By Gary Anderson
There’s always a king of the hill. In the world of sports sedans, the unquestioned king is the BMW 3-series.
The press kits for at least seven cars that I’ve reviewed in the past year contain the claim that their car “is as good as the BMW 3-series.”
So how good is good?
To find out, I borrowed a 2001 330 Ci convertible from BMW for a week.
In addition to the base price of $43,045, this car had the sport package with bucket seats, sport suspension, wide performance tires on 17-inch alloy wheels and a few other goodies that brought the suggested retail price to just under $45,000.
To give the car a good run, my assistant editor and I took Page Mill Road up to Skyline Drive then drove north to Alice’s Restaurant at the intersection with La Honda Road. From Alice’s, we continued up Skyline to Highway 92, then down to Highway 280 and back to Los Altos.
This loop provides an opportunity to try everything from tight uphill first-gear corners, through sweeping high-speed curves, to all-out, onramp acceleration runs and high-speed cruising. With a good car, this is a great route to blow the cobwebs out of the synapses.
Talking over hamburgers at Alice’s, then over a latté at the end of the run, we agreed that BMW has every reason to claim it offers “the ultimate driving machine.” Other automakers could do worse than setting the cars with the dual-kidney grilles as their benchmark.
BMW’s approach to performance driving is hardly cutting edge.
It uses a straight-six front engine with rear drive, and coil-over independent front and rear suspension with a front anti-sway bar and rear trailing links. By continuously refining this formula, BMW has produced a silky-smooth, taut-handling car that seems faultless. In addition, the 3-liter engine meets ultralow emission levels and produces a reasonable 20-28 miles per gallon.
Of course, we opted for the five-speed manual transmission. In combination with the electronic throttle and engine management system, even a novice driver can throw downshifts for tight corners like a seasoned pro.
Shifting up through the box on the onramps, it’s easy to believe BMW’s claim of zero to 60 in less than seven seconds.
What was lacking, however, was a real feeling of torque. In spite of a respectable 214 pounds-per-square foot of torque, nicely balanced with its 225 horsepower, the throttle-by-wire system removes that shove-in-the-back acceleration feeling.
Instead, even with my foot shoved to the floor between shifts, the car simply gathered speed in a smooth, seamless manner.
The car was a dream to drive on Skyline’s lovely curves.
The speed-sensitive power steering through the rack-and-pinion system allows confident control, even on unexpectedly tight corners. It feels like gliding on skis through powder snow. In fact, if we had to find a complaint about the power and handling performance, it would be the lack of edginess that once was the mark of a true enthusiast’s car.
In this car, you’ll never feel that a lapse of focus might have the rear end sliding out of control, or the engine struggling to regain momentum.
We wish we could be as complimentary about the car’s styling.
Compared to other cars, the car’s drag coefficient of .35 is roughly equivalent to saying it is styled like a brick. The slab sides, flat front-end and high belt-line - characteristic of all the BMWs - hardly suggest sculpture in motion. We also weren’t taken by the busy details of the front headlight trim and the fake oil-cooler grille that signifies sportiness on this convertible.
Sitting at one of the outside tables at Alice’s, we noticed that the car went virtually unnoticed by the motorcyclists who hang out up there, even with its top down.
We can commend BMW on the neat look of the convertible top and the ease with which it automatically tucks out of sight under a flush plastic panel.
However, the effect is largely lost because of the high head restraints on the rear seats. Couldn’t those tuck down when not needed? The rear seats are roomy enough for two adults - something that can’t be said about many other convertibles - but there aren’t going to be many times when you actually drive the car “four-up.”
But these complaints disappear once you slide behind the wheel. The interior is neatly styled, gauges easy to read, and controls easy to reach, understand and manipulate. Snick the gearshift up through the gears, bank the car into a nice curve, then turn the wheel and feel the subtle weight shift, and you will soon forget the styling issues.
As a driver’s car, BMW’s 3-series is still king of the sports sedan hill.
Anderson is editor and publisher of British Car Magazine, published bimonthly and distributed internationally from offices in Los Altos (949-9680; www.britishcar.com).
