT match the 550i GT on comfort-for-four. Perhaps the closest buyer-demographics competitor, the Porsche Panamera, has classic GT seating in back, meaning it's not very appealing for two couples other than for short trips.

If you opt for a BMW 550i GT, here's how to equip it and still keep the price reasonable, meaning barely over $80,000:

• Base car, gas guzzler tax, freight, $65,775
• Camera package, $1,200 (must-have option)
• Driver assistance package, $1,350 (must-have option)
• Sport package, $4,200
• Head-up display, $1,300
• Premium sound and iPod adapter, $1,400
• Power rear sunshade, $500
• Rear entertainment system, $2,200
• Satellite radio, $350
• Total MSRP, $80,025

I left off my mythical and near-perfect 550i GT configuration the luxury rear seating package because it's a bunch of money unless you really do a lot of long-distance driving with four not two people aboard. Want to save a few bucks? You could find a third-party DVD player with two seatback screens for half what BMW charges, but it's one thing to mess around with a $35,000 SUV that overcharges for rear seat entertainment, and another to splice into the wiring harness of a $75,000 car.

The only waste-of-money option on the 550i GT is ceramic controls: You pay $650 for knobs that are slippery to the touch, in order to get knobs that feel cool to the touch and have more apparent heft.

Actually, were I buying, I'd wait for the six-cylinder version and the all-wheel-drive version. Then you'd have the ultimate car for trips from your house in the city to your ski house in the mountains. I'd also wait in hopes BMW added adaptive cruise control, a must-have feature for long distance touring.

Other reviewers have noted how much more costly this is than a BMW 5 Series station wagon or the 550i V8 sedan. True, but so what? Neither has the rear passenger room of the 550i GT. (The next 5 Series, arriving this year, will have improved rear seat room but probably not like the 550i GT.) If you want comfortable grand touring with performance, safety, and cachet - the cachet that has bystanders saying, "I bet this thing costs almost a hundred grand" - then the BMW 550i GT has no competition.