CRUCIAL THREE
BMW’s compact executive saloon icon enters a remarkable seventh generation later this year – and it’s getting it sporting mojo back
For all sorts of reasons — not least because it’s hard to think of another car in recent times that has achieved such critical acclaim and sales popularity in equally phenomenal measures — we might wonder.
For BMW’s next-generation 3 Series, due to be unveiled at the Paris motor show later this year and appear on Thai roads in early 2019, reasserting the compact executive saloon segment dominance that its predecessors have enjoyed looks a particularly tall order.
It faces a Mercedes-Benz C-Class that’s good enough in its latest iteration to comprehensively outsell the outgoing F30coded 3 Series. The Alfa Romeo Giulia and Jaguar XE, neither of which existed at the launch of the sixth-generation 3 Series seven years ago, are both plainly out to purloin BMW’s mantle as the maker of the best-handling compact saloon.
Unlike us, of course, BMW’s own executives, designers and engineers have not been wondering, or indeed worrying, about what the future holds; confident in the strength and equity built into the 3 Series brand over more than four decades, they’ve clearly been getting on with the job of bringing the world the seventh-gen version of a car whose name has become shorthand for its segment.
And they’re almost finished. With only the finer points of software calibration and tuning still to do, BMW recently made the new 3 Series available to us in prototype form for a short test drive around German’s Eifel mountains and a not-so-short couple of laps of the Nurburging Nordschleife.
It’ll be another few weeks until BMW is ready to reveal how the exact technical details of the new 3 Series, codenamed G20, will depart from its forebear. As background for this taster, however, we were told that it’s a slightly longer and wider car, with a longer wheelbase; and that, having been built on BMW’s Cluster Architecture, it’s made of a higher proportion of aluminium, magnesium and high-strength steel than its predecessor, and is a slightly lighter (up to 55kg) and torsionally stiffer (by 15-20%) car to boot.
The 3 Series’ axle tracks have both grown, with MacPherson strut suspension used up front and a multi-link arrangement at the rear. A wide-ranging overhaul of the suspension and steering hardware has left little untouched. There’s a new ‘variable sport’ steering box (although it isn’t speed-sensitive ‘active steering’, which hasn’t featured on a 3 Series since the E90 generation); there are new optional adaptive dampers from Tenneco if you want them; and there’s firmer springing and bushing for cars with M Sport suspension than of like-for-like current-gen cars.
But there are no air springs (at least not for the saloon) and no four-wheel steering. Contrary to what you might have read elsewhere, Munich is clearly content to leave features like those at the more expensive end of the executive saloon spectrum.
BMW has, in fact, made an effort to rationalise its investment of new suspension componentry and development resource with this version of the 3 Series; to focus on the hardware that customers actually buy; and to attempt to imbue this version with a simpler, more direct and more discernably sporting character.
Dynamically, at least, it aims to head back towards the 3 Series’ roots; and, as roots go, they were pretty good. For an admission of the fact that BMW is in defensive mode, ready to protect the territory it has owned for so long from the likes of Alfa Romeo and Jaguar, look no further than that.
By and large, 3 Series drivers don’t buy adaptive dampers, and so devoting a large proportion of development time to finetuning those dampers, as BMW has in the past, just doesn’t make sense. Buyers tend to prefer passive suspension, often with an alloy wheel upgrade. And, this time around, those customers will get struts with both main and auxiliary springs, as well as clever shock absorbers that provide additional damping support at the extremes of wheel travel (for improved rebound control at the front axle and better compression support at the rear).
“The suspension hardware means we’ve been able to increase the effective spring rate of the M Sport suspension quite a lot, so there’s now twice as big a gap in terms of handling response and body control between cars with standard suspension and M Sport suspension than before,” explained Jos Van As, who leads the 3 Series’ driving dynamics engineering team.
“But we’ve also been able to take initial, low-level damping interference away in the stiffer-sprung version, because we’ve got more progressive control available later in the suspension stroke. That actually makes the car’s ride flatter and more supple, because the suspension’s freer to work and to move to begin with; the body doesn’t jostle or fidget as much. Other manufacturers use ‘selective’ dampers in an attempt to achieve something similar, but those can ‘freeze’ when the suspension inputs pass a certain pretty arbitrary frequency — and when they really needn’t.”
The new 3 Series’ engine range isn’t likely to change too much, according to project insiders, who admit that — in spite of the uncertainties associated with the future market acceptance of diesel or indeed any sort of non-hybrid powertrain — they haven’t attempted to fix what isn’t believed to be broken.
The advancements relevant to the 2.0litre four-cylinder petrol-turbo 330i they gave us for testing are, we were told, a reasonable guide for what to expect more widely. It benefits from a 7hp improvement in power (taking it above the 250hp barrier) and a 50Nm increase in torque (up to 400Nm), with incremental like-for-like gains on emissions and lab test fuel economy likely (although as yet unconfirmed).
