BMW Z4 3.0si Coupe and Ferrari F430 don't disappoint

By Gary and Genie Anderson, Special to the Town Crier

The BMW Z-4 Coupe, above, offers a smooth, sporty ride with a price tag within reach.

For gearheads, sports cars are the stuff of which dreams are made. The Z4 Coupe recently introduced by BMW is a dream that we could actually bring into our waking lives. Beyond the realities of most of us is the Ferrari F430, considered the ultimate dream car by many enthusiasts.

The Z4 Coupe is a great car at a reasonable price if you’re serious about high performance and don’t mind a little sacrifice in pursuit of your dreams. The F430 is, well, everything you’ve ever dreamed of, and maybe even a little more.

In the dreams of most auto enthusiasts, a sports car has a convertible top, and every day is soft and warm, and back roads are driven with the top down and wind gently tousling the hair. In the real world, even in California, there is also cold and fog and rain.

Addressing those realities, BMW recently introduced the coupe version of the very successful Z4 sports roadster launched in 2004. Equipped with the new 3.0si six-cylinder BMW engine, producing an impressive 255 horsepower and 220 pound-feet of torque, the two-passenger coupe has a base price of $40,795.

Fully tricked out with the six-speed Steptronic paddle-shifted automatic transmission, Premium convenience package, Sport performance package and leather upholstery, the red car we drove was fully priced at $46,970.

Though controversial at first, the hard-edged design of the Z4 roadster has grown on us as a logical alternative to the smoothly contoured Porsche Boxster with which it is most often compared. The coupe version might be a little top-heavy, with a bulge to accommodate tall drivers, but the roof lines are quite compatible with the body lines carried over intact from the roadster.

On the interior, the car is quite luxurious. With the weather-proofing afforded by the hard top, the brushed aluminum dashboard of the roadster is replaced by warm poplar-grain wood trim, available in dark or light shades. The extended leather upholstery in our car added to the feeling of luxury.

With the large rear latch over the capacious luggage compartment, the car is quite adequate to carry driver, passenger and two bags of golf clubs to the country club, or some overnight gear and a racing helmet to the next track event. Just don’t think of this car as transporting a romantic couple on a dreamy getaway down the coast.

Once we were seated in the car and under way on San Jose freeways, any dreams of being in a cushy boulevard cruiser were rapidly dispelled. The seats are firm and the bolsters hold one firmly in place - an appropriate touch for a car that is really designed for twisty back roads and track curves rather than long-distance highway cruising.

The 18-inch alloy wheels with their low-profile run-flat performance tires - coupled with the taut suspension and controlled by a “sport button” that when pushed increased throttle, suspension and turn-in response, all part of the Sport package - came together to offer a ride quality and handling more like that of a track car than a street car. Sitting nearly over the back wheels and near the exhaust, the car is noisy at speed and pavement bumps are communicated directly to one’s backside.

But that suspension and engine power translate into just the right recipe for confidently handling tight curves on a spirited back-road drive or car club track day. The satisfaction of carving the corners is a fair price to pay for a little discomfort on the highway.

That’s the beauty and the beastliness of this car. If your dreams of transportation for two include quiet and comfort, you should probably look elsewhere. If you’re looking for a taut, all-weather, high-performance car that’s truly worthy of being called a sports car, the Z4 3.0si may be the car of your dreams.

On the other hand, if you’d prefer to hit the snooze button and dream a little more, consider the Ferrari F430 Spider.

My opportunity to see, touch and feel this fabled car was an owner outing sponsored by Ferrari of Silicon Valley (www.ferrariofsiliconvalley.com) to the American LeMans finals at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, where the company was sponsoring one of the cars. The dealer arranged for me to ride down and back with the proud owner of a lovely new dark-gray F430 Spider with a red interior, which was the same model being raced on the track without the luxurious interior.

Before I describe this dream car in detail, let’s get one thing out of the way. One owner told me that the first question he is invariably asked, sometimes even by total strangers at stoplights, is, “How much does it cost?”

The F430, available in Berlinetta coupe form or convertible Spider, is priced around $200,000, give or take $20,000 for trim and options.

These machines have limited availability. Largely assembled by hand, these cars - even at these prices - have more potential buyers than the factory in Marinello, Italy, can satisfy. So unless you already own another Ferrari and are known to the dealer as an enthusiast, you may not even get on the six-month waiting list for the F430.

From the outside, what one notices first are the smooth, pleasing curves. Under the impeccable paint job, not a line is out of place. Some compromises were dictated by modern manufacturing methods, but in my opinion, under its new American design chief, Ferrari styling is now the best it’s been since the early 1950s.

The mechanically gorgeous 4.3 liter V8 engine is on proud display under a glass cover behind the cockpit. Producing 483 horsepower and 343 pound-feet of torque, the engine can propel the 3,200 pounds of the car to 60 mph in around four seconds, and carry it to a top speed close enough to 200 mph to be literally in the realm of fantasy.

Slide into the cockpit, avoiding the edge of the racing-style side bolsters for fear of marking the leather, and you see several features. First, nearly every cockpit surface is covered in leather edged with hand-stitched seams. Then one can admire the machined-aluminum shift gate and manual gearshift, selected by this owner for its history and tradition instead of the optional paddle-shifted sequential manual gearbox developed for Formula 1 racing.

Finally, as the eyes pass over the crisply marked gauges, with the tachometer emblazoned in yellow, one notices the steering wheel, in the same shape as the F1 steering wheels. In the center of the steering wheel, again copying the style of a modern F1 wheel, is the start button under the left thumb. Under the right thumb is a rotating switch - called a manettino by the F1 drivers - used to select the desired style of driving, from snow or rain through comfort, sport and finally full race. Moving this one switch changes engine behavior, throttle response, suspension and spring rates to suit the task at hand.

As we drove down to Laguna Seca, whether we were in stop-and-go traffic on Highway 17 or doing highway speeds on Interstate 85, it was startling how comfortable the car was. Even with the top down, we could carry on a conversation in near-normal tones, and the ride was as smooth as any car I’ve driven recently.

Could this car actually transform itself into a track performer, I wondered? Parade laps on the Laguna Seca track organized for the Ferrari owners answered that question authoritatively. With several opportunities to drive quite quickly, my host gave me a taste of the car’s capabilities. The car turns in with alacrity, accelerates fast enough to pin one back into the seat, brakes hard enough to push one against the seat belts and does all this with absolutely no fuss whatsoever.

Sure, the car is more than expensive. But it is nice to know that there are still a few dreams in life that don’t disappoint when you get close enough to experience them. If you’re a driving enthusiast, the Ferrari F430 fully deserves its place on the pinup board of your mind.

Gary and Genie Anderson, Los Altos residents for more than 20 years, are co-owners of Enthusiast Publications LLC, which edits MC Squared, the MINI magazine, and contributes articles and columns to a variety of other automobile magazines.