BMW 328i 2011 Review - International

What we liked
>>Sparkling chassis balance
>>The handling crackle is back
>>Big-car ride quality
>>Far roomier interior

It’s the biggest bet BMW makes and it’s one they hold their breaths with whenever they do it. Can the all-new 3-Series live up to a heritage that dates back to the 2002?

Sooner or later, you will end up knowing quite a lot about the new 3-Series, dubbed the F30 in the internal halls of Munich’s Fiz technical centre.

It will be the basis for many a BMW, including this new sedan which will arrive in Australia in February, a wagon, a five-door GT in the 5-Series GT-vein, a coupe and a convertible and then, of course, M will give it an inevitable tickle, too.

For now, though, we will leave you with just a few first engineering and drive impressions from the 328i, which is expected to be the rock of the 3-Series range worldwide.

It’s bigger than the old 3-Series in almost every respect, from length, to height, to its front and rear tracks and in its wheelbase and overhangs. And it’s lighter by around 40kg, depending on the specification you compare.

And, for the first time ever, the 328i is a four-cylinder, rather than a six. BMW believes its new 2.0-litre, direct-injection, in-line four is an engine that bests its traditional 3.0-litre sixes for smoothness and its twin-scroll turbocharger means it steams over the top of them for mid-range performance as well.

Besides its 180kW of power and 350Nm of torque, the four-cylinder engine also employs start-stop to help it run a combined fuel economy of 6.4L/100km, which isn’t bad for a car that runs to 100km/h in 5.9 seconds and keeps going to 250km/h. Well, it does in its new Sports specification, but not in its two other guises.

While the base (and fastest) version of the Sports runs a six-speed manual gearbox to appease BMW’s purists, it brings an eight-speed automatic into the mid-size prestige fight to appease everybody else. It’s a gear more than anybody else has and it has lower fuel consumption than the manual.

BMW also has another argument for those purists who see the 328i badge as a six-cylinder one: to 100km/h, the new four-cylinder is just 0.5 seconds slower than the turbo-six manages in its efforts to propel the incoming 335i.

Like all new BMWs, though, the “new” 3-Series is not exactly all new. It is the way of Munich that the 3-Series shares plenty of parts with the rest of the family, both lesser and greater. The front suspension, the front bulkhead, (most of) the central floorpan, the electrical systems, the iDrive switchgear and even the transmission tunnel are carried over from the new 1-Series; the transmission is already well-worked and even the 328i’s engine first saw action in the Z4 sDrive 28i.

It gains its extra length by the ridiculously simple expedient of chopping the 1-Series central pan a bit longer, gains the extra width by attaching thicker rocker panels to the sides and still drops 45kg over its predecessor.

Its visual theme is clearly 3-Series and, arguably, it is the most conservative evolution yet of what was once BMW’s smallest car. BMW argues that it’s quite radical from certain angles, but you have to be standing in the same room as the car and its designer so these “radical” changes can be explained to you before you notice. Otherwise it just looks like a sharper, sleeker, cleaner 3-Series with a lower nose or a slightly crisper 5-Series. Or something in between, which is probably the point.

BMW has borrowed from the Mercedes-Benz playbook by offering Modern, Luxury and Sports versions of the 328i, which are basically three differently “themed” 328is on the same core car. Where Benz changes the grilles between its Avant Garde and its Elegance, the most significant changes BMW makes are to the detailing in the air intakes at the side of the bumper. The trio also has different wheels, the Modern and Luxury specs top out at a lower 210km/h and, finally, the interior trims are different, too.

The kidney grilles take on more historical significance with every evolution at BMW, and they now stand out proudly, surrounded by headlights so sharp looking they could almost cut you. The most obvious change is that the kidney grilles are now wider, lean forward and you can also see their chromed surrounds from the side of the car. The headlights automatically adjust to high beam whenever it’s safe, turn corners whenever you do, sit beneath a lower bonnet and still have the traditional LED corona rings.

If all that sounds like BMW has taken very few risks with the car that accounts for a third of its total sales, it’s an opinion that’s reinforced inside a cabin where size, style and quality materials meet better than they ever have in a 3-Series before. The 328i we drove came as a Sports line model, which included an anodized-style red streak of metal across the clean dash and, as odd as it sounds, it kinda worked.

There is the now-traditional BMW infotainment and nav screen jutting up at the top of the dash and, while it looks like it folds away, it’s actually a permanent growth that you either regard as a carbuncle or become faithfully enamored of.

Immediately, though, the cabin feels as though it has more space - and it does. The rear seat room, never a 3-Series calling card, is up 17mm, the rear knee room is up 15mm and there’s 0.3 inches more headroom, too. You’d have every right to expect such largess for the occupants, because the whole car is significantly bigger.

The car itself is 93cm longer, though only 50mm of that growth is in the wheelbase, and the tracks have grown at both ends (37mm at the front and 47 at the rear). The front and rear overhangs are both longer, too, and there’s another 20 litres of boot space, taking it out to 480 litres, though the low boot lid and high floor, hiding a complex, five-link rear suspension mean it’s not a hole that’s up with Audi’s level of usefulness.

There are, typically, two massive dials (one a tacho and one a speedo) dominating the instrument cluster real estate and now, with its proximity key, you fire up the 328i via a start button you can’t actually see. It’s buried behind the right-side steering wheel spoke and you can look in vain for the electric parking brake, because the 328i still uses an old-school lever.

