420D Coupe due soon (hopefully)

Next up is M340D Touring. Nothing amazing in the spec for it, but I really wanted a shot at having the big power diesel before they outlaw them altogether.

 

My 15yr old daughter does nothing but gripe about it so I can’t imagine how much worse it is for a full grown man!
A while back my dad had borrowed the car from me for a few days and had to do a couple of trips with the following line up in it… dad as driver at mid 60s, mid 80s front seat passenger and mum (60s) and her aunt (mid 80s) in the back of it. The thought of it kept me chuckling for a while at the time - a proper unlikely lineup for a 2 door coupe.

 

My neighbour got one a month ago. Loves it, fast and extremely economical in everyday traffic. There's a thread on his somewhere on here that I posted from a month ago ....it's purple too!!

 

I’d read that thread with the purple one. Bold colour choice. Mine will be a much more mundane black colour.

 

M340d touring, fantastic bit of kit. Great choice.
Just watch that HUD, the speed will creep up on you pretty damn quick! I have a speed awareness course in two weeks that proves the point. Doh!

 

Early start today for my last drive in the 420D and it performed flawlessly for just under 300 miles averaging just under 58mpg travelling at sensible motorway and A road speeds. All in, it’s been an excellent car in the time I’ve had it, a really pleasant place to sit, capable of taking 1 or 2 people decent distances in plenty of comfort.

Since I know myself well enough to know that an ownership thread for the new one would be as empty from my side as this thread I might as well just drop 1st impressions and a couple of photos in here… quick, very quick, but almost deceivingly so, you notice how quick it is more so by what’s behind you than and how quickly they get smaller than how it feels itself, albeit I’ve been conscious that it’s not had a run in period, so haven’t given it an actual decent full throttle burst, more just a brief dab so far. On the same drive home, but with much, much worse stop start traffic especially on A1 and A66, it’s given me 51mpg again following the same sensible motorway speeds. Not the best photos, but they are all I have so far!

 

Looks menacing in black. How are you getting on with the digital/touchscreen dash?
These economy figures sound excellent, especially given that it hasn’t been run in yet.
What spec do you have? One of that is on the short/long list for the replacement of the M440i.

 

I had actually meant to say in my first post that I’m not really sure on the fully digital dash and the new version of software on it, but do have to admit at the same time that I didn’t set it up at all before driving home, just jumped in the car, paired my phone and app and headed for home.

Spec wise this is a standard car, so none of the extras boxes ticked, it was a stock car that was held by Stratstone. I’ve not had time to feel it misses anything yet, but i also never saw a full spec list for it as after moving out of production that seemed really hard to come by on line, so what it does and doesn’t have will be a slowly uncovering mystery to me as I get to know the car!

Obvious doesn’t have versus my 4 series are HK speakers and adaptive suspension. I suspect at some point the latter could feel like a miss.
Things it does have that I wasn’t sure it would are powered tailgate, and a working auto headlights button (some may remember my annoyance at this in the 420D). I think it also has the iDrive controller that takes a drawn on input (though after a couple of tries using that in our older 3 series we just ignored it was there), and headlights with a blue light in the bottom, though I’m not sure if these are now just completely standard.

As a brand new car it does switch back on the speed limit warnings every time you switch it off, so I guess I’ll need to do my best to get a shortcut to killing these on the idrive, but even more annoyingly it switches the aggressive lane correction steering back on too every time - I find this much harder to live with than the speed warning bonging noise.

 

I believe that the M340d does have adaptive suspension as standard, you have to go into the I drive to get to the settings. Should come with a Limited Slip Differential too.

My neighbour is getting over 55mpg on commutes of about 15 miles. The mild hybrid really helps here.

 

I’ll check in the settings to see what I can find, I just assumed they had dropped the adaptive suspension with the LCI updates when there wasn’t a button for it. 55mpg on a 15 mile commute sounds pretty impressive, I’m not sure I’ll match it but would definitely expect an average of mid/high 40s on mine which is just under 30 miles each way. The 420D could fall anywhere from mid 40s all the way up to about 65mpg for the commute depending on traffic conditions. Single carriageway A roads for the majority of the distance means some trips get done at a solid 40mph leading to huge mpg (it was at 78mpg for the journey as I reached the town part of the journey last week) - drops rapidly form that in the last 4-5 miles of the journey though through town traffic.

