I'm here in leave 2019 BMW Z4. Now it wouldn't be quite right to call this an
all-new vehicle for BMW because they did make the Z4 for a long time. It is back
though after a hiatus of a few years and frankly that's probably because the old
model, even though it was nominally a sports car and a convertible, wasn't
really that fun to drive. So I'm here in Palm Springs to test out the new Z4 and
to see if it fixes the sins of the old one. Changes to the 2019 Z4 start with
styling. So the old car, it was a kind of this weird mix of lines and curves that
didn't really go together very well. The new car, it flows much better and I think
it's better looking overall starting with the front. You still have a kidney
grille but instead of the traditional vertical slats you'd have almost look
like star particles coming out of each side and up close it looks very
attractive, the detailing is really impressive and as you move back, strong
character lines that kind of move from the front fenders down the sides to the
rear. Overall if the whole thing looks lower, it's actually wider and longer
than the old car and BMW says that the new car also has pretty much 50/50
weight distribution which is supposed to help balance it in corners. One other
big change, it now has a soft top instead of the hardtop and that saves you some
weight and that's kind of what you wanted in a roadster and I took it up on a
windy road to see if it helped with the car's agility.
BMW has announced that there will be two variants in the Z4 coming in pretty
short order: the sDrive 30i which I'm in now in the faster M40i which will
follow a little bit later. The sDrive 30i comes with a 2-liter turbocharged
4-cylinder under the hood and it makes 255 horsepower but a really impressive
295 pound-feet of torque and that's a lot of torque that come out of a 2 liter
4-cylinder engine and it makes a huge difference. This engine is one that we've
seen before in other BMW models. It's good in those vehicles, it's really good
in this one. The highlight of Z4's driving experience is definitely how responsive
that engine is and not only that how responsive its 8-speed automatic
transmission is. Not only does it shift quickly it also does a very good job of
moving gears wether your in either Sport or Sport+ mode. So much of the Z4
is configurable. This one also has the optional adaptive and suspension and
there's all sorts of different settings that you can dial up in a menu so beyond
Sport and Sport Plus there's also an individual sport setting where you can kind of
change up the settings, make them how you like them. As I mentioned before the Z4
has nearly perfect 50/50 weight distribution and what that does is it
makes it a very balanced car in the corners. Now this vehicle also has the
optional adaptive M suspension which means that when you put it into Sport or
Sport Plus it stiffens up the dampers, it stiffens up the ride, so when you toss it
into a corner it stays pretty flat. Impressively flat for a front-engine
rear-wheel-drive car and that helps you put down power on exit because it feels
like the car is balanced coming out of a corner and you're able to get on the gas
a little bit sooner. Balance is only part of the handling equation and it's the
other part where the Z4 does fall a little bit short for me and that would
be steering feel. The wheel, it does have a good amount of weight to it especially
when you put the car in it's more aggressive driving modes but what I'm
speaking of is not weight, it's something more specific than that and that would
be feedback. When you're driving a car as hard as this car you know kind of wants
to be driven you want more feedback and not less.
You want to know what the tires are doing, you want to know when you're approaching
the limits of the cars grip. The problem with the Z4 is that when you approach
those limits it gets a little bit vague. There's not enough feedback from the
wheel to let me know what the front tires are doing and the suspension, since
it has those adaptive dampers, it kind of is working to smooth out the
imperfections and keep it you know perfectly flat so you're not quite sure
where the edge of the car is and that's really not anything that you want when
you're trying to drive hard. In the vast majority of driving that won't really be
an issue, like you know commuting or driving around day-to-day, but you don't
buy a sports car for the 90% of the time you buy it for that 10% of time when you
want to get out there and drive the car hard. The Z4 is almost there but not
quite. Even though the Z4 isn't quite sharp enough for me I still found plenty
to like about this vehicle. I'm a big fan of the styling changes on the outside
and the powertrain. Even though this is the less powerful model I still think
it's a pretty good engine and transmission combination. Inside it's
also a massive leap forward from the previous Z4. We have these two high
resolution screens in front of you feeding you information and BMWs iDrive
multimedia system has come a long way and it's now one of the easier systems
that I've found to use in luxury vehicles. This screen also it might look
like it's super far away from you but I could actually reach it from the
driver's seat without leaning forward and that gives me the choice of using
either the screen or this knob down here to control multimedia functions. The 2019
Z4 is priced is fairly aggressive. This sDrive 30i model starts at just over
$50,000 including destination charges and for that you get a very balanced car
with a pretty good powertrain. Now if you're interested in this car good news
is you went off the wait long. sDrive 30i models will go on sale starting in
March with M40i models to follow later in the year.