A common theme is emerging in the reviews. The car is mostly brilliant all round, but the marketing department got their way when it came to suspension settings with 'Sport's being too firm and 'Comfort' too wallowy. Nothing a software update couldn't fix.
There's also no denying this car is a LOOKER, with or without the m-sport package.
http://www.carsales.com.au/reviews/2013/prestige-and-luxury/bmw/4-series-coupe/bmw-435i-coupe-2013-launch-review-37751
Welcome to the new BMW 435i, but is the 4 Series Coupe really one better than the 3 Series Coupe?
BMW 435i Coupe
International Launch
Cascais, Portugal
What we liked>> Best BMW looker in years
>> Assured grip, handling
>> Accessible performance
Not so much>> Comfort and Sport too extreme
>> No Goldilocks damper setting
>> Interior too plain for exterior
OVERVIEW>> After three generations, some parts of BMW still call this a 3 Series coupe. The rest of them want you to call it a 4 SeriesBMW is venturing deeper into the numbers-driven matrixes. Where once this would automatically have been the new 3 Series Coupe, it now gets its own full name and this, the 435i, is the fastest of them all.
That is, until the all-wheel drive version of the 435i arrives and, inevitably, the back-to-six-pot M4 Coupe lands next year. It’s also the most expensive of the three 4 Series models due to arrive in Australia later than expected in the first quarter of next year.
Initially, BMW has planned a 420d diesel, a four-cylinder petrol 428i and this six-cylinder 435i, but will follow that up with xDrive versions of the petrol engines, plus a 430d and a 435d xDrive in November, in time for the European winter. All three come with six-speed manuals as standard, though most Australian sales will go to the eight-speed automatic and AWD versions are unlikely for us.
Of course, the new 4 Series is clearly based on the latest 3 Series sedan that arrived here last year. It shares the crux of its chassis, the core of its suspension, its steering, its engines, its gearboxes, its differential systems and its electronics, along with its entire dashboard. Cleverly, though, the only actual carryover body panel is the bonnet.
As is BMW’s current trend, all 4 Series models will be available with the option of Luxury, Sport and Modern lines in Europe, with BMW clumsily explaining that while the first two do what’s written on the tin, the Modern line makes the brand-new 4 Series look more, umm, modern.
PRICE AND EQUIPMENT>> Lots of fruit, lots more at a priceBMW has yet to release Australian pricing for the 435i or its lesser siblings, but it’s trying to move the 3 Series-based coupe genre a touch upstream in an effort to create a unique space for a 4 Series sedan between the 3 and 5 Series. Or, as BMW will try to convince us, as a logical ladder step below the 6 Series GranCoupe.
The easiest way to order a different look and feel for your 435i is by picking whether Modern, Sport or Luxury suits you, because each one delivers its own front splitter design and its own trims on the air breathers behind the front wheels and various other trims. There’s an M Sport pack atop all of that, delivering more of the same.
There are plenty of options, some strange, some not. Full LED headlights seem like a normal sort of option, though a split-fold rear seat seems like an awful lot of engineering not to make standard, as does a sliding console lid.
MECHANICAL>> Strong, balanced and swiftIt is handling, rather than sheer, raw power that is at the heart of the 335i…, err, 435i.
BMW worked on creating a body-in-white that was about the same weight as its predecessor’s but has 60 per cent more torsional rigidity and also delivers its traditional 50:50 weight distribution.
Perhaps more critically, the 435i has had its centre of gravity lowered by an enormous 21mm to sit 498mm off the ground. That helps the driver feel more like part of the car rather than a rider on top of it, and gives the 435i a more planted feel in corners and, especially, during direction changes.
The design changes that emphasise the rear wheel-arches help to deliver a 1545mm front track (+45mm) and a very planted 1594mm rear track, though you have to be more careful these days not to kerb the rear rims on corners, because they each stick out around an inch wider than the front ones.
It combines all this with a 1525kg kerb weight (on the unladen DIN figure for the eight-speed auto that everyone will buy). That’s 25kg less than the 335i Coupe but 15kg heavier than the six-speed manual.
The lightest in the family will be the 428i, which is 55kg lighter than the 435i auto (though 60kg lighter than the manual), but taking up the xDrive all-wheel drive option will stack on all of that and more.