 

Enjoy your new car with its very impressive mpg, which will hopefully improve as its runs in, I had an f series 335d tourer a few years ago and that was a license at risk quick car.
My x5 was in for service earlier this week and was lent an i4 m50 for the day, my first proper experience of a fully electric car, very quiet, extremely quick, wasn’t sure about the lack of physical buttons to control things, ended up pulling over and stopping to made adjustments to climate etc and to generally work out how it worked.
Must admit vey impressed overall and although the price is rather off putting, an all electric car is now on my next car list, although hopefully the X5 will stay reliable as need it to tow the caravan.

 

Adding in here cause I think all the folk who would much care to read will catch from here anyway…

I’d mentioned that it didn’t have adaptive suspension and I thought I might come to miss it, and it was helpfully pointed out to me that it has adjustable through the menus.
Reason I thought I might come to miss it was that I had quickly felt the car to be pretty heavy feeling and very, very stiff - almost to the point of being an annoyance. Anyway, today I noticed a “knock” from the front passenger side, so I done what I should have done 2 weeks ago and had a look by jacking the car up and lifting up the gaiter on the shock. No surprise at all to me that I found what I have to assume (and the internet tells me with a decent level of certainty) are the shipping blocks that should’ve been removed during PDI. No photos as it is pissing it down with rain here tonight so I just wanted to get back in the house, but complaint incoming to supplying dealer tomorrow and a question to them of how they resolve this one tomorrow or Friday as I need the car to be available to me.

 

That is very poor. Should have been a check for the PDI and/or the dealer hand over. Hope they rectify that asap and give some recompense.

 

Fully rectified today and it’s like having a new car, amazing the difference in it - makes me annoyed that I was making excuses for it, when I was so certain it wasn’t right, and almost resenting the car a wee bit for how flawed it was. Ultimately questioning if it really was the car for me.

Least said about the service experience from either the supplying dealer or the servicing dealer today the better, fair to say both have fallen miles short of my expectation of what is good on a brand new motor. The only person I’ve dealt with today who gets any real credit from me was the call centre advisor/service booker who was genuinely brilliant, understood my frustrations and worked to resolve, sticking to what she told me.

 

How is the car treating you?

 

Just ticked over 3500 miles in it now and still really liking it. It’s ridiculously quick for a normal looking estate car, and is plenty comfortable. It consistently does 48mpg over the course of a tankful. Only hiccup in the time of driving it was coming home from a weekend away there was an awful screeching from the passenger side front wheel area. I had a suspicion that it was likely to be a stone caught between the brake disc and the heat shield, so I managed to borrow a jack and a socket and wrench from someone working in their driveway, take the wheel off and found exactly what I suspected I would. Once removed everything was back to normal.

 

A brilliant everyday package, power, handling, comfort and economy. If I wasn’t running two cars I’d have one of those as a perfect compromise.
There isn’t a lot in the performance of the 40i and 40d variants of the G21. I remember watching several YT videos comparing them back to back, CarWow and Joe Achilles I think.

 

I’ve probably watched all the same videos between starting to do the deal on it and picking it up. Agree on it being a great one car compromise.

If I have a minor niggle with it then it’s definitely the colour. I am not a big fan of washing cars, but it’s nigh on impossible to get any satisfaction from cleaning it as even when washed it seems to be a magnet for dust and water marks.

 

I’ve vowed never to have a black car, exactly for the reasons you’ve mentioned! Although that vow hasn’t really worked, had two black Saabs and two black Alfas. Looked wonderful after a few hours of cleaning, 20 mins later, I did wonder why I’d bothered.
Have you had any treatment for the paint?

 

It has BMW X Protect treatment on it as part of the deal, but given the PDI issues I had I’m not convinced it’ll have been applied particularly well.