Every so often, I get the chance to drive a new car. This happened this morning when I had to go to Trivett in Rydalmere to collect a pair of BMW kidney grilles for my boss' BMW 318i E90.
Firstly the name 318i is actually a misnomer. Underneath the bonnet is not a 1.8L engine as you'd expect but a 2.0L in-line 4 (N43B20 for all the nerds out there). The engine produces 105kW or 141bhp and is therefore almost spot on with the outgoing Holden Astra in terms of power.
The 318i aims quite squarely at its target market and is obviously a corporate-rep-box. It is appointed with leather seats, climate control, a decent stereo system with tweeters in the A-Pillars, electric everything, iPod connectivity etc etc etc. and therefore you'd expect it to be very easy to drive for extended periods.
The steering doesn't feel overly light nor stiff, in fact it's rather neutral in its posture. The handling of the car doesn't feel either heavy or lithe, and the engine and power delivery is very smooth. In fact that is the best way to describe this car, very smooth indeed. For the engine is whisper quiet, and apart from the rev counter going into fits and starts it seems unfussed pulling away from the lights or cruising down the motorway at 110km/h.
Yet this is precisely why I felt entirely uninspired by this car. BMW's corporate slogan is "sheer driving pleasure", and no matter where I looked, I simply couldn't find any.
Don't think by any means that this was a bad car, it wasn't bad in any respect. It's just that everything felt so polished, so smooth, so... bland and boring, that any character traits that the car may have had, have all been engineered out of it.
This car is the white bread of motor cars, the boiled white rice, the plain copy paper, the Staedtler 430M stick of the car world. It does everything properly and efficiently but there's no driving pleasure to speak of.
Driving this car has given me a new perspective on BMW drivers. There is one word which keeps on cropping up when you talk about BMW drivers; I have learnt that it's not the fault of the car, the car itself is very neutral. Therefore what they say about BMW drivers... exclusively applies to them.
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