It’s fitting that we’re driving the BMW 550i Gran Turismo in the hills up the Hudson from New York City. Don Draper, the lead character of AMC’s Mad Men lives here, and while the 550i is a very fine car, BMW might need a master ad man like Draper to figure out how to market the thing. No wonder the company has been buying up so many 30-second spots this season.

The 5-series GT, which will eventually include both the 550i and the 535i, plus xDrive variants in the U.S, is tough to define. It’s not quite a wagon, yet it’s a bit more than your typical hatchback; it definitely isn’t a sedan. It’s also hard to call it a 5-series. As we now know from the recent 5 sedan debut, the two body styles don’t share much in the way of styling or even a footprint. The 5 GT rides on the same wheelbase as a 750i, though the front and rear overhangs are shorter, and it’s an inch taller than that car. Rear legroom, depending on how the sliding seats are adjusted, is somewhere between the short- and long-wheelbase 7-series models. In everything but content and marketing, this really is a 750i GT.

It’s also not fair to call the 550i GT a squashed down X6, either; that’s even less accurate than calling it a “5 plus” or a “7 lite”. Believe it or not, the taller and 300-pounds-heavier X6 xDrive 50i is the more entertaining one to drive. While the X6 feels somewhat like the spawn of a 3-series and a Baja truck, the 550 GT feels like a 7-series with an X6’s rear window. It’s more isolated and softer than buyers might expect of a 5-series, but lovers of business class air travel will feel right at home. We say that not only because of the space, comfort, and amenities, but also because it’s incredibly fast. We’ve yet to find an application in which BMW’s new 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 doesn’t deliver fire hose acceleration, and we don’t suspect we ever will.

So now you know what the 550i Gran Turismo isn’t but that doesn’t exactly help explain what it is. Or does it? Because the truth is, it seems like BMW’s plan for the 5 GT was to take the best elements from each of its other cars and mix them all together in one vehicle. The rear seat is as commodious and comfortable as any 750i we’ve sat in. The command-view driving position feels a bit like driving an X5, although the ride height is different, while the driving dynamics fall somewhere between the current 5- and 7-series. As for the rear hatch, BMW must not have known whether to give it a 5-series sedan trunk or an X6’s rear liftgate, because it ended up getting both.

Using a pile of good parts isn’t guaranteed to result in a hit vehicle, however. The GT has its good angles—most of them looking down on the car to visually reduce the car’s height—but it also has some bad ones. From many views, the car looks taller and narrower than it is, and the stubby rear is especially hard to love. Open just the trunk section of the rear hatch and step back, and you might begin to understand what it’s like seeing the world through the eyes of a proctologist.

To its credit, BMW worked some pretty cool tricks into that hatch. When the lower trunk section is opened, it accesses a space completely partitioned from the passenger cabin—there’s a two-piece panel behind the seatbacks that keeps a seal regardless of where the sliding rear seat is set. The full cargo potential is discovered by shutting the trunk door and opening up the full liftgate. You can then flip down the rear seats and the divider panel, freeing up sixty cubic feet of space; the volume difference between the 5 GT, the current 5-series wagon, and the X6 is negligible. Our favorite bit of attention to detail is that the small cover blocks the trunk through the rear window, which can be tucked away in a compartment under the load floor. So many times with other cars, we load a big haul and wonder what to do with that panel when it’s removed (and not in our garage.) Still, the versatile schizophrenia of the rear hatch’s split personality does add some unwanted weight – even rendered in aluminum – causing the GT to weigh in slightly more than a 750i.

All BMWs have the uncanny ability to shed a lot of weight when they’re moving, and the 550i GT is no different. 4938 pounds is positively SUV-like on the scales, but chassis tricks hidden in a Munich vault and 450 lb-ft of torque from the reverse-flow twin-turbo engine make it seem no heavier than any other 5-badged car we’ve driven recently. That said, the 5er GT does feel its size. The way the dashboard peaks in the center then falls away in a parabola toward the passenger door adds visual width, while the rear glass positioned all the way at the end of the car’s 196.8 inches of length makes it feel like a limousine. Trying to line the tires up just perfect for a hard right-hander can prove a bit tricky. Our car’s active steering, which both adjusts the ratio and dials in a few degrees of rear wheel steering, has a better feel and is more predictable than past iterations, but it still takes some getting used to.

While the 5 GT isn’t as thrilling to dance through curves as most Bimmers, it’s one of the best for straight-line cruising. There’s a slight disconnect in body movements, something we’ve noticed on the newer cars with the active suspension controller next to the shift knob. In normal driving that goes mostly unnoticed, and we’ve found that the Sport and Sport Plus settings are useful for quicker responses in tight city driving, while Comfort is ideal for lazy highway travel.

Speaking of lazy, the Gran Turismo is just the second BMW (following the 760Li) to use the company’s new 8HP70 eight-speed transmission, and its long legs allow it to cruise along at 80 mph with the engine turning under 2000 rpm. It’s quiet, smooth, and efficient. One BMW insider also mentioned that the limited top speed can be achieved in four (four!) different gears. We weren’t able to try that. It can also jump multiple gears at once and we noticed that for the most part, the new box is pretty slick. However, we did have a few occasions coasting along in slow traffic where it seemed to upshift just as we were getting back on the throttle, causing some lag and an eventual jerky shift. It may have been the result of a simple bug in our pre-production tester.

Back to the 5 GT’s engine for a moment; if you require more proof of how wonderful it is, consider that at 5.4 seconds, the GT is the slowest 0-60 mph runner of any of BMW using the same powerplant. Fortunately, its brakes are huge to compensate—14.7 inches up front at 14.6 at the rear. With calipers included, they completely fill out the car’s 18-inch wheels and even look massive inside a set of 19s. They’re incredible in action as well, and have as good a pedal feel as any other BMW.

So how would Don Draper sell this thing? Who knows—that guy is so vague and abstract in most of the things he says, he’d probably just plaster it on a page with something like “You Deserve More” under it. But we see the 550i Gran Turismo as a lot of good products without their associated stigmas. It’s a crossover in its versatility and its space, but no one’s going to light it on fire for being conspicuously wasteful. It’s a limousine in its passenger space and comfort, but an industry giant could pull up to the Capitol building and not fall victim to any chastising inside. And it’s a sedan, but with the added benefit that tall things could squeeze in the back in a pinch.

Without question, the 5-series GT is a luxurious, 400-hp Leatherman tool. But those plusses above also have their minuses. The GT doesn’t have that “I’m more important than you” look of a 7-series. It doesn’t have the “I can go more places than you” feel of an X5 or X6, and it doesn’t have the “I can go faster than you” dynamics of a 5-series sedan.

It’s going to take a special buyer to jump on the Gran Turismo, and we’re especially interested to see how the rest of the 5-series range is priced around the GT (which starts at $64,735), if a traditional wagon comes to the U.S. at all. It’s hard to say if it’s going to be successful, because BMW is trying something rather new here. Even the car’s product planner wouldn’t throw out a target sales number for us. Personally, we find the X6 to be a bit more personal and fun to drive, though it sacrifices a lot of rear passenger room. Like that model, the GT has been endlessly debated by BMW fans, but we’ll have to wait and see if its initial sales are as impressive as the X6’s were. Either way, respect BMW for doing something daring, even if this one isn’t for us.

Would Don Draper buy one? Maybe if BMW dangled a lucrative ad contract in front of him. Otherwise, he’s a Cadillac guy.

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