Which BMW to Rent in Los Angeles: Ten Cars, Three Shapes

Two of the cars in this garage are called a BMW 7 Series, they sit on the same page, and one of them costs $125/day while the other costs $230/day. They are not the same car with different paint — they are two generations, and the badge on the boot says nothing about which one you are looking at.

That is the shape of the whole BMW question here. Ten cars wear the badge, across six models and three body shapes, and the spread from the cheapest to the dearest is a hundred and twenty-eight dollars a day. Nothing about the roundel tells you where in that range your week belongs.

Most pages that answer “which BMW” are a grid of photographs with a price under each one. A grid is a fine way to see what exists and a poor way to choose, because the two decisions that actually matter here — X1 against X5, and which of the two 7 Series — are both decisions where the cheaper car is right more often than people expect.

The live rates, the dates and the booking itself sit on the BMW page, which is where every figure below is kept current. This article is the argument for which of the ten belongs in your week.

Six models, ten cars, three shapes

Model	Shape	Seats	In the garage	Rate
BMW X1	Compact SUV	5	Two — white, black	$102/day
BMW 3 Series	Compact saloon	5	One — white	$102/day
BMW X5	Full-size SUV	5	Two — white, black	$125/day
BMW 7 Series	Full-size saloon	5	One — white, previous generation	$125/day
BMW 430i	Convertible	4	Two — grey, white	$137/day
BMW Z4	Roadster	2	One — blue	$171/day
BMW 7 Series	Full-size saloon	5	One — black, current generation	$230/day

Three shapes, then: two SUVs, two saloons, two open cars. Three of the ten have no roof, which surprises people who arrive expecting a badge best known for saloons.

The two 7 Series are two different cars

This is the one thing worth knowing before anything else, because it is the mistake that costs somebody a week. One is white and one is black, both are called a 7 Series, and a full model change sits between them.

The white 7 at $125/day is the previous generation: one-piece adaptive headlights, a chrome grille of ordinary proportions, and an interior that is quietly excellent rather than theatrical. At that money it is arguably the most car per dollar anywhere in this fleet — a full-size flagship saloon for the price of a compact SUV.

The black 7 at $230/day is the current G70 car, and it is a genuinely different object: split headlights, an enormous illuminated vertical grille, a cabin built around screens, and a presence on Rodeo Drive that the older car does not attempt. It is also the only BMW here with a $750 deposit rather than $500.

So which is the expensive one and which is the cheap one is not a colour preference — it is a generation, and the photographs on each car's page are the fastest way to see which you want. If the brief is a large quiet saloon for a working week, take the white car and spend the difference on days. If the brief is arriving somewhere, the black car is the one that does it.

X1 or X5: what twenty-three dollars a day changes

The X1 at $102/day and the X5 at $125/day are both here in black and in white, and the gap between them is small enough that almost nobody chooses on price. They choose wrong for a different reason: they picture the X1 as a small X5, and it is not. It is a front-drive-based compact with a high seat, a tidy boot and a turning circle that makes a Beverly Hills parking structure a non-event. The X5 is a full-size, six-cylinder, 375-horsepower SUV with a boot that takes four cases and a ride that makes the 405 tolerable.

The rule we give guests over the phone: if the week has luggage, passengers or a drive out of the county in it, the X5 is worth the difference several times over and it is the best-value large SUV on the whole site. If the week is one or two people moving around the city, the X1 parks in places the X5 does not, and the extra money buys you nothing you will use. Where either sits against the rest of the SUV fleet is laid out in the four SUV tiers.

The 3 Series is the one nobody writes about

The 3 Series at $102/day is the same money as the X1 and answers a completely different brief. It is the compact saloon this company built its reputation on: low, precise, easy to leave with a valet, and invisible in the good sense outside a meeting in Century City on a Monday morning.

People skip it because a saloon looks like the boring choice next to an SUV at the same price. In this particular city that is backwards about half the time. If your week is freeway miles and parking structures rather than luggage and passengers, the 3 Series is the more pleasant car to spend it in, and it is the one guests most often say they would take again.