It has, as you’d expect, a flawless driving position, though we only had the chance to sample the 328i automatic. The pedals are perfectly positioned for both left- and right-foot brakers, the seats have a tremendous range of travel and the steering moves manually but has impressive range of height and reach adjustment.

But, as we found out on a cold, wet day in Barcelona, Spain, this week, the car has gained more in character than you could ever pick up from dry specification lists.

BMW insists the quality of its four-cylinder, turbo-charged motors, which also pick up variable valve timing and lift, is now high enough that they can do the performance and smoothness jobs normally tasked to six pots with all the fuel economy of a four. On paper, it’s tough to argue.

Btu while there is enough speed to live with the visual promise, it’s the economy that sets it all up as an impressively balanced driveline. BMW has confirmed it has achieved a combined city/highway figure of 6.4L/100km, with 8.5L/100km around town and 5.2 on the highways. That leaves it with a combined CO2 figure of 149g/km, which is impressive.

One of the tricks it uses to achieve this is the standard start-stop system, another is by having an engine so torquey and strong at low revs that people can fling the tacho needle skywards only when they want to, not because it’s compulsory to make the damned thing move before every single gear change.

It’s a smooth motor, especially at low revs, and its idle feels little different to the old six’s.  It has tremendous strength at low revs for such a small capacity engine, with 350Nm of torque arriving at 1250rpm and staying in a flat line until 4800rpm.

The odd thing is; that’s not how it feels to drive. A lot of turbo motors nowadays have similarly flat torque curves and offer flat performance. The 328i offers a drive that starts strongly and just gets stronger. It’s not perfectly linear, like an atmo six, but it’s a big step in the right direction, especially when the power peak has its own flat line, arriving at 5000 revs and sticking around until 6500.

It revs higher than that, though, fizzing all the way out to around 6800, but the truth is the last 400 revs or so are just for show. Its best work has been done and spun, and you might as well change gear earlier just because it feels more effective and it’s also smoother.

The noise isn’t as pure as the atmo (and neither is its throttle response) but it’s very good and maintains its composure beautifully, except where it tails away right at the top. It’s quiet from idle until you ask it for everything it’s got, then its tailpipes get all angry and drip with an immediate, slightly metallic strength that gets thicker and richer until it gets a growl to it at around 3800rpm, from where it just gets snarlier until well into the sixes.

Whatever the purists might believe, this engine is born to run with the eight-speed automatic. It’s a lovely device and, in our test car, had the optional paddle gear shifts which are a tacit admission from BMW that the old model’s push-pull paddle shift arrangement was, well, silly. This one runs the same one-up, one-down philosophy as M has been using for years, and it works intuitively. You can also change gears on the shift lever, which works nicely as well, or you can leave the whole business to the 328i’s big brain.

There is much to like here, and it ties into the same modal switch we’ve seen in the 5-Series. In the 328i, you can choose either the default Comfort setting, Sport, Sport + or Eco Pro, which might save you heaps of fuel by harnessing virtually every energy drain source in the car and putting them on a budget, but it does its very best to make it feel  like a 1.0-litre six-cylinder car.

Sport + is a bit track-pack, tightening up the throttle, turning off the traction and skid controls and, in our version with the optional Dynamic Damper Control, tightening up the suspension, too.

The chassis is easily the highlight of the car, and that’s partly because of the damper control system (which we’ll be seeing a lot more of on all sorts of cars in the near future), but mostly because the car is lighter, has a longer wheelbase and runs a 50:50 front-to-rear weight distribution.

It steals what is already an impressive show by being so nimble and light on its feet that it feels like a featherweight when you want it to dance, but you can switch it to become a heavyweight when you want it to crush the bumps beneath you.

It’s a daring chassis; one that might have been saved up for the next Z4, but here it is beneath BMW’s stock in trade. Arrive at a corner carrying far too much corner speed and the 328i’s steering lightens for a moment to tell you it’s understeering, then it waits for the tyres to scrub off enough speed and coyly sneaks in towards the apex.

It’s the same trick when the back end starts to slide, with the 328i gently breaking free, telling you about it so diplomatically that you think the proactive steering input is your reactive idea and then straightening up and driving hard out of the corner.

It carries far more mid-corner grip than we thought possible on the saturated Spanish roads, and the 328i covered itself in kudos, charming with brilliant balance, being stupidly adjustable mid-corner, refusing to be anything but hugely progressive and unrelentingly forgiving of errors or ham-fistedness.

It doesn’t matter if you’re in a tight corner or a fast one, the 328i likes to have enough spring to turn in and then it just keeps surprising you with how much more throttle you can put to the road, and how early you can put it there. It’s so stable, too, that if you’re in a corner and favor the chip-chip-chipper style or you’re a one-turn-in-one-turn-out guy, it works either way.

Its power down is immense out of tight corners and the traction is hard to fault - even when you turn everything off or use Sport + (which amounts to the same thing), which BMW alone of the German prestige guys permits you to do.

Like the rest of the chassis, the brakes are tremendously strong and adjustable mid-corner. The pedal position never moved in four hours of hard mountain driving, either.

The steering is, in this return to absolute driving fun, not brilliant. Well, it’s not bad, it’s just not quite at the standards of the rest of the car and is damned by the comparison.

So, that’s what’s right. What’s wrong? For some, the styling doesn’t go far enough, even with its new low nose and all the design talk about differences that aren’t immediately apparent to the untrained eye. And the boot is not huge in the practical Audi style, with all that rear-drive suspension architecture chewing up any potential for a deeper floor.

But that’s about it.

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