BMW released a new coupe and a new engine with the 335i. We drove the car through hundreds of miles of elevationchanging mountain terrain and found that it’s not nearly as elegant as it looks. And that’s a good thing.
BMW replaced the fantastic 3-series coupe with an even more fantastic 3-series coupe. End of story. Let’s close the issue and head out for a drive.
But, no, it’s not that easy. The introduction of a new 3-series coupe is more special for car enthusiasts than the introduction of a new 3-series sedan, and therefore it’s worthy of intense scrutiny and constructive criticism. That the new 3-series coupe also features a brandnew twin-turbo engine makes the assignment all the more exceptional.
The new 3-series coupe will be offered with two power variants and two transmission choices for the North American market on its September launch. The 3.0-liter, twin-turbo 335i produces 300 horsepower, while the 328i produces 230 horsepower from a 3.0-liter normally aspirated engine. Both are offered with six-speed manual transmissions (the 335i’s coming from ZF, while the 328i gets one from Getrag) or BMW’s new automatic transmission, which comes with steering-wheel paddles and the ability to direct shift down as many as four gears at a time, which forces us to contemplate the peculiar situations where we’ve wanted a sixth-to-second downshift. The 328i will be offered with BMW’s xDrive all-wheel-drive system (called, of course, the 328xi), starting in September, while a 335xi will go on sale at a later date. In Europe, the 3-series also gets two diesel models, but those aren’t planned for the U.S. until well after we have our low-sulfur diesel and our fifty-state regulations sorted out and normalized.
When the options were presented to us, we went right to a manual-shift 335i for our test vehicle, based on the thinking that 300 horsepower is typically better than 230 and because a new turbocharged engine from BMW isn’t something that comes along every season. Yes, the new coupe design is special and any new BMW is worthy of space in an enthusiast magazine, but the fact that this car has a turbo is what really got us excited. What would it be like? Wildly expensive? Unforgiving and massive? Would it come with reversed Turbo decals on the windshield? Thankfully, the answer turned out to be no on all counts.
Without any of the things that we’re used to seeing, hearing, or feeling in a turbocharged vehicle, the new twin turbo delivers on the original promise of turbocharging (i.e., additional power but not additional weight for displacement). The engine doesn’t spool up and frighten the unknowing with a great boost of sudden power. It doesn’t sound like it’s winding up. It doesn’t feel like it’s just gulped an extra mouthful of air into its lungs.
It just feels like an inline six-cylinder engine from BMW—and a quick one, at that.
BMW hasn’t even bothered to put a boost gauge anywhere on the dash, nor have they added a “T” to the badge or an italicized “turbo” anywhere on the car. It’s not that the engine’s forced induction is a secret, but it would appear that BMW is telling its customers that the engine isn’t great because of its turbocharger. It’s great because it’s so quick, so high-revving, and so full of torque. Yes, it has a turbocharger—built by Mitsubishi, incidentally—but it also has direct injection with piezo injectors, variable valve timing, and an aluminum crank case. Oh, and 300 horsepower and 300 pound-feet of torque.
So, if you’re reading this hoping that BMW’s new turbocharger is one hell of a powerhouse, you will be disappointed. It’s remarkable because of its ability to blend in with other engine components and become one piece of a whole. It does not define the 335i—it just contributes to its creation.
There is absolutely no delay in the turbochargers’ uptake, and that is certainly due to the fact that two small turbochargers can build power much faster than one single unit. Each turbocharger spools air from three cylinders and they’re arranged exactly symmetrically. There’s a bit of sluggishness when putting down power in third gear at low engine speeds, but otherwise the driver has power on tap in most every situation. The engine reaches its peak torque of 300 pound-feet at 1400 rpm and holds it all the way up through 5000 rpm. BMW claims its new bi-turbo design is fuel efficient, too. With the turbines being treated in a new heat-resistant method, the turbochargers are able to cope with temperatures of up to 1922 degrees Fahrenheit without the use of additional fuel for cooling. BMW’s claim is that it stayed away from turbochargers in these, its contemporary, profitable years because it couldn’t make them efficient. Therefore, it’s the ability to run very hot turbochargers and the very unique use of dirt injection that’s made this twin-turbo unit possible.
