2007 BMW 328A friend has a 2007 BMW 328. I have been in it for many thousand miles. It is a nice car combining luxury with sportiness. It is reasonably quick, but not a rocket ship. Recently, I noticed a tire was low. It turns out the tire wasn't low, it was completely out of air. It was a run-flat tire, so it just looked low. Not only was the tire low, but so was another. What was worse, there was no display in the car indicating that two tires were out of air. The car did turn to the right when driven (as both tires without air were on the right). When we filled up the tires, the car drove straight. It is currently in the shop and BMW is in the process of fixing it. It took It took about 10 days to fix. The dealer was basically unable to repair the low pressure sensors. They claim that this was a new feature for BMW (which might be true, but it is an old feature for other cars), and that there is no way to make the system work. As the car's lease expires in 6 months, the owner wasn't too worried. I think this seriously tarnished BMW's reputation about having fine German engineering. |
This is a BMW 'courtesy car', from the dealer, while the 2007 BMW 328 gets repaired. It features the new 'i-drive' from BMW which controls almost everything inside the car. There have been many complaints about it, as it takes several operations to change a setting. I think it is great, as long as there is a knowledgeable passenger in the car to use it. I would hate to use it while driving. It does have a nice wide screen LCD display that is well shaded. The GPS looks very nice. It drives quite like the 2007 BMW, which isn't surprising.
The GPS doesn't have a touch screen, rather it uses the i-control to get input. The user interface isn't too bad for entering cities or street names, but not as good as a touch screen keyboard. The routing software is seriously flawed. This is a 2008 product, and GPS costs $2000. There is no excuse for second rate routing software. My garmin xxx and mio xxx do a better job at routing, and are 10 to 20 times cheaper. This also tarnishes BMW's reputation about having fine German engineering.
I was in a rental Chevy Cobolt for 2 days. It is a pretty basic car. Crank windows. Manual door locks. No remote trunk release. It did have a pretty nifty digital display on the dash which would display air temperature, coolant temperature, trip computer, tire pressure and the like. It seemed like a decently built car with no frills.
A friend has a Lexus GS-350, and I got to drive it for about 25 miles. This is the base model, which retails for $45,000. It does have the nav package, which raised the retail price to $50,000. It has a 303hp 3.5 liter engine, (which is 0.1 liter bigger than my tacoma V6, but has 113 more horsepower), and a 6 speed automatic transmission. (The top end GS-350 has a V8 and a 8 speed automatic transmission.) It is pretty similar in size compared to my 2002 camry, but much more luxurious. The GPS is much better in routing than them 2009 BMW 328, and has a touch screen. It isn't nearly as well shaded as the BMW's, so sometimes it is hard to see. By default they 'keyboard' on the GPS is an ABCDEF keyboard, which is pretty silly, however there is a setting to change it to a QUERTY keyboard. My friend tells me the bluetooth works but doesn't transfer phone directories seamlessly from an iphone, unlike the BMW.
The car has a much firmer ride than my camry, but not nearly as firm as the 2009 BMW 328. The ride is still a bit choppy over a bumpy freeway. The engine is quite quiet, but the tires have quite a bit of road noise. The transmission shifts very quickly and seamlessly. It was very fast going from 70 to 100mph. The mirrors have a slight color tint. I think there is a LCD behind the mirrors, and my friend tells me that they dim and turn bluish at night. The steering wheel tilts and telescopes. I found it hard to find the controls for the side mirrors. It turns out there is a mirror symbol, which doesn't look much like a mirror symbol to me. If you press the nearby button, cleverly labelled 'Press', a small control panel rotates out, and there are mirror and windshield wiper controls on it. It rotates back, and becomes unobtrusive. I would like it if the suspension was better at absorbing bumps. Other than that, I really liked the car.
A friend has an Elise, and I spent about two hours in it. It is a very nice sports car. It is mid-engined, and the 'trunk' is located behind the engine. It is pretty small, with the official size being 112 liters (which is just under 4 cubic feet). I found it quite amusing to have a glow in the dark interior release latch. The seats are very thin pseudo racing buckets. They aren't real racing buckets, like the Kevlar honeycomb seat I used to have in my Shelby CSX, but they are reasonably comfortable, and offer significant side support. The interior is quite spartan. There isn't a glove box, but rather an open shelf where you might put small items. The car is left hand drive, and on the far right is a blank panel where controls would go in a right hand drive vehicle. Lotus could have put a small glove box there. This car has a single cupholder, which was a Lotus option. It telescopes out from under the dash. The door sil is quite wide and high. I found it impossible to get in the car with the top on. After removing the top, it took a bit of effort to get inside the car. Once inside, it took a bit of arm strength to lift myself up out of the seat, before being able to get in the car. The top is a pretty basic cloth top, which I am told is only available in black. It looks nice, but the color isn't very practical in warm climates.
On the road, the Elise was quite quick. The car came with an adjustable sport suspension. It was fine over most roads, but on one freeway it was so bouncy that I literally couldn't see straight. I have been in some cars with stiff suspensions, but this was significantly stiffer than any car I had ever been in. The car is a great toy, but not very practical for every day use.
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