We won’t miss this BMW
BMW has made some fantastic sports cars over the years. The justdeparted Z4 was never really one of them. Damien O’Carroll waves goodbye with a smile.
A car you probably never thought much about has quietly slipped out of production. We’re talking about the BMW Z4, the oldest model in the brand’s lineup and essentially the last vehicle for BMW’s previous-generation technology and design.
We won’t miss it. For a company that generally knows how to make proper driver’s cars, modern BMW roadsters have rarely hit the mark in terms of driver appeal, performance or desirability.
Incredible when you think they’ve had 20 years to get it right. It all started back in 1995, when BMW revealed the Z3 roadster to a wave of apathy. Saddled with a 1.8-litre fourcylinder petrol engine that produced a dismal 85kW of power and 168Nm of torque, the Z3 took more than 10 seconds to hit 100kmh. The styling seemed to be apologising for the poor performance.
A slightly more powerful 103kW/180Nm 1.9-litre engine was also available at launch, while the addition of a 2.8-litre inline sixcylinder engine in 1996 finally gave this underwhelming effort some decent performance.
While it did improve throughout its lifespan – with the more powerful six-cylinder version eventually becoming quite a wellregarded car – the Z3 lagged behind the competition for most of its existence. For example: it still had a plastic rear window when the far cheaper Mazda MX5 got a glass one. Basic stuff. Speaking of basic, the optional automatic was a four-speed unit.
The most notable moment of the Z3’s life (apart from the brilliantly mental Z3 M roadster and coupe that sprang from it in 1997) was its initial appearance before the world in the James Bond movie Goldeneye.
If the Z3 was a largely underwhelming effort, its replacement – the first generation Z4 from 2002 – was a whole different collection of wildly improbably swoops and angles.
Styled by Danish designer Anders Warming, the Z4 landed at the height of the Chris Bangle-led ‘‘Flame Surface’’ design phase that so polarised consumers and commentators.
The Z4 was arguably the pinnacle (or nadir, depending on your tastes) of that particular design direction.
While it may have looked somewhat challenging, BMW seemed to have finally achieved quality and driver appeal with the Z4. So it was something of a mystery when the secondgeneration Z4 launched in 2009: in terms of sporting character, it seemed to be a huge step backwards. Instead of being a premium European competitor for the Mazda MX-5 (like the original was intended to be, but never really was) or a Porsche Boxster (like the Z4 M aspired to be), the new Z4 was a soft, bloated cruiser. And there it basically stayed, with the Z4 almost becoming the forgotten branch of the BMW family tree, languishing in the background with only relatively minor updates until it was finally bundled into a figurative sack and thrown into an allegorical river.
The Z4 was the only car in BMW’s current range to lack the company’s ConnectedDrive connectivity/concierge system and it was also the last haven for the admittedly excellent N54B30 twin-turbo 3-litre inline sixcylinder petrol engine.
BMW quietly dropped the Z4 in New Zealand in 2014, after averaging around 10 sales per year during its life. In August this year, production ceased completely.
So the Z4 is dead, but there will almost certainly be something to replace it. And it will likely come in the form of a collaboration between BMW and Toyota.
The two companies signed an agreement a number of years ago to develop hybrid technologies, as well as an unspecified sports car, which is likely to become both the replacement for the Z4 and a new Toyota Supra.
The Z5/Supra is scheduled to enter production in 2018, meaning that if you really want a new BMW roadster before then… you are probably out of luck. It’s for the best.