While less powerful versions will come with manual gearboxes as standard, at 330i/330d level and above all will be eightspeed automatics. Selected engines will be offered with xDrive four-wheel drive, and one or two might be xDrive only.
Stick to standard drive and M Sport trim in your 3 Series, however, and you’ll be offered something that’s in effect been confined to BMW’s dealer-fit accessories catalogue for a while now: a limited-slip differential. The new G20-gen car has a simplified version of the e-diff you’ll find on the current M3 that uses clutches to vector torque between the inner and outer rear wheels. It’ll be available only as part of a package of options, and only in tandem with the car’s more powerful engines.
Whatever kind of sporting driving experience they’re looking for from their executive saloon, owners of the new 3 Series will, I suspect, find what they’re after. Our test drive was quite short and only took in one engine and one combination of wheel, tyre, suspension, steering, transmission and differential. Our 330i prototype had the M Sport passive sports suspension that BMW has worked so hard on, as well as 19in mixed-width M Sport alloy wheels, Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S non-runflat tyres, an automatic gearbox, ‘variable sport’ steering and that new torque-vectoring e-diff.
First impressions? In this configuration, a Giulia probably remains a more compact and lighter-feeling, marginally more incisive and naturally agile saloon. But then, modern BMWs are relatively complicated, more ‘specification-sensitive’ cars than most of their executive rivals; and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that, in just the right mechanical trim, this car could dive and swivel left and right just as keenly as its Italian challenger.
Although the interior of our 3 Series prototype was covered with disguise almost as thoroughly as its exterior, it was possible to note a few themes about the new cabin. For one, it’ll have some surprisingly flashy, ritzy material touches — no doubt in response to the public’s apparent appetite for the more lavish/chintzy (delete according to personal taste) C-Class. There’s certainly more glossy chrome-effect plastic to be found around the air vents than there is in the current 3 Series.
Lower down the centre console, it seems as if BMW’s had a rethink on how it presents the car’s drive mode buttons, preferring a row of discreet Comfort, Sport, Eco and DSC Off keys to the old rocker switch of the current car. And up ahead, our prototype had a proper digital instrument screen unlike that of its larger BMW contemporaries, because it doesn’t feature fixed chrome bezels. Although we didn’t have the time to fully explore its modes, that fact alone should greatly add to its flexibility and the number of ways in which the display can be configured.
Only certain drive modes were available to try on our test drive, and on a passively suspended 330i M Sport on 19in rims — especially one described in the “firmed-up” terms we’ve already detailed — experience teaches you to have realistic expectations of the car’s Comfort setting. But the new 3 Series rides with a surprisingly settled suppleness and dexterity for something of an explicitly sporting brief.
It does feel a little bit firm at low speeds, and slightly busy over smaller ruts and bumps taken at speed. But it certainly has suspension seemingly capable of working hard within the wheel housings without ruining the level poise of the body until it really needs to. Plenty of tarmac imperfections are therefore heard but not really felt too much from the driver’s seat — and despite the progressive settings of both spring and damper, the car’s ride frequency feels honest and predictable as the bumps get bigger.
The suspension’s outright ability to absorb punishment without running out of travel, meanwhile, is quite remarkable — up there with a really well-sorted hot hatchback.
After a switch to Sport+ mode (the only other available to test), the 330i’s steering gets meatier and a touch more precise just off centre. Van As explained that BMW always tries to cater for the customer who wants to relax a little at 200kph (on the German autobahn); maybe even take one hand off the wheel for a moment when he needs to.
In this mode, the 330i’s engine is drowned out by artificial engine sound when you’d sooner listen to the car’s motor, however plain-sounding — but it feels gutsy enough; capable of that level of real-world pace beyond which extra power and pace is hard to use. Responsive, too.
It may not be quite gutsy enough, though, to easily bring to life a chassis that ought to be among the most throttle-adjustable in the class, particularly considering BMW’s equipment of that e-diff. But on that score, we’ll have to wait and see. That’s partly because the 3 Series’ delicacy of handling balance will almost certainly be better on smaller rims than our prototype’s optional 19in wheels, but also because our test car’s DSC Off driving mode (in which the car’s active diff will take on its most aggressive software calibration) wasn’t one of those deemed to be production-ready.
What can we conclude, then? Not a great deal, perhaps; particularly as regards the lower-end petrol and diesel models that the majority of owners will drive over the next seven years. And yet we can be encouraged by plenty. The 3 Series is plainly the work of people stirred by competitive instincts, who’ve set out to make the very best driver’s car of its kind — and they may very well have succeeded.