First drive: BMW 3 Series 330i M Sport prototype

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First drive: BMW 3 Series 330i M Sport prototype
Compact executive saloon icon enters a seventh generation later this year – and it’s getting its sporting mojo back

In a car market that almost always makes it harder for a successful brand to stay on top than to get there in the first place, the BMW 3 Series is beginning to look like a car of gradually waning fortunes. Will the good times ever roll for it quite like they did in its late 90s and noughties pomp?

For all sorts of reasons — not least because it’s hard to think of another car in recent times that has achieved such critical acclaim and sales popularity in equally phenomenal measures — we might wonder.


For the next-generation 3 Series, due to be unveiled at this autumn’s Paris motor show and appear on UK roads in early 2019, reasserting the compact executive saloon segment dominance that its predecessors have enjoyed looks a particularly tall order. It faces a Mercedes-Benz C-Class tha's good enough in its latest iteration to comprehensively outsell the outgoing F30 3 Series. The Alfa Romeo Giulia and Jaguar XE, neither of which existed at the launch of the sixth-generation 3 Series seven years ago, are both plainly out to purloin BMW’s mantle as the maker of the best-handling compact saloon. Up until now, you might say that mantle has been ‘on loan’; first at Gaydon, then more recently in Turin. But soon it’ll be the time for Munich to either reclaim it or give it up more permanently.

The G20 3 Series: world leader in waiting?

It’ll be another few weeks until BMW is ready to reveal how the exact technical details of the new 3 Series, codenamed ‘G20’, will depart from its forebear. As background for this taster, however, we were told that it’s a slightly longer and wider car, with a longer wheelbase; and that, having been built on BMW’s Cluster Architecture, it’s made of a higher proportion of aluminium, magnesium and high-strength steel than its predecessor, and is a slightly lighter (up to 55kg) and torsionally stiffer (by 15-20%) car to boot.

Journalits and leading BMW engineer gave they thoughts about G20 and Giulia:

First impressions? In this configuration, a Giulia probably remains a more compact and lighter-feeling, marginally more incisive and naturally agile saloon. But then, modern BMWs are relatively complicated, more ‘specification-sensitive’ cars than most of their executive rivals; and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that, in just the right mechanical trim, this car could dive and swivel left and right just as keenly as its Italian challenger.

It might even entertain better ultimately, given Alfa’s refusal to supply a Giulia with fully switchable electronic aids below the £60k Quadrifoglio level — something that Van As, with whom I drove, couldn’t resist commenting on. “The amount of money that’s gone into the Giulia’s suspension is very impressive,” he said. “It’s a great-handling car — though I’d have tuned it differently. But why spend all that money and then not include a proper ‘off’ button for the stability control? That’s crazy to me. It’s a waste.”

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/first-drive-bmw-3-series-2018-330i-m-sport-prototype

 

[Jared B]

While the 3 series is a good handling car, I've always found it a bit over rated to be honest. While camo'd it looks like it's going to look at lot more like the 5 series this go around. Instrument cluster looks interesting as well.