BMW 435i Coupé Sports Steptronic – One Small Leap (Part 2)

More Grace Than Pace

Although the turbocharged straight-six engine that nestles beneath this car’s bonnet may share a few strands of DNA with the upcoming M4′s power-plant, there’s no risk of toes being trodden on. With outputs identical to those of the 335i and the previous 335i Coupe, those placing their orders for the 435i will, without a doubt, be doing so fully aware that what they’re getting is a brisk, well-mannered tourer. And, in this respect, the 435i doesn’t disappoint.

Few manufacturers can produce engines as refined, creamily smooth and effortless as BMW’s turbocharged 3,0-litre straight six, and the 435i is pretty much the ideal vessel for such a unit. Those 3 Series-based underpinnings bring with them a fine balance of agility and involvement tempered with assuredness and comfort that virtually no rival in the 4 Series’s bracket can match.

We expected our test unit’s combination of firmer suspension and 40/35 profile tires to serve up a jittery ride, but this setup felt well damped over most road scars. The sweet spot sits in the comfort setting of the adaptive setup, which provides a bit more give compared with the tauter sports setting but doesn’t submit easily to body roll. In this respect, the 435i easily fulfills the role of comfortable, long-legged 2+2 capable of inspiring confidence on sweeping roads as well as in tight corners.

Dynamically, there’s little to fault. That near-50:50 front-to-rear weight distribution and a center of gravity that’s considerably lower than that of the outgoing coupé lend the car an almost pivot-like ability to nose into bends, aided in no small measure by an electric power-steering system that’s both responsive to inputs and sufficiently weighted to provide good feedback without becoming tiresome.

The powertrain doesn’t give way to the uncouth shove at 2 500 r/min that often accompanies large-displacement turbo petrol units. There’s a delightfully fluid feel to its power delivery, but it’s in no way languid. The 400 N.m of twist from just 1 200 r/min allows the powertrain to pull cleanly, whether in higher gears at low speeds or under hard acceleration, and spool up to its 7 000 r/min redline without any fuss. The eight-speed ‘box meshes well with this power-plant, being smooth in its operation and assured in its ratio selection, and is seldom flummoxed by any abrupt throttle inputs thrown its way.

While the engine is sublime in its own right, there is, much like the design and packaging, a strange sense of things standing quite still when a new-model-line revolution is expected.

A couple of years ago, we performance tested – but didn’t publish a test of – the E92 335i Coupe and a glance over the figures reveal precious little between it and the 435i. Both have the same engine outputs and, despite BMW’s claim of a 30 kg weight saving over the previous model, the 335i’s 1 611 kg kerb weight undercut that of our, admittedly well-equipped, 435i by 40kg.

Comparing performance results serves to only substantiate the narrow margin separating the two. The seven-speed dual-clutch-equipped 335i’s 0-100 km/h time was only 0,03 seconds slower and the older car bested the 435i’s ingear acceleration figures from 60 km/h upwards.

It was with this in mind that a couple of the testers walked away feeling that another 20-or-so kW would provide enough fizz to better distance the 435i from the sedan and lend it the sort of distinction that justifies its R100 000 premium.

Test Summary

Seldom does the summation of a really accomplished test car bring with it such polarizing views, but this is exactly what the 435i has presented. In isolation, it’s sublime: the BMW is subtly handsome, refined and possessed of the balanced dynamics that blows its rivals into the weeds. It’s a seriously appealing package, but it has one big problem…

The 3 Series upon which it’s based is more affordable, similarly well balanced, a mite more practical and almost as pleasing to the eye. It seems unfair to hobble the 435i thus, but with the numeric leap from 3 to 4, there’s always the risk that, when people look at the newcomer, they will expect the sweeping differentiation that divides such models as the 5 Series to 6, and X5 to X6.

Perhaps the introduction of the eagerly awaited M4 will widen the gap, but you get the feeling that the task of spanning such a divide while meeting the groundswell of hype will place a huge weight of expectation on the M car.