Bmw z4

f there wasn’t already a saying about marketing men never coming up with a great driver’s car, it’s time there was. And the new BMW Z4 could be the perfect example. Flash back a couple of years and those marketeers asked BMW customers what they wanted from a replacement for the Z4 Coupé and Roadster. A car that’s more practical with a more forgiving ride, came the response. Oh, and it must have a folding hardtop. Prospective Z4 buyers, it seems, were being lost to the Mercedes-Benz SLK. And the Bavarians baulked at that.

So in the German firm’s own words, the new Z4 has been built as a “conquest” car; its function is to capture customers from rivals such as Audi (the TT), Porsche (Cayman and Boxster) and, of course, Mercedes and its darned SLK.

You can imagine whispered chats in Munich corridors between engineers about bloody marketing men and their unreasonable and contradictory demands for a sports car that mustn’t be too sporty.

Give them credit; they’ve done their best to overcome this. They’ve even come up with a new BMW acronym, DDC, or Dynamic Drive Control. With three settings (Normal, Sport and Sport +) you can “tune” the throttle response, gear change time and steering to your liking. Spend extra on the Adaptive M suspension and the ride quality adjusts, too.

You can argue that Normal is too harsh while Sport + is too rigid, with a throttle response that’s overly sharp for drivers who value smooth inputs. But at least you have the choice.
For pottering about, the Normal setting suits the Z4. This latest model has grown in all directions apart from upward compared with its predecessor and it feels like a far more substantial car. The real impact of this growth becomes apparent as soon as the tarmac turns twisty – conditions you might imagine a BMW sports car would relish.
The Normal setting becomes too floppy in these more challenging circumstances, but select Sport + and the Z4 will take everything in its capacious stride. Nothing wrong there, but a Cayman or Boxster would demand your attention and reward you by momentarily knocking a decade or two off how old you feel.