BMW 225i Active Tourer 2014 Review - International

You know the world’s forces are in flux when BMW decides it’s the right time to bring this style of car to Australia and Volkswagen decides it’s not. One of them must be wrong.

The parallel is impossible to ignore because with Audi sitting out this fight for the foreseeable future (it’s not sexy enough, they say), the closest on-paper and in-spirit foe for the 2 Series Active Tourer is Volkswagen’s Golf Sportsvan. There is the Mercedes-Benz B-Class, but, frankly, in my opinion, it’s not good enough to warrant being in the picture here.

The main differences between the Golf Sportsvan and the 2 Series Active Tourer are that Volkswagen’s been doing it longer (it had the Golf Plus in the last two generations of Golf) and that BMW is aiming at a far more premium end of the market. That, and the BMW is actually coming to Australia, whereas Volkswagen isn’t confident anybody here will care about its latest Golf variant.

They’re right to ask themselves that question, because both cars focus on interior space and versatility but are easier to park than most things with this much capacity ought to be. And BMW might even have a marker to navigate by, with the similarly sized Mercedes-Benz B-Class carrying similar dimensions and finding a toehold in Australia. It’s not really anything like as convincing as the 225i Active Tourer, though, and its sales to the end of June this year dropped more than 40 per cent from its 2013 high of just over 1950.

The BMW is based on a modular architecture designed from the ground up to house this car, plus up to five others bearing BMW badges (the most likely being a sedan, a seven-seat version of this car and a hatchback), plus a myriad of MINIs. The 2 Series Coupe and Convertible will stay on rear-drive architecture, while the much-hyped Z2 sports car exists only in the minds of one or two amateur product planners in German magazines.

Being the first front-drive production BMW carries some responsibilities, so BMW hasn’t skimped on the resources, with expensive tailor-welded blanks throughout the body structure. There’s a multi-link rear suspension set-up for this car, plus a very stiff front structure made from a high-strength steel subframe, plus front struts with aluminium bearings.

Then there’s the size. It’s only 4342mm long, which makes it a significant 282mm (about a foot) shorter than the 3 Series Touring, and indicates it’s a car developed with city work uppermost in BMW’s mind.

BMW now has a dizzying assortment of mid-sized, non-sedan, extra-space models these days, so it’s worth adding that 225i Active Tourer is a 482mm (nearly half a metre) shorter than the 3 Series GranTurismo, but only 296mm shorter than the 4 Series GranCoupe.

The 3 Series Touring and the 4 Series GranCoupe share a wheelbase, which is 140mm longer than the 2670mm stat on the Active Tourer, but then things get less obvious in the in-house size wars.

The Active Tourer is 1800mm wide, which is only 11mm narrower than the wagon, 25mm narrower than the GranCoupe and just 28mm narrower than the big GranTurismo. And yet, when you measure the shoulder room, the Active Tourer trumps them all, in both the front and the rear, but especially the rear, which is wins by at least 140mm over its siblings.

Neither is the newcomer miles behind in cargo capacity, with BMW claiming 468 litres of capacity with the rear seats in the standard position (they can move fore-and-after, have a 40/20/40 split and also have adjustable backrests), though we suspect that figure includes the divided trays beneath the false floor, so it’s probably less than that in reality. Still, it’s only 12 litres less than the GranCoupe, 27 litres less than the Touring and 52 litres less than the GranTurismo.

Drop the rear seats flat and the Active Tourer turns that around, claiming a 210-litre advantage over the sportier GranCoupe, a 10-litre advantage over the Touring and losing out (by 90 litres) to the 3 Series GranTurismo.

So there’s a level of spaciousness inside the 225i that belies its exterior length and does it well enough to confuse the issue for anybody wanting a non-standard sedan with a BMW badge (presuming, of course, they want a step-down in hard-core street cred).

It’s not just big in the back; the luggage area is well organised, with curry hooks on both sides of the space, tie-down and elastic straps aplenty, a nice deep floor and electric buttons to drop the seats down. And the single, roof-hinged door is massive, giving it a large opening, allowing you to slide in things that are up to 2.4 metres long. And the rear seats are comfortable, too, with that shoulder room, plus headroom, a high seating position and big windows, giving an impression of space and airiness that the car doesn’t match up in the paying seats.

If all of this sounds like stuff that would be peripherally relevant to the average BMW customer, then BMW agrees with you, thinking that 70 per cent of Active Tourer buyers will be new to the brand. There was, it claimed, a critical mass of people wanting a BMW but not finding sufficient practicality inside the brand’s line-up to sign a cheque for one; hence the Active Tourer.