Two open BMWs, and only one of them has a back seat

Three of the ten cars here have no fixed roof, which is more than most people expect from the badge.

The two 430i at $137/day are the four-seat convertibles: 255 horsepower, rear-wheel drive, a fabric roof that folds in seconds, and a boot that survives a weekend for two. The grey car has a red interior and the white car has black, which is a real choice rather than a swatch, because in an open car the cabin is on display for the entire drive.

The Z4 at $171/day is the same engine in a two-seat roadster — 255 horsepower again, a tenth quicker to sixty, in a vivid blue — and it trades the back seat and most of the boot for balance and a lower roofline. One soft weekend bag is the honest luggage limit.

Which of the two suits your day is really a question about how many people are coming, and where they sit in the wider open-top ladder is set out in which convertible to rent. Both also appear on the convertible collection with live dates.

The BMWs we do not have, and what they map to

The absent list for this badge is longer and better known than for anything else in the fleet, so it is more useful to be plain about it than to let somebody find out on a phone call.

• The M cars — M3, M4, M5. None of the three is in our fleet, and we hold no M-badged car at all. What we do hold is the 430i, which is the same body as the M4 without the M engine, and the Z4, which is the closest thing here to the way an M car feels on a canyon road. If outright pace is the brief rather than the badge, the honest answer is that something else in this garage does it better for the money.
• The X6 and the X7. The X6 is the coupe-roofed version of the X5 and the X7 is the three-row one; neither is ours. Our X5 is the conventional five-seat car, which is the one that keeps its boot and its rear headroom. If you need a genuine third row, no BMW here has one and the answer is a different badge entirely.
• The i8. The plug-in hybrid coupé with the butterfly doors is not in our fleet and never will be — BMW ended production in 2020 and the car is now a collector's item rather than a rental proposition. Nobody in this city runs one.

What sits outside the day rate

The same on every BMW here, with one exception worth flagging.

• The deposit. $500 on nine of the ten cars and $750 on the black 7 Series. It is a hold against a credit card in the primary renter's name rather than a charge, and it is released 5–7 business days after the car comes back.
• Drivers under 25. The floor is 21 with two years of licence history. Between 21 and 25 the supplement is $50/day on every BMW in the fleet — the higher $175/day band applies only to cars with a deposit of $1,500 or more, and no BMW here reaches it. For an under-25 driver this is one of the least painful parts of the fleet to book from.
• Delivery. Complimentary to our partner hotels in Beverly Hills, free if you collect from Robertson, and quoted anywhere else in Los Angeles.
• The airport. Delivery to LAX is paid, in two levels, priced each way. Standard is $75. The car is left in the airport parking structure and you ride the shuttle out to it at no charge, which adds about half an hour and is awkward with a lot of luggage. VIP is $150 and the car is at the terminal. Round trip that is $150 standard, $300 VIP both ways, or $225 for VIP in and standard out, which is what most people book. On an X5 the standard option is genuinely fine; on the Z4, with cases, it is not.

Where a longer booking actually saves on a BMW

There is no percentage discount anywhere in this. What exists is a set of blocks — single days, a five-day block and a twenty-one-day block — and the quote takes whichever combination is cheapest for your dates without being asked. Whether a block beats the days depends entirely on the car, and on the BMW page it splits neatly in half.

On the X1, the 3 Series, both 430i and the Z4, the five-day block genuinely beats five separate days. On both X5s and on both 7 Series it does not — a working week on those four cars costs what a working week costs, and the saving arrives at the twenty-one-day block instead. That is worth knowing before you shorten a trip to four days expecting a break that is not there. The full version of this argument, across the whole fleet, is in where the price actually breaks.

Every BMW here, with its own page

If you are between two of them, send the dates, the head count and whether the car is being parked at a hotel or on a street. That settles it faster than any row in the table above.

Every BMW in the fleet, with live rates → The X1 and X5 against the rest of the SUVs →