The bottom line with a car UI is that a good one has only one rule, the UI is about one thing, and one thing only: drivers can easily accomplish tasks. Everything else, including look and feel, are secondary issues. They should be considered mainly to evaluate how they're contributing to the one rule.
So: in evaluating this purported 7.0 leak, the question is, will it make drivers more successful at accomplishing tasks, or not?
I think the two top factors that go into measuring the "success" or "failure" of accomplishing a task are:
• time it takes to do the task
• can driver to accomplish the task without looking
The aesthetics are way down the list, imho.
If when 7.0 comes out, drivers get things done sooner, easier, with less hassle due to better info chunking, info hierarchy, and step count reduction, then it's a success.