First drive in an E90

I got an E90 325i as a loaner car from a BMW dealership when my M Coupe was in for its 1200 mile service. What follows are my impressions of the car.

The exterior is not the tasteless mess that the 5 and 7 series are, but it lacks the refined ellegance of the E46 3 Series. There are some angles from which the car looks unbalanced and akward, where the E46 looked perfect from every angle, and some detailing (such as the tailights' boundary lines) were not well chosen.

The interior is cheap, akin to a 4-year-old Mazda 6. For the price of a 3 Series I'd expect a lot better materials. The E90's interior is also somewhat ugly - far less attractive than the E46's interior. I was also surprised to find only manual seat adjustments. I must surmise this was standard on the E46 as well, but I never got an E46 loaner (same dealership) that didn't have a power driver's seat. The E90 seats were comfortable though, and held me well through turns.

The steering effort felt ok at first, but at slower speeds it seemed to have a variable ratio. I assume this feeling is actually variable effort, but it still makes transitional driving uncertain. Overall the steering feel was ok, and the weight is good at highway speeds, but it offers less feedback than the E46 models. Why BMW thinks that ditching the benchmark steering of the sport sedan segment is beyond me.

Grip was very good, and turn-in was crisp and positive...except at lower speeds where it was dead and overly light. The ride was exceptionally smooth for it's cornering ability.

The brake travel was short and precise, but felt dead and remote. Maybe it's better when pushed around the Nurburgring, but for daily driving it's no more remarkable or tactile than a Toyota's.

The new 6-spd transmission is much better than the E46's 5-spd, although shifts in automatic mode are still a bit slow. Shifts in sport mode are much improved, but you sacrifice fuel economy because it then holds gears under part throttle. Manual mode is good, with shifts happening fairly quickly. But the transmission still upshifts near redline, thus invalidating the purpose of manual shifting.

The engine pulled well and returned good mileage. It's as good as one would expect from BMW.

Other gripes:
How do I deactivate DSC? There is a DTC button, but I believe that only deativates the Dynamic Traction Control. With stability control still active, you cannot properly track the car, or drift, or truely drive it in a sporting manner. Apparently the lawyers have won...or BMW is no longer interested in building "ultimate driving machines".

The rear seat center headrest blocks the bottom 1/2 of the rear view mirror. This makes the E90's rearward visibility worse than the Z4 Coupe's - often panned unfairly by the press.

The new turn signal stalk is not as ergonomic as the traditional one. A slight push in one direction causes the signal on that side of the car to blink three times (not once, not twice, but thrice, not four, not five, just thrice). Pushing it further makes it stay on until you turn significantly. It's not the worst idea for a turn signal stalk ever, in fact it's the second best, but why toss out a perfect system for a "newer" one that's almost as easy to use? This is another example of German over-engineering at the expense of usefullness.

Which brings us to the key. Oh, wait, it's not a key...it's some sort of button-sporting fob/plug thing. Ok, forget that it's actually larger than the previous key, forget that it does NOTHING different, forget that it's clunky Ford-looking hunk of plastic instead of being a compact work of functional art, BMW's "keyless" starting system actually requires MORE effort than using a traditional key. Instead of just sliding the key in and turning it, you must first insert the "fob" into a slot on the dash, then move your hand up and hit the start/stop button. That's not too bad, but to shut off the car you must put it in Park, hit the start/stop button, and then push IN on the fob and then pull it out of the dash slot. Personally, I'd rather just turn the key and pull it out in one smooth motion and get on with my life.

Before returning the car I re-filled it with gas - a process made irritating by there being NO finger dent with which to pry the outer cap up. I even tried pushing in the rear of the flap, but that didn't work. Eventually I was able to pry it open using both hands. There was no remote release (that I could find). I'm sure there is some easier way to open the flap (there MUST be!), but it certainly wasn't intuitive for me to figure out.

I really tried to like this car, and much of its engineering is worth liking, but the overall design, feel and ergonomics are a big step backwards from the previous generation. While it is statistically superior in most ways to the E46, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I was constantly asking the car for permission to do things instead of simply driving.