Wife, meet mistress. Mistress, meet wndife
Fancy new 330i Touring should easily outclass trusty old 320, shouldn’t it? But of course nothing’s ever that simple.
The 330i’s arrival made us a two 3-series Touring family, giving me a chance to delve deep into what a decade’s development has brought.
I won’t argue my 2009 320i Touring is better, but there is a lot to like. The design has matured well, it’s still a comfortable, spacious car, and it’s currently enjoying an Indian summer of having shed all its value, still being perfectly good to use, but having enough ‘patina’ to make us feel carefree if never careless when using it. Decent enough mpg, cheap maintenance by a garage that’s within walking distance – there’s much to be said for this.
The obvious difference between the two cars is size: the new car is 188mm longer, putting it halfway between a 10-year-old 5-series and my 320i.
Inside, there’s a substantial increase in space for the new car, particularly in the back, plus analogue clocks have given way to a digital dash and an optional gesture function that lets you twirl thin air to adjust volume. Much of this technology is first class, though it’s striking how much harder the buttons for headlights and temperature control are to find than the old car’s dials.
It’s also a smarter, plusher cabin with standard leather trim, but I continue to be fond of the oldtimer, which shares its successor’s low-set driving position and sense of purpose from behind the wheel. I bought it five years ago from Marshall in Nottingham, who delivered it with four spare alloys shod with winter tyres in the boot; a nice surprise (less so the badly repaired hail damage on the roo).
The 320’s drive is a bit underwhelming: iffy electric steering in the early days of BMW’s adoption of the technology and uninspiring four-cylinder 170bhp powertrain saved by a nicely balanced chassis.
The new 330i is far better dynamically, as well as being more spacious and loaded with useful tech. Despite having only 80bhp more and being around 150kg heavier, it delivers comparable low- to mid-30s mpg and feels much brisker. It is stiffer and, I think, suffers more road noise at motorway speeds (though I’m rarely on the motorway in the 320i), a trade-off for this being the tauter, more precise driving machine. Nonetheless, living with them back-to-back, the new 330i is obviously better when judged on every single metric.
The new car also doesn’t break down. We had the 320i under extended warranty for as long as possible, at about £350 a year. For three years it worked perfectly, from 50k to 80k miles. In the fourth year we used the car about half as much, and started working through well known coil-pack failure issues, had an injector replaced, and a broken spring due to a man-sized pothole. That probably paid for most of the warranty. Then just before the warranty expired last year, the diff went. It cost the warranty company over £2k.