“High-precision injection” is the term BMW uses to describe its new fuel system, meaning the fuelto-air dosage can be made more precise and the engine’s compression ratio is higher. The engine’s unique piezo injectors are placed in the middle, between the valves. The small injectors actually open outward and away from the cylinder in order to squirt fuel into the combustion chamber. The highly expensive, Siemens-built piezo units are made of crystals, which can actually change shape on a microscopic level when subjected to voltage.
To get closer to that beloved 50/50 weight distribution (the new turbocharged 335i coupe is set at 51.2/48.8 percent front/rear, slightly more nose-heavy than the lighter 328i coupe), the front fenders were made from a new thermoplastic material, saving twenty-two pounds in total over the sedan’s body. The car does feel light overall, but slightly heavier in the front. Road holding and traction are impressive, with a tendency toward understeer at higher speeds, and a rather easy and steady oversteer at low speeds, but BMW’s traction control will catch you well before any mischief occurs. There’s no sporty M-Diff limited-slip unit as in the M models, but it’s still a driver’s car. “The driver’s cockpit is nearly without fault, with all the knee room a six-footer would ever want.”
The front suspension is structured on two pivots, using spring struts made of nearly all aluminum. In the back, it’s a five-link setup; anti-roll bars are featured on both ends, with stronger roll bars used for the “sport” suspension that we unfortunately did not get to sample on this test. That optional sport setup will come with stiffer springs, a strengthened rear subframe and eighteen-inch wheels (seventeeninch wheels are standard). Like all new non-M BMWs, the 3-series coupe rides on run-flat tires (these are Bridgestone Potenzas), which really do not bother us much in the 3-series models because they were built into the original chassis development (as opposed to the Z4 convertible, which has never gotten along with its run-flat tires, since they were added well after the chassis engineering process).
The driver’s cockpit is nearly without fault, with all the knee room a six-footer would ever want. The only downside of the rather beautiful sloping A-pillar is that your forehead is pretty close to the sun visor—especially with the seat height adjusted all the way up. The old coupe’s problem with its far out-ofreach seatbelts seems to have been solved, fortunately, with an interesting solution. The front belts are housed in the B-pillar but are literally delivered to the driver and passenger by an automatic seatbelt feed. The electronic feeder tray pushes the belts immediately next to your shoulder and then disappears back into the B-pillar once you’ve grabbed the belt. In the back, the rear seats are surprisingly large and headroom is very good, thanks to the fact that the seats are positioned lower in the coupe than in the sedan. This time around, there are only two seats in the back, with a little cluster of doors and spaces for storing things between the two riders.
The coupe’s exterior, drawn by BMW designer Marc Michael Markefka, has been and will continue to be debated for months and years to come, despite the fact that the coupe structure accounts for only seven percent of all 3-series sales (but, seven percent of 434,000 worldwide 3-series sales is still a good amount—over 30,000, in fact). But that this coupe spawns the basis for the forthcoming BMW M3 means that it’s an important shape, and one that all car enthusiasts feel obliged to spend days and nights thinking about. It’s hard to replace a legend, and few would dispute the outgoing E46 coupe’s (sold from 2000 through the end of this year) status as a true classic.
Like most new designs, the best view of the 3-series coupe comes in the flesh. The complicated, ribbon-like panels of the exterior throw off light in different ways depending on where you’re standing and where the car is in relation to a light source. It’s complicated, contemporary, and beautiful. Even though it’s wider by one inch than the outgoing coupe, it’s not as ruggedly manly as its predecessor—but it’s still no hairdresser’s car. It looks fantastic going down the road, it looks muscular when it’s all loaded up on its suspension, and it looks fast when sitting still. It does look more like the 5-series sedan from the front, mainly due to the coupe’s very clean headlights, which were made smaller since the coupe comes standard with bi-xenon beams and the twilight “corona” rings (normal lights are available in the 3-series sedan, which forced that car’s designers to create larger lenses for that model).
The new coupe might not appeal to everyone, but it’s no chop job. It is beautiful and elegant, and it’s got classic BMW proportions—a very short front overhang, a long hood, a beautiful roofline, and a menacing view from dead-on in the front. It grew on us and we’re willing to bet it will grow on you, too. The car is probably more beautiful than the way it drives, and we mean that in the best possible way. It is a 5.3-second zero-to-sixty car, although the exterior doesn’t tell you it’s a firecracker. So, when we speak to the naysayers, let us speak as eloquently as possible, and tell them to go to hell.
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