Test Drive: 2006 BMW Z4 3.0si

Bangle.  Chris Bangle. That's all I can think of when I look at a BMW Z4.  I can see his trademark styling all over these cars, and when Bangle's Bungles first started hitting the road, all it made me want to do was punch babies and scream.  "How can he do this to us?  Our cherished BMWs!  He's ruining them!"

But you know, the Z4 has been on US roads now since 2002.  That's 9 years to soak up the Z4's unusual styling, and to be honest it's rather grown on me.  Not to mention the fact that the Z4 wasn't actually styled by Bangle, the styling was directed by Bangle.  So if you want to punch someone, look up Anders Warming.

Really though, the (E85-chassis) Z4 Roadster is a combination of classic proportions swirled together with über-modern detailing, and compared to some stuff on the market today, it's rather graceful and restrained.  The classic super-long-hood, no-trunk sizing, and the dipped doors make the Z4 look more like a modern Triumph TR4 than it does a nuovo Z3.  And resting on these old-school dimensions, the Z4's styling makes some more sense.

The 2006 styling update certainly helped, cleaning up some of the iffy details that came on the original Z4.  The tail-lights made the biggest difference, ditching the multi-colored weirdness for simple red and white.  New headlights, bumpers, and wheels make the facelifted E85 still look up to date, and (at least in this author's humble opinion), clean and restrained next to the new (E89) Z4.  The Z4 is the anti-Miata: it's seemingly been fired on with the "weird styling details" shotgun, and somehow it manages to work.  Compared to BMW's relatively staid sedan models, the Z4 is a festival of oddness.

Check out those front-fender turn signals, with the trademark BMW roundel in them.  They don't look like a turn signal, but flip the stalk and the sides of this round protrusion glow, which reflects off the concave surface it's mounted in, giving an eery "floating" turn signal from the side.  Or how about the sagging swage line that runs from the front to the rear fender through the door to the rear fender, giving the car the appearance of melting?  Or the strangely humped-up trunk, or the two-shapes in one tail lights, or the random switch from a positive to a negative surface on the front fenders, or the symphony of origami lines crossing the body...

But like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's continued ability to get hired for "acting" roles (did you see him in Fast 5? He was hilarious), it somehows works out to... a strangely beautiful car.  It's no E-Type Jaguar, or Lamborghini Miura, or split-window '63 Corvette, but I do imagine that history will look back on the Z4 kindly.  Or at least moreso than they do the Z3.  Fresh off driving one of the Z4's competitors (or at least the Z4 M Coupe's), the Cayman S, let's dive into how a Z4 drives, and what it's like to live with.

This particular model is a 3.0Si.  When the original Z4 came out, there was a 2.5i and a 3.0i, which made sense as the base model had a smaller engine.  When the facelift occured in 2006, BMW ditched that (at least for the US) and both engines available in the Z4 were the N52 3.0L 24v I6.  BOth of these motors have blocks made out of magnesium (isn't that flammable?) with aluminum cylinder liners.  The 3.0i makes 218bhp and 180lb-ft of torque, comparable to the old M54-powered 3.0i's 231bhp.  The 3.0Si, which was the uplevel performance model (but below the wicked Z4 M's 330bhp) used the same motor, but with a variable-length intake manifold, and a more aggressive ECU tune.  Output in the 3.0Si is 255bhp and 220lb-ft of torque, compared to the 3.0i's 215bhp and 185lb-ft.

With a 3.0Si weighing in just over 3,000lbs, that's a decent (but not insane) amount of poke for the pork.  Mated to a six-speed manual transmission, BMW claims the 3.0Si is good for a 5.7s 0-60mph time, which is comparable to the smaller-engined Porsche Boxster as well as the Mercedes SLK350.  Like all good German cars, the Z4 has an electronic leash that cuts off the fun at 155mph.

What's it like to drive?  Well, some things are great.  Others, not so much.  The biggest issue, and one that's hard to avoid, is that the Z4 is surprisingly hard to fit in for someone large of frame like myself.  At 6'2", ingress and egress on the Z4 - even with the convertible top stowed - is a challenge, and the cockpit is surprisingly tight.  the tall door sills and low steering wheel mean some interesting contortions are necessary to slide behind the wheel, perhaps not fitting with the "luxury sport roadster" theme.  Just for reference, it's not nearly this hard to get in and out of a Cayman, and that car's roof doesn't move.  Once inside, the wheel crowds your lap if you've got it adjusted in a such a way as to be able to see the gauges, which is useful.  Of course, being a high-end BMW, the interior quality and design is beyond reproach - the Z4's non-M seats are supremely comfortable, and this car's white leather with light-colored wood trim and black dashboard makes it cheerier than the all-black interior you'd expect.

I'm a sucker for good gauges, and the Z4's are awesome - nice deep bins to keep the sun out, and a radiant orange glow that looks like an epic sunset.  They're easily visible at dusk, too, which is a strange weak spot on some cars with LED-lit gauges.  The E85 Z4's are blissfully unencumbered by BMW's infernal iDrive device, and the navigation screen folds out of the way when not in use.  It's clearly legible even in bright sunlight when it's on, and the touch-screen operating is accurate enough to get the job done without a bunch of punching and swearing.

How you like driving the Z4 depends on what sort of driving you're doing, and whether or not the sport mode is engaged.  If you just want to lay the top back and take a pretty lady (or dude, I don't judge) out for a relaxing drive in the country side, the revised Z4 is pretty damn awesome at that.  The early Z4's were criticized for their kidney-punching stiff ride, but 06+ models aren't bad at all.  In normal mode, ride motions are well controlled, throttle response isn't hyperactive, and the light clutch and BMW stick shift require approximately 5 minutes of learning curve before you stop even thinking about it.  BMW did their homework with this convertible; even cruising at 70 with the top down, wind disturbance is minimal, and you can easily carry on a conversation with a passenger without resorting to shouting.  This is where all those luxury features come in handy: the heated seats are powerful, the built-in nav will direct you to the nearest winery, etc.

If you're in this mood and you punch the sport mode, you'll drive along for a few minutes, then promptly turn it back off.  The suspension gets remarkably stiff, transmitting tiny ripples through the steering column, and it seems more apt to bounce over bumps than actually suppress them.  The throttle response goes from normal to Oh God Do A Burnout! and the steering weight increases to forearm-building levels.  If you're hammering down a back road in the Z4, you'll want to engage this mode, but you'll wish you could control the shock damping levels separately from the rest of the sport mode like you can in the Cayman.  Like the Cayman, Sport is too damