Which BMW Is Best to Rent? Four Shapes, Decided by the Job

Shape	Models	What kind of choice that is
Compact saloons	3 Series	The badge’s reputation, at the bottom of the ladder.
SUVs	X1, X5	X1 for the city, X5 for the county.
Full-size saloons	7 Series	The current generation, and the car for arriving.
Open cars	430i	Four seats, a fabric roof.
M cars	M4	The loud end, in the top deposit band.
Deposit bands	$500 / $750 / $2,000	Refundable holds. The band sets the cover and the young-driver fee, not the rate.

The one most weeks should take BMW X5 Luggage, passengers and a drive out of the county, for a little more than an X1. Dates and rate →

The 7 Series is the one for arriving

The 7 Series in this garage is the current generation, the new car rather than the 7 you may remember.

The black 7 is the current G70 car, and it is a genuinely different object from the 7s before it: split headlights, an enormous illuminated vertical grille, a cabin built round screens, and a presence on Rodeo Drive that the previous generation does not attempt. It sits in the $750 deposit band.

If the brief is arriving somewhere, the black 7 is the one that does it, and if the brief is a large quiet saloon for a working week, it is that car too. The photographs on its page are the fastest way to see it, and the BMW page carries every rate and calendar below.

X1 or X5, and what the twenty-odd dollars a day changes

The X1 and the X5 are both here, 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 structure feel generous.

The X5 is a proper full-size SUV — 375 horsepower, 5.3 seconds to 60, a boot that takes a family’s luggage — and the rule we give guests over the phone is simple. If the week has luggage, passengers or a drive out of the county in it, the X5. If the week is one or two people moving round the city, the X1, which parks in places the X5 does not.

A week that sits between the two is an X5 week. Where both sit against the rest of the SUV shelf is set out by tier.

The 3 Series is the one nobody writes about

The 3 Series 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. 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.

The open BMW, and its back seat

The 430i is the four-seat convertible: 255 horsepower, rear-wheel drive, a fabric roof that folds in seconds, and a boot that survives a weekend for two. In an open car the cabin is on display for the whole drive, so the interior colour on the car’s card is a real choice rather than a swatch.

Whether it suits your day is really a question about how many people are coming, and where it sits in the wider open-top ladder is set out in which convertible to rent. It drives its rear wheels, and it carries the button marked DSC that guests usually meet for the first time on a damp canyon road — what a short press changes that a long press does not is worth two minutes before Latigo.

The BMWs people ask for, and what they map to

For an electric saloon, the closest thing in the garage is the Mercedes EQS. For seven seats, the Cadillac Escalade or the Chevrolet Suburban. Between the 3 and the 7, go up to the black 7. And for an M car, the M4 — BMW’s own M range shows what sits around it. Every BMW here is on the BMW page with its own calendar.

What it costs, and how it reaches you

Every BMW here carries a refundable deposit of $500, $750 or $2,000 by the car, back 5–7 business days after it returns; cover is priced per day off that band and the young-driver fee for a driver under twenty-five follows it. Most of the shelf carries a five-day block that shaves a fraction off the fifth day and a twenty-one-day block that shaves a good deal more; where the price actually breaks sets that out car by car, and the black 7 is the one with almost no break at all.

Collection from our lot on Robertson Boulevard is free, delivery to the partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary, and the airport is $150 both ways standard, where the car waits in the airport parking structure and you take the shuttle out to it, or $300 both ways VIP at the terminal, half that for one direction. The rest is in the terms.