I do not have a lot of sympathy for any BMW. I think the cars are a bit overpriced and, because of how the option packages are structured, getting your Bimmer kitted to your liking can add thousands more.
Steam gently wafts from my ears every time I use the company’s iDrive system — the magic knob interface for the navigation, audio, communications and climate menus. BMW’s recent “flame surfacing” styling exertions, on cars including the Z4 and 5-series, leave me colder than the 10th planet.
So it’s with no small cognitive dissonance that I report that the new 3-series, redesigned for model year 2006, is a spectacular car: lean and perfectly balanced, ineffably masculine and refined, and built with a futuristic precision that makes me wish the company made space shuttles.
Car watchers held their breath waiting to see whether the redesigned 3-series — BMW’s bedrock product, accounting for more than half its 1.2-million sales worldwide — would carry on with the widely derided flame surfacing.
When the new car appeared, critics declared it “conservative,” and so, perforce, a rebuke of BMW Group design chief Chris Bangle.
I’m not so sure. The wick has been trimmed, certainly, but the 3-series still has sagging ventral accents along the rocker panel and a loose concavity in the car’s flanks below the beltline.
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