BMW first started experimenting with luxury car steering in the 3 series in 2001. I had just bought an E46 330i, fitted with the Sport Package which was so brilliant that this car remains one of the best driving, most involving cars, most satisfying cars I have ever driven. 3ers in the US market without the sport package rode very softly but compared to the sport package ars, they had very mushy handling, very poor responses and generally a stupidity and dumbness about how they drove when pushed hard.
The sport package cars were brilliant however. One of the best driving roads I know was behind the town where I lived and right near the BMW dealership. The road not only curved like hell but also went up and down violently and was cambered through the curvers, something into the curve, enhancing grip, at other times, off camber so it did the opposite. This was a brilliant road for seeing how well or poorly a car handled while its weight was getting tossed in every direction. If a car could rail through this road without sapping driver confidence, it was a master. This road exposed the weakness of the S2000, for example.
I drove an E36 M3, a 2001 E46 330i Sport, a 2001 E46 325i Sport, back to back on this road, and later a 2002 E46 325iT non sport and a 2000 E46 328ci non sport.
What I learned was that the E36 M3 and the E46 330i Sport drove virtually identically except the 330i had much poorer steering feel. Since the E36 M3 was used and I couldn't find a nice clean one, I bought a 2001 E46 330i Sport. I loved it but I soon became very disgruntled with the steering and took to driving my 1997 MX-5 for it was just so much more fun to drive.
The online 3er community had started to resonate with complaints about the steering. The E46 had come out in the US as the 323i and 328i in 1998 and there were huge complaints about what had been done to the steering when the 323i/328i had been given new engines and made into the 325i and 330i. I didn't know what had been lost. I just knew that I wasn't happy.
Then my car went in for its first service and I received a 2000 model year 328ci loaner car. The ci models were half the sport model. they had the suspension of the sport package but not the wheel/tyre package. Instead of wide low profile high performance tires, they had narrow high profile all season luxury car tires. Driving this car was an amazing experience. While it did not have the grip or the responses of my car, its handling on that road was still amazing. But far more notable was its steering.I could not believe how amazing it was. It was so organic, meaty, so so full of feedback and feel, so bursting with information, it felt SO SO SO good, I was in love. But it was quite heavy at slow speeds.
Then it came out that BMW had held a focus group about what people liked in the car and what they didn't like, a focus group selected at random, not enthusiast focused and virtually everyone, especially the women, had said they didn't like the steering because it was too heavy. So for the 2001 update, BMW had revised the steering to the satisfaction of the non-enthusiast buyers.
When the 3er enthusiast community started screaming about it, BMW revised the steering again. The 2002 model cars would receive the new steering spec, and it spread in the community that those 2001 model owners who requested BMW for a refit would have their cars fitted with the 2002 spec steering at no cost. Even the dealers didn't know about it. I called my dealer and had them check with BMW and in a month of so my car received the 2002 spec steering.
It was still not as brilliant as the pre-2001 steering. it still did not reach the levels of feel that the pre-2001 steering had, feeling artificial compared to that, but compared to what it had come with, it was a vast improvement, absolutely brilliant. I would say it was about 80% as good as the pre-2001 steering, with much reduced effort, an immeasurably better than the 2001 spec. It was also the last steering in non-BMW that was really impressive. But it was clearly a stop gap. It was again too heavy to be satisfactory to non-enthusiast buyers because it took some effort and clearly BMW was worried about how this limited the appeal of the car and blocked sales of the car to people who are attracted to the BMW badge for the status but care nothing for the "ultimate driving machine" promise of badge. It was here that BMW started to feel that making cars appealing to enthusiasts but limiting sales to non-enthusiasts would stand in the way of it new goal to match audi and Mercedes in global sales. This was the time when all the things that had made BMW cars what they were was set aside. this is when bangle designs took off, this is when the Z4 and the E60 5 series came out. This is the period in which BMW cars stopped being the absolute total masters of driver appeal that they used to be. India has not experienced the BMW of the old days.
The E90 again returned to something similar to what BMW had tried with the 2001 E46. It was a very good handling car, but more appealing to more people. Its steering wasn't as good as the E46 (not even in the M), feeling artificial, as if connected to an electronic drive-by-wire sensor, deprived of the muscle and sinew in its guts that earlier 3ers had used to make the driver feel like he had his hands on the contact patches of the tires. But while it was so compared to the earlier BMWs, it was still extremely good and quite acceptable in the context of what other sports and sporty cars offered at the time. It was good enough and the car enough of an advance over the E46 that it didn't elicit much complaint.
The F30 however had gone all the way. What BMW tried in 2001 and had to back off from because of complaints from enthusiasts, they've succeeded in doing in 2012.
That was the story of the steering. the other aspect is the engine. As I explored the world of cars and drove many kinds, I was particularly struck by the BMW inline 6 engine. I became a die hard fan of the straight six. This was the best kind of engine configuration. The V6 had replaced the inline 6 because its shorter length made it hugely more appealing for packaging reasons. It could be used in transverse layouts easily (matters because most cars are now of that layout), and in longitudinal layouts, it permitted a much shorter engine bay and thus a far more spacious cabin within the same wheelbase.
But I found that for driver appeal, the inline 6 engine was just wonderful. inline 6 engines rev like turbines and make a lovely song. BY comparison, V6 engines were either crude or just very very bland, like the one in my dad's A6 3.0T quattro. A V6 can be massaged to minimize its vibrations, and use of clever engine mounts can remove the last bits reaching the cabin, but it cannot replicate the feel and sound of an inline 6.
I also found that much of the appeal of an inline 6 vs a V6 gets lost when mated to an automatic transmission, the automation mechanism filtering out virtually everything that makes them feel different.
And I found every single automatic transmission BMW i drove to be a tremendous disappointment. Oh, they make fine transport appliances that pamper the occupants. But in every case, they have not been 10% the drivers machines that their manual transmission equivalents have been.
It doesn't matter to 80% of BMW buyers in the US and it doesn't matter to 100% of BMW buyers in INdia.
Now we have a 3 series in India without a straight six engine, without a manual transmission, without wonderful steering, but with all the prestige, gadgetry and style that the Indian premium car buyer craves.
Please buy the car if you like it. I am sure its a brilliant luxury car and will make lots of people very happy.
But don't tell me that you're an enthusiast driver. Enthusiast drivers don't buy luxury cars. They buy cars with charismatic engines, superb steering, manual transmissions and they leave the all the numb soft convenience and luxury to other people.
There aren't very many of those in India.
Last edited by mobike008 : 13th September 2012 at 11:59.
Reason: back to back posts. Please refrain
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