THE 3 SERIES PERFECTED?
THE CHALLENGING ROADS surrounding BMW’s Nürburg development centre have been just as key to the 3-series’ development as the village’s famous race circuit (and so have roads in the USA, France and Wales).
We’re on the engineers’ secret test route in the hills and plains close to the Eifel mountains, a mix of fast, flowing sections and narrow, unsighted capillaries, in the same camo’d 330i prototype I was hot-lapping at the ’Ring just a few hours ago. On these quick, testing roads the new 3-series feels right at home, with top-drawer body control, plenty of feel through the M Sport-spec brakes and an eight-speed auto gearbox that feels notably well calibrated, supplying the right gear at exactly the right time – a surprisingly rare commodity. The sports seats are superbly comfortable, with support in all the right places, and you could easily imagine putting away a few hundred miles without fuss. Superb rolling refinement is one of the 5-series’ biggest assets, and more than a little of that car’s profound peace and quiet has filtered into the 3.
A perfect car, then? There are a few, minor, question marks left for the production car to answer. The prototype we tested was fitted with passive dampers in the firmest Sport set-up and 19-inch wheels. To BMW’s credit, the test route roads are seriously gnarly, including stretches of rough, pockmarked asphalt as bad as any you’ll find in the UK. Primary ride was excellent, but the car felt just a little jiggly and tremulous on lower-frequency bumps, even on some of the smoother stretches of tarmac. BMW’s still fine-tuning the dampers at this point; it’ll be interesting to see how production cars feel, and whether this particular fly can be plucked from the ointment.
One thing that can’t be fine-tuned is the car’s sheer width. The newly broadened 3-series feels like a big car now, more 5-series than compact backroad weapon. It’ll take up most of the lane on a typical B-road, and threading it along the line of your choice at speed is a little more stressful as a result. But the flipside is incredible stability, and the ability to carry serious corner speed.
Those sky-high limits are both a positive and a negative; on the road, at ordinary speeds, there’s a sense that the car is almost too good – you sense you’ll never get to really exploit all that it has to offer. But there is a pleasing sense of precision to its movements nevertheless. Like a wristwatch rated to an incredible diving depth you never plan to take it to, there’s undeniable appeal in knowing it can do it.
THE CAR’S SKY HIGH LIMITS ARE BOTH A
POSITIVE AND A NEGATIVE