BMW M340i xDrive 2019 Review - International

To get your bearings on the BMW M340i xDrive, which joins the expanding G20 3 Series line-up that first arrived in Australia in March, stop looking towards the next BMW M3 and instead cast your mind back in time...

... A good place to stop would be 1998, the year the E39 M5 showed up.

Stick with me. This makes sense [Ed: really?].

The M3 has always been harder-edged than the M5; supposedly drawn from motorsport and happy to be flung from one place to another, while the M5 eased and powered its way there.

And that’s what the BMW M340i xDrive does.

Don’t believe me? The inline turbo B58 3.0-litre six of the new car thumps out 275kW and 500Nm, while the 4.9-litre V8 in the E39 M5 had 294kW of power and – what a coincidence – 500Nm of torque.

The M5 ran to 100km/h in 4.8sec – just 0.4sec slower than the new M340i xDrive – and they shared their 250km/h electronically limited top speeds, though both could easily run much faster. The M340i is also just 0.4sec slower to 100km/h than the outgoing M3...

Indeed, it actually feels a lot more like an old M5 than a middle-fast 3 Series and its dimensions aren’t even miles away -- such has been the bracket creep of the 3 Series bodyshell. Sure, it’s 70mm shorter than last century’s M5 at 4713mm long, but it’s 26mm wider and 28mm taller.

The G20 generation 3 Series’ wheelbase is 21mm longer than the E39 M5, yet the M340i is an astonishing 125kg lighter, even with the addition of a turbocharger, all-wheel drive and a mountain of interior tech.

So the classic M5 (or even its gorgeous E34 predecessor) is clearly the philosophical benchmark for the M340i, rather than the upcoming M3.

Just as well, because it doesn’t feel much like the M3, even though it scores plenty of M3-style stuff. There’s the M-Sport electro-mechanical locking differential, the M-Sport suspension and a ride height 10mm lower than the standard 3 Series.

But where a best-of-the-breed M3 really gets going the harder you push it, the M340i instead calms down, with every fibre of its communication with the driver urging you to settle for the speed you have.

It feels wonderful, mostly, up to about eight-tenths of the car’s performance envelope, and then its interest levels seem like they tail off.

It’s out there, at the edges of what’s capable from the chassis and powertrain, that the steering stops looping valuable nuance, where the seat-of-the-pants feel begins to fade out and where the slices of electronic involvement become a preponderance.

So you very quickly learn not to push it too hard, and then it makes more sense. It’s a junior sports sedan, a Q-car in the old sense and a swift way to move from one place to another.

The BMW M340i xDrive engine is pretty terrific, with 25kW more than we generally see out of this generation of the 3.0-litre twin-scroll turbocharged 3.0-litre inline six.

The headline act is the 275kW from 5500rpm to 6500rpm, and it will rev to 6800rpm quite easily, but the real story is the 500Nm from 1850-5000 revs.

The eight-speed automatic transmission is a classic of the genre, too, with the ability to ease through gears in the Comfort and Adaptive modes but snap through them in the sportier subsets. The calibration of the shifting is brilliant, in every situation.

It leaves you with a powertrain that’s simple to operate, calm in city traffic and potent when required.

What the acceleration numbers don’t reveal is just how stonking it is when it’s overtaking or hauling out of a corner. It scarcely even needs a moment to build boost and then it’s surging you back into the comfy seat and it never, ever lets go.

It doesn’t sing, though. A straight-six BMW engine should sing. They always have. This one has all the smoothness you’d expect, but it doesn’t have a natural, mechanical silkiness to the noise.

It’s nicely muffled in the softer modes, but the faster modes see the natural noise swamped by a synthesised howl that sounds almost like it should, but never hides its not-quite-right origins.

The BMW M340i xDrive has unshakeable grip and its stability engulfs the driver in a confidence inspiring cocoon. The body stays flat in corners, the calmness is pervading and it even feels a little rear-drive in the way it powers out of bends.

The active suspension delivers four damping settings to go with the 10mm drop in ride height, but it’s not that simple. The dampers don’t just switch into preset Comfort or Sport modes, for example, but remain active within more narrowly defined ranges based around those modes.

It’s at its best, predictably, in the engineer’s setting, the Adaptive mode, where everything predicts what’s going on underneath you and pre-acts to cater for it.

It’s in this mode, also that the M340i’s transmission works best, that the throttle response is just ticketyboo and that the steering does its job as best it can.

It’s in this mode that it does everything well -- eating corners and straightening bends. But there’s something niggling that just won’t go away.

And that’s the ride quality.

Comfort mode is soft, but a touch too unresponsive in the powertrain, Sport and Sport Plus are too firm, so that it feels like it’s going quickly across winding terrain, but in fact it’s slower than the Adaptive mode.

And all that is hampered, at the outer edges, by a variable sports steering system that’s slow just off centre and speeds (and weights) up the further you steer. It never feels quite intuitive.

It’s an almost shocking experience to see how much the latest 3 Series has improved its materials, its design and its comfort levels.

In the BMW M340i xDrive, the cabin is classy, from top to bottom, with sumptuously trimmed seats that look and feel more expensive than anything in the Audi A4 or Mercedes-Benz C-Class.

The seats are beautifully supportive and the button-strewn steering wheel feels luxurious, even if the rim thickness is becoming ridiculously fat at BMW and M.

There are digital instruments that almost work, a 10.3-inch touch-screen infotainment unit and a terrific full-colour head-up display that carries more data in more easily digestible views than its foes.

The difficulty for me is that the brand that invented perfect ergonomics in the instrument cluster has abandoned them. The instrument cluster uses a backwards tacho, like Aston Martin, which is just ridiculous when a round unit works best.

How much does the 2019 BMW M340i xDrive cost?
Price: $99,900 (plus on-road costs)
Available: December 2019
Engine: 3.0-litre turbo-petrol inline six
Output: 275kW/500Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic, all-wheel drive
Fuel: 7.0L/100km (WLTP)
CO2: 160g/km (WLTP)
Safety rating: Five-star (Euro NCAP 2019)