SURROUNDING oneself with automotive luxury can be an expensive business, but it's Christmas, so I can allow myself to nominate to Santa that my fourth choice for the 10 cars of Christmas is the BMW 740Ld xDrive M Sport saloon.

That's a wheeze inducing amount of nomenclature for what's essentially a long wheel-base version of the excellent BMW 7-series, with four-wheel-drive and the M Sport body styling.

The test car came in at – for this type of carriage at least – a reasonable few pounds short of £80,000. But a bewildering list of extras pushed up the on-the-road price to a whopping £104k – so Santa will really have to be benificent in the extreme to grant me this Xmas wish.

However, of that long list of add-ons perhaps the only really useful one would be the stonkingly good Bowers and Wilkins surround sound system which added £3775 and the extra aids that Driving Assistant Plus brings to the game, costing £2420.

It's a big car. The 7-series is already a lengthy luxury limousine, but the 'L' factor makes this 17-feet of motoring comfort.

With a three-litre turbo diesel rated at 316bhp, you'd think that this was hardly enough to get this beast to lift up its skirts when asked to. But you (and I) would be wrong, because – and this is quite astonishing really – the engine has strong enough torque characteristics to propel its 1.9 tonnes in the 0-62mph run in a tad over five seconds.

That's pretty quick and even though the extra wheelbase suggests it will be as nimble as a 20-stone prop forward, it is, in fact another surprise that it is very nimble, except perhaps on the twistiest of b-class roads. It's also helped by the euperb eight-speed automatic gearbox and the four-wheel-drive set-up.

This is where BMW engineering excels. It knows all about the dynamics of chassis, steering, engine response and gearbox and it all comes together in such a way as a win three-quarter (remember them?), rather than a lumbering fatso.

It is also capable of returning a little more than 50 miles for every gallon of diesel – and that's remarkable too.

As is the way of it, there's electronic trickery involved in offering a 'comfort' or 'sport' mode and I found that though there wasn't that much difference between the two in terms of handling, though the engine pick-up was noticeably quicker. There's also the option of the 'eco pro individual' for the real nerds, which allows you to set certain driving characteristics yourself. But why bother, this is a luxury saloon and it majors on wafting one about in splendid comfort.

And that's the real success of the 740L. Inside the cabin, there's a calm serene feel about the 7-series and the L option certainly gives rear seat passengers enough room to have a game of football in, should they so wish. A standard bench seat is available, though an option is two have two individual and reclining seats.

The dashboard layout is well-proportioned and carries an easy to use 'infotainment' screen front and centre underlined by rich wood trim.

Standard equipment is pretty comprehensive. There's 18-inch alloy wheels – the test car had 20-inch specials – four-zone climate control, LED brake lights, a 10.25-inch colour screen, cruise control, DAB digital radio, Bluetooth, wireless charging, auto-dimming headlights, sat-nav, parking sensors, a reversing camera, heated seats all round and a leather-bound steering wheel.

There's even a remotely operated self-parking system that means you can park the car from the kerb using the hi-tech key fob – real James Bond stuff.

There's plenty of tecchie stuff inside and most of it is controlled via the the central 10.2-inch display via the ubiquitous BMW iDrive controller on the centre console.

It also comes with features like blind-spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control, automatic high-beam control and autonomous emergency braking.

So all-in-all this is a pretty comprehensive car which you can make available for weddings and parties and still have fun driving! Santa, you could also fit hunners of presents into the cavernous rear boot space of 515 litres.