BMW 3-Series GT - Does It Live Up To The Hype (Part 2)

When we stop in a quiet corner of the estate to have a poke around in the 3GT’s world behind the driver, the car’s strengths shine through. And they need to; in the cold light of day, the 3GT really is a 3-series Touring with a bigger boot and roomier back seating, whatever the marketing men might tell you. The sheer volume of space in the rear cabin will be alien to anyone who has spent a decent amount of time in the back of a 3-series. There’s significant legroom and enough headroom for a six-footer, traits that combine with a level of luxury and comfort to make it suitable for three adults on a long journey.

It behaves just like a 3-series, especially on M Sport dampers

There’s plenty of room for their luggage in the 520-liter boot, too. That capacity rises to 1600 liters with the rear seats folded. These figures are not too far off the 560 and 1670 liters of the 5-series Touring, which has a considerably larger footprint.

But all this space comes at a cost. The 3GT will cost you about $1,950 more than a Touring, which is already $1,950 more than the equivalent saloon. When you look at these prices, it’s clear that the 3GT is unlikely to tempt business users out of their saloons. Rather, it must convince those who use the saloon and Touring as family cars that the extra space is worth having.

There’s plenty of room for their luggage in the 520-liter boot, too. That capacity rises to 1600 liters with the rear seats folded.

History is littered with examples of space being perhaps the least successful trait around which to build a car. How many Vauxhall Vectra buyers forked out the extra to buy a Signum, for example? And the 3GT hardly answers the current trend for downsizing; people want more for less, not more for more. What BMW has done here, though, regardless of the cost, is execute the original brief. It has successfully created a 3-series that gains more in space than is taken away in the dynamics, following its rise in size and weight, even if the price is bigger to go with it. Whether it is a niche or indeed a 3-series that needed finding and making will come down to whether the market really ‘gets’ it, whether it is a good car or not.

The rear bench will house three adults in long-haul comfort

Recent motoring history shows us that more niches are being found and more cars made to fill them – including by BMW – than ever before, but with mixed success. For every Nissan Qashqai or Range Rover Evoque, there is a Mercedes-Benz R-class or Renault Avantime.

Or a 5GT, for that matter. A spacious luxury car sounds nice on paper, but the market didn’t really want that. It’s outsold by the 7-series by three to one, and even the hugely controversial X6 sold twice the number that the 5GT did last year. Only six per cent of 5-series sold are 5GTs.

The 3GT’s formula looks even better on paper than the 5GT’s, and it has been executed far better here than its bigger sibling, if still not perfectly.  But it’s the market that will decide whether or not the 3GT becomes a longer-term fixture in the 3-series line-up than the Compact hatchback, which lasted just seven years. Or, indeed, the Heygate Estate, which is now decaying ahead of its planned demolition in 2015 to make way for another 2500 new homes.

The 3GT’s formula looks even better on paper than the 5GT’s, and it has been executed far better here than its bigger sibling, if still not perfectly.

There seems to be no middle ground with cars like the 3GT. They’re either instantly understood, like the Qashqai and Evoque, and sell in their thousands, or they require continued justification and explanation and end up just drifting away. Reservations remain over the cost, but we suspect that the 3-series badge and the quality of the execution might be enough to see it have a more prosperous existence than the Heygate Estate.