An alternate way to think of it, though, is that where Mercedes-Benz has twinned the CLS- and E-Class bodies on the one machine (and the A- and CLA-Class) and where the Golf and the A3 are similar at the Volkswagen Group, BMW has just pulled the same big cost-efficiency swiftie with the MINI and BMW brands.

But is it genuinely a premium offering?

The first thing you notice up front is that the materials are very, very convincing. With the sole exception of a cheap-to-touch lid over a secretive storage area beneath the HVAC controls, everything looks classy, feels premium and works brilliantly well. It’s a clear cut above the B-Class interior. There are those who felt the raised reflective glass-type head-up display isn’t cutting edge, but it’s easy to adjust in height and direction via the multi-media screen and the iDrive controller.

Standard gear includes a 6.5-inch multimedia screen, a Bluetooth interface for hands-free conversations, radar cruise control, emergency braking and dual-zone climate control. And it’ll hold a full 1.5-litre water bottle in each front door pocket.

There are issues, though, before you even move off. The most obvious is the triangle A-pillar. On the Golf Sportsvan, one of the twin pillars is large, the other is narrow and the window between them is sizeable. In the BMW, both pillars are fat and the window is much smaller, making vision difficult not just in some T-junctions, but in tight, winding roads as well. It’s like a critical five-degrees of vision has just been sacrificed on each side.

Other than that, it’s pretty easy to get sorted. The driving position, with a wide range of fore-and-aft adjustment, height adjustment and steering wheel adjustment is exceptionally good, however, once you’re comfortable, you’ll find something extremely odd for a BMW: you can’t see the bonnet. At all. Thank the sloping front-drive body style for that, and thank the parking distance control for stopping you rearranging it.

There will be three engines coming to Australia for this car: this one, the 1.5-litre, three-cylinder engine that works so well in the MINI Cooper (and that BMW Australia has high hopes for in this body) and a four-cylinder turbo-diesel.
This is the strongest and fastest of them, with 170kW of power out a 2.0-litre direct-injected, twin-scroll turbocharged four pot. The power hit comes at 5000rpm, while the 350Nm of torque starts from 1250rpm and stays until 4500.

It’s reasonably economical, too, given that this specification weighs 1430kg, thanks to an NEDC number of 5.8L/100 km and emissions of 135g/km of CO2.

BMW mates this motor (it’s effectively the MINI Cooper S engine) to an eight-speed automatic transmission and there’s no sign of any rear diff to help a bit. Mostly, it’s not needed. BMW has not completely dialled out torque steer, but it has come close.

The numbers suggest a faster car than it feels, with the 100km/h sprint being knocked over in 6.6 seconds and on to a 240km/h top speed. It never actually feels that quick on the road and it’s instead more notable for how smooth the powertrain is, and how flexible the engine is from middling revs.

The transmission works best in Sport mode, where it’s accurate and intuitive. It’s smooth and crisp, and is a better alternative than the notchier manual offerings in the lower machines.

It’s not a car with a handling package that begs you to grab it and throw it around. It is more the sort of car that works hard at keeping things calm for the driver and passengers, regardless of the level of competence involved. There is grip there, thanks partly to BMW fitting all the test cars with 18-inch rubber instead of the stock 205/55 R17 tyres, but also through a very accurate suspension set-up.

BMW insists the Active Tourer has been tuned to have its own, unique character and is nothing like the MINI. But it is a lot like the MINI in the way it handles. Note: handles, not rides. Its on-road behaviour is probably summed up best as a bigger MINI with the same competences and a more compliant ride.

It’s not perfection, though. The electric steering set-up is woolly and unengaging in Comfort mode (but better in Sport), but the worst of it is the sheer volume of road noise coming into the cabin from both ends. Maybe it’s related to the fatter rubber. Maybe not. But it’s there and it’s not premium.

But almost everything else is falls into the ‘premium’ category well enough. It’s the kind of car you almost certainly won’t ‘get’ if you arrive with preconceptions. It’s the kind of car you almost certainly won’t ‘get’ after a 10-minute drive. But the more time you spend in it, the more you understand what it’s about.

As for whether it’s BMW enough, you’ll probably have to ask the first tranche of buyers because it makes more sense with more time inside it.

2014 BMW 225i Active Tourer pricing and specifications:
Price: $TBA