Even with the extra weight, the xDrive version of the 435i is quicker to 100km/h than the rear-driver. It’s the only stock 4 Series model to slip beneath five seconds to 100km/h, slicing two tenths off the rear-driver’s time to post 4.9 seconds. The manual version of the 435i is a 5.4-second proposition, so it’s only 0.4 seconds quicker than the four-cylinder 428i automatic.
The 435i’s engine has the same numbers as it boasts in the 335i sedan, with the 3.0-litre inline six delivering the same 225kW of power between 5800 and 6000rpm and 400Nm of torque in a strong line between 1200 and 5000rpm.
It also delivers an NEDC combined fuel economy cycle of 7.2L/100km and emits 185g/km of CO2.
The thing is, though, that the 428i offers nearly the same performance with a lot less weight over the front axle and far better economy. Its 180kW/350Nm hits 100km/h in 5.8 seconds (0.7 seconds slower than the 435i) and has the same 250km/h top speed. Critically, it is just 0.3 seconds slower in sprinting between 80 and 120km/h, so it’s strong where it counts. Yet it uses just 6.3L/100km and emits 154g/km.
The steel body gets an additional link between it and the front subframe to make the suspension more accurate than it is in the sedan, while the rear-end gets a five-link suspension set-up but, critically, no mechanical limited-slip differential.
The brakes are single-piston units all around and the car rides on 17-inch wheels that nobody is going to buy. Every test car lined up by BMW ran on 19-inch rims, with Bridgestone Potenza S001 rubber sized to 225/40 R19 up front and 255/35 R19 at the back.
PACKAGING>> Bigger inside and out, but lighter and lowerI’ll be honest, this is the first BMW in the Adrian von Hooydonk era that I think works from every angle. It’s a mix, as every 3 Series Coupe has been, of aggression, style, class, dignity and timeless proportions.
It hasn’t hurt the design team that it was given 43mm more wheelbase (2810mm) than the old 3 Series Coupe and overhangs that were more than 10mm shorter at both ends. It also helped the look that the roofline is 16mm lower than the old car, at 1362mm, in a 4638mm overall length.
It’s helped even more that the chassis engineering team went to the design team and asked whether they’d mind very much if the rear track moved out 80mm over the old car. Designers love that stuff and the overall width (1825mm, which is 43mm more) of the 435i is widest at the rear wheel-arches.
For other practical issues, the 445-litre boot is slightly larger but more practical, it turns in 11.3 metres and the fuel tank is, disappointingly, only 60 litres.
The cabin delivers more head, leg, shoulder and knee room in all four seats than its sort-of predecessor (even BMW occasionally lets slip that the 3 Series Coupe is the predecessor) and the driver seems to sit lower than in the 3 Series sedan, confirmed by a seating position that’s about a centimetre lower, even though the dash is the same height.
As ever, the direct controls and dials are trained on the driver, with the dash dominated by the speedo and the tacho. Just like in every BMW, the multi-media screen is a permanent feature atop the dashboard, even if it looks like it pops up, and it hides some of the curvature of the dash that continues behind it. It saves weight (and, the obvious unspoken cost saving) compared to fitting an electric motor to raise and hide it, BMW says.
The iDrive controller now has a touch-screen-style function on the top, though it’s not an immediately intuitive system to use, even for regular smartphone users.
While the standard two-seat rear area is fixed, BMW offers the option of a 40:20:40-split folding system.
Up front, there is a useful centre console with an optional sliding armrest (a bit of a must-have, frankly) and a reasonable glovebox, but the door pockets are small compared to Audi’s A5 and the fixed cup-holders don’t suit all sizes. And a manual hand brake is a bit at odds with the high-tech positioning.
SAFETY>> Oddly similar to the 3 SeriesThe 4 Series is yet to be tested by Euro NCAP, but should come with the same five-star safety rating as the new 3 Series sedan, with which it will share its key safety features.
They should include six airbags, stability control, ABS, Brake Assistant, Cornering Brake Control, Dynamic Traction Control and Dynamic Braking Lights.
It could also come with the 3 Series standard Active Protection package, which activates automatically once the car is travelling at or above 18km/h and tensions seatbelts. In the likelihood of a crash occurring, it also tightens the seatbelts further, winds up windows and closes the sunroof. Finally, once a crash has taken place, the system will automatically apply the brakes for 1.5 seconds to reduce the prospect of a second crash.
COMPETITORS>> A short list...Without going in to detail, BMW is looking at the Audi A5 Coupe and the Mercedes-Benz E-Class Coupe. In reality, it should also be looking at the C-Class coupe, especially given the E-Class coupe is a C-Class underneath the skin anyway.
ON THE ROAD>> Fast, accomplished and stylish, but not perfectFor all its beauty, the 435i isn’t perfect. First the gripes, which will be quick because there are really just two of them, the first being the biggest.
The car comes with adjustable dampers that are tied to a switch next to the gearshifter that shuffles play between EcoPro+, EcoPro, Comfort, Sport and Sport+ modes.
The first three apply Comfort setting to the dampers, while the top two use the Sport setting. And there is a yawning gap between the two settings that BMW desperately needs to fill.
In Sport mode the car is extremely firm and tends to jiggle the body over short, sharp bumps -- but it wafts and wallows too much in Comfort, as if the suspension is too slow to react to changes in the speed of the damper shaft.
The upside is that the car is clearly more focused on its handling than its not-too-shabby predecessor was, and that delivers extremely crisp turn-in in Sport mode and tenacious grip everywhere.
The trouble is that to carry the mid-corner speed the chassis has the promise to deliver, it needs a middle damper setting that it doesn’t have. Sport might work well on a track, but as one of the BMW chassis engineers told me, it’s a marketing setting; intentionally stiff to remind people that they’re in the Sport mode they paid for.
That may be public perception of how the most “sporty” setting should feel, but it’s not the most efficient way to get around a corner in the real world. We found Sport way too jiggly on every road we found in Portugal – and they were chosen by BMW.
It hits mid-corner bumps so hard that the tread of the tyres feels like it is skipping across the surface and you can’t actually carry as much speed through a corner as you can in Comfort. On the road in the real world, that’s a ridiculous state of affairs.
By comparison, Audi counters this by delivering an optional Automatic setting, which you could read as being the “chassis engineers’ choice” that straddles both marketing settings and is almost always the fastest and most assured way to drive the car.
Where Audi uses magnetic dampers to deliver a broader range, BMW prefers a switchable damper that closes a bypass valve to give it two smaller, more targeted ranges. Theirs is more accurate, they correctly say, but Audi’s gives it a broader performance envelope.
Everybody we spoke to ended up doing something similar themselves, moving to Sport every time a corner loomed and rocking back to Comfort every time the road straightened up for more than 100 metres. Why?
The shame of it is that the rest of the car is complete; save for a mechanical limited-slip differential that BMW saves for M Performance up-spenders.
The 4 Series is an easy car to be immediately comfortable in; especially sitting so low in the chassis that you feel almost like your butt is below the propshaft. It’s going to make a cracking M car…
The steering feels better sorted than the suspension, frankly, and the electronic system finally delivers the sort of intuitive tacking that BMW lost in the switch from hydraulics.
But it’s the chassis that stars, with its wider front track biting hard into corners wide and narrow, tight and fast, and flitting out the other side in a marvelous example of chassis balance and suspension geometry.
It’s a tribute to the core of the chassis that it doesn’t take the ultra-firm Sport damping and spit the car off the road anywhere. It feels faithfully, progressively lovely.
That feeling of loveliness is helped by a tried-and-trusted powertrain that feels similarly progressive, sophisticated and composed. It’s as sweet and free a revver as anything that crunches a limiter in the sixes and it feels as though it’s got plenty of urge left in it, should BMW choose to pull the trigger.
It has a strong mid-range, particularly in its lower three gears, and can flit comfortably from roaring with enthusiasm when you’re pressing on or silently watching as you poke along on cruise control.
Its gearbox is nearly invisible and only comes to anybody’s attention when it delivers big blips on downshifts in Sport or Sport+ mode.
And it all works, just like you knew it would. Coming from 3 Series architecture, everything in the cabin is familiar and easy to use. Its shortage of interior cubby holes is a touch frustrating, as is BMW’s inability to provide a firm holding spot for the remote key.
The seats are comfortable, the steering wheel feels fabulous and the controls are all accurate. Even the iDrive works well, but you might want a back-up map should you ever use the sat-nav in Portugal.
As expected, the 435i is an easy car to like. It looks great, goes well, handles like a bought one and it’s comfortable. With more range in its damper settings, we’d love it even more.
