Yahoo Autos The E90 325i Was All the BMW You Could Ever Need
If you're experienced in arguing on the Internet these days-and who isn't?-you're probably heard the phrase "the fallacy of the beard." It refers to a form of argument that goes something like this: A man with a beard doesn't see it growing on a daily basis. There's basically no useful difference, for example, between my beard yesterday and my beard today. So… there's not really any useful difference between my beard on Monday and my beard today. The "fallacy of the beard" takes that idea to its ultimate but illogical conclusion: there's no difference between Mr. Clean and Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top.
Die-hard BMW fans, the people who can find no fault in the company, often use the fallacy of the beard to excuse the rather staggering increase in size and weight between the original 2002 and the current-generation 3-Series. They'll say that there was only a small swelling between that '02 and the E21 320i, and that the E30 was only a tiny bit bigger than the E21, and the E36 really just represented a short stretch in wheelbase, and… you get the idea.
It's true that the differences between any two generations of 3er are often small. It's equally true that today's 320i is a foot longer, and about half a ton heavier, than the 1977 version. So the question becomes: Was there a Goldilocks moment when everything was just right?
The answer almost certainly depends on what you want out of a 3-Series. If you're a club racer, chances are that you're completely satisfied with the E30 or E36; the newer cars are just too big and heavy. Casual trackday users like the E46 M3's blend of power and handling; time-trial drivers are in love with the V8 power of the E92 coupes.
But if you take all of the people mentioned above and put them in a single group, you're still only talking about a very small percentage of BMW owners. Maybe a better question would be: Which generation of 3-Series works best for enthusiastic daily driving on the street? After all, the whole idea behind the 2002 was to create a car that worked as a unified, gratifying whole in everyday use.
If you'd asked me last week, I would have said that the E46-generation 330i Sport 5-speed that I owned from 2001 to 2003 was the perfect daily-driver BMW. It was quick, handled beautifully, looked gorgeous inside and out. I honestly think that BMW could sell that car right now, in today's showrooms, and do pretty well.
This past Sunday, however, Danger Girl and I caught a ride with a friend to the motorcycle show at the Cleveland airport, about 135 miles each way from my house. My friend-we'll call him Joe, since that's his name-has a pre-facelift E90 325xi. Six-speed manual transmission. Zero options that I can see. Aluminum interior trim, vinyl seats. Compared to my 330i Sport, which was a $42,000 car in 2001 with full leather and all the options I could get, it's basically a taxi.
Yet the newer sedan can do something that my gorgeous old E46 couldn't-it allowed my long-legged, five-foot-nine wife to sit behind my six-foot-two self for the whole trip without either one of us requiring a follow-up appointment with a chiropractor. After nearly five hours in the car in the space of a single morning, both of us were able to stretch our legs and walk away.
With 108,000 miles on the clock, the 325xi is no spring chicken. And the AWD system is so hilariously dilatory as to be useless; it will easily do a donut on light snow the same way its RWD sibling will. But Joe is an old-hand SCCA racer/mechanic and he's managed to keep the car looking and feeling relatively new.
Most of the things I love about Millennial-era Bimmers are right here in this car. The stark and spare but eminently usable interior with its driver-oriented console and flat black plastic. The simplicity of the instrument panel and controls in this base-model, no-frills spec. The slick heft of the shifter and the faintly discernible mechanical thrum in the steering that reassures the driver that he is neither in a Corvette nor in a game of Forza Motorsport.
Most of all, however, the strong and sweet inline-six. The disappearance of this naturally-aspirated engine from the BMW lineup is an authentic tragedy; it's the very essence of the brand and the experience. No, the '02 didn't have it, but every small BMW since has been its very best self when powered by some sort of small-displacement straight-six. I'm one of those people who will take an E30 325is over an E30 M3 every day and twice on Sunday. Give me that silent turbine power. Hell, I even adored the two eta-engine cars that my father owned.
It's the engine that separates Joe's car from the Passats and C230 Kompressors of similar vintage, really. That, and the unique driving position; it manages to capture elements of both sports-car perspective and sedan spaciousness. It's nice to be able to see a little bit of the hood from the driver's seat.
Joe's car was fairly expensive new, and it's still worth a little bit of money. For good reason, if you ask me. I think that this was the Goldilocks 3-Series for daily use. Just big enough for four Americans. Neither an underpowered commuter nor an M-car with all the attendant cost and consumption issues that entails. It feels special when you drive it but it's also not so precious that you'd want to put it in a heated garage and slather it with Zaino.
There's just one problem with Joe's 325xi: there's no real way to replace it. The new 3-Series is bigger, less driver-focused, powered by efficient but charmless turbo four-bangers. It's full of technology that Joe doesn't want and it's got features that he wouldn't use. So as far as Joe's concerned, that 108,000-mile odometer reading is just the beginning. But if you want to join him in the Goldilocks generation of everyday Bimmer, you'd better move fast. These cars are starting to disappear into buy-here-pay-here lots and careless third owners. They won't all disappear tomorrow, but a few of them will, and a few of them will go the day after that, and so on, and so forth, and... Think of the supply of good E90 Bimmers as a beard. It's being trimmed, you dig? And that's no fallacy.
Born in Brooklyn but banished to Ohio, Jack Baruth has won races on four different kinds of bicycles and in seven different kinds of cars. Everything he writes should probably come with a trigger warning. His column, Avoidable Contact, runs twice a week.
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