If you’re thinking of buying a car anytime soon you ought to test drive the BMW 330i. Hell, even if you aren’t thinking of buying a car, you should do it just for the rush.
Because this is the car that all other sedans have to measure up to. You shouldn’t get to have this car just because you can afford it. You should have to pass a driver-appreciation exam. There should be scholarships, because this car is like Harvard for the driving literati.
The “Road Rake” and I had the pleasure of being given free rein by the nice folks at Motorwerks BMW to take this car for a day, sans supervision. In other words, Steve Rydberg, the sales manager there, trusted us. He probably shouldn’t have, but he did. (We lied and told him we were actual journalists—as opposed to guys who like fast cars and happen to write about them occasionally.) We put the car to the test. Not all the way to the making-it-skid-backward test, but almost. Now that I think of it, Steve is probably glad he wasn’t with us. He just didn’t know it.
The last time I test drove a BMW, it was with a friend who wanted me to advise her on whether to buy one. The test drive was short and uneventful—the usual one-stop up the freeway and back. I drove, my friend was on my right, and the salesman was in the back. As we were returning to the dealership on the frontage road, I decided we needed a little more information about the vehicle. So I accelerated to 60 … 70 … 80 … 90. As the dealership approached, the salesman kept pointing out the turn to me. He repeated himself because he noticed I wasn’t slowing. I took it after a hard brake and downshift. He whimpered a little bit as my friend and I said “Whee.” He managed a “Whew,” as he realized he hadn’t been killed. And he was about to spit out something more descriptive when my friend turned around in her seat and said, “That was fun. I’ll take it.” The salesman felt much better.
That car was a BMW 645i, not the 330i, but you get the picture. If anything, the 330i is even quicker. Not as much weight to haul around, you see. The Road Rake and I took turns driving it one sunny Saturday last month. We zoomed around the back roads of Bloomington and shot up Highway 100, using the 330i’s effortless acceleration, ultra-responsive steering, and lovely Steptronic automatic transmission to pretend we were on the Autobahn and could pass whomever we liked. We could and we did.
We made some very hard turns at high speed to test the vaunted stability control system. As far as I can tell, the engineers at BMW seem to have found a way to eliminate centrifugal force from the precepts of Newtonian physics. In other words, the car turned precisely as asked, didn’t lean at all, even at the point when the tires were losing adhesion, and made the Road Rake and me grin at each other as if we’d just got off the big rollercoaster at Valleyfair and said “Let’s go again.”
The Road Rake and I are both confirmed standard-transmission guys, but it bears mention that we agreed we’d happily give up the left knee pain engendered by the stiff racing clutch pedals in our fun cars for the BMW’s Steptronic transmission. Unlike some of the earlier versions of the concept, like the Audi’s Tiptronic, which once displayed a slight reluctance to change gears when ordered, the manual shift auto transmission in the BMW was instantaneous and imperceptibly smooth. There was no “clunk” even at numerous high-rev downshifts. The car responded with instant acceleration without complaint. On the upshift, it shot ahead as if we were all of a sudden pedaling downhill while everyone behind us was stuck on the wrong side of a mountain on the Tour de France.
On top of all this physical sensation is the sound. Not the audio system (which we really didn’t have time to notice, but I’m sure is fine if you’re not that into hip-hop). I’m talking about the sound we noticed after we turned off the radio. The tuned exhaust system was a perfect accompaniment to the performance. This car even sounds fast.
The version we drove lists for $41,820 and includes the premium package, with auto dimming mirrors, a garage door opener, BMW Assist (OnStar with a German accent), and the Bluetooth connection, in case you feel like you have to talk on your cell and drive at the same time. (There’s also an all-wheel-drive model—the 330xi, for a couple grand more.) Drive one. Use the phone only to call your banker to arrange for the loan. —Tom Bartel
The Road Rakes Tom Bartel and Chris Birt are now online at www.rakemag.com/today/roadrake/.
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