BMW 3 Series review

Are we used to the Neue Klasse interior yet? We’re getting there but it’s still impressively forward-thinking. Doesn’t seem like all that long ago that BMW’s curved glass display arrived.

Anyway, the eye-catcher here is clearly the Panoramic Vision, which works in tandem with BMW’s Operating System X and the 17.9in central touchscreen. This is a shallow display that spans the entire base of the windscreen just above the top of the dashboard, dispensing with the traditional instrument display directly ahead of the driver. Key information such as speed, rev counter, navigation arrows and info is shown a fraction below the line of sight. Other widgets or info graphics can be dragged and dropped. It really works. Mostly.

Mostly?

We have some reservations. As we were on unfamiliar roads and hadn’t plumbed in our iPhone, we were using BMW’s sat nav, as displayed on the central screen. The graphics on that proved a bit distracting and actually a touch laggy, which is a little worrying given that it’s designed to work in parallel with the Level 2 driver assistance.

But the main issue is one of information overload: run that, the head-up display, the nav on the pano strip and the voice instructions, and you’re spoilt for guidance. Google is integrated into the nav system to improve the quality of search.

Beyond that, the central screen is dense with content, little of which can be truly assimilated during a three-hour test drive. In fact, we wonder how many owners would really get on top of it at all. But there’s no knocking the massive effort that’s gone into this. It’s high quality, too, though some of the materials and finishes are more tactile than others. There’s decent storage, wireless charging, and USB-C ports.

And the steering wheel?

We love that. It sits lower so it feels a little unusual to begin with, and really does alter your relationship with the car. But it feels good pretty quickly. It’s multi-function in the modern idiom, but uses ‘shy-tech’ so that the controls for driving assistance and parking functions are only illuminated when available, while the infotainment stuff has haptic feedback. BMW says all this partitions the functions for safety, but it’s still all a bit much.

The driver sits a little lower in the 3 Series ICE than the i3 because of the latter’s underfloor battery pack. The seats are slightly different, too. But there’s not much to choose between them.

And that operating system?

Undoubtedly very clever, and the gateway to expansive customisability. Content, widgets and displays are individually configurable, says BMW, with various colours and background images. A Video content App gets you into streaming, and Amazon Prime Video is also available. AirConsole and Boosteroid are for the gamers; the latter’s a cloud gaming platform. We remember when a cassette deck was a desirable extra.

BMW insists its Intelligent Personal Assistant AI voice activation is now bulletproof; it can handle navigation entry, media content, air conditioning and all sorts of other stuff via natural and colloquial language without the need for pre-ordained voice commands. But we struggled with it. Also, do you really want a ‘self-learning assistant that turns the vehicle into an intelligent digital companion’?

Oh, you do? Well, step this way. We’re off to rev the nuts off that engine again.
By the way, the 3 Series has a 450-litre boot capacity versus 420 litres for the i3.