The senior exterior designer at BMW responsible for the facelifted 7 Series has explained why the updated luxury sedan was given a massive grille.

Speaking to BMW Blog, Alexey Kezha described the refreshed 7 Series as “one of the most drastic LCI programmes we’ve had so far”.

“What you really can see is at the end of this programme we have a completely new-looking vehicle at the front, and thanks to the big changes we have brought in our kidney area and also the design of the lights – they became much slimmer – the lower part of the bumper became much more clean and integrated,” he said.

Kezha went on to suggest these changes created a closer connection between the flagship vehicles (such as the new X7, updated 7 Series and new 8 Series) towards the very summit of the Munich-based firm’s line-up, while further separating them from more mainstream models.

“This allows us also to achieve a much better family connection to the rest of our luxurious line-up at BMW. When you look at the X7 or at the 8 Series, as well as the new 7 Series LCI, you see a lot of connection in how the treated and its proportions,” he explained.

For the record, local pricing for the facelifted 7 Series has already been released.

Original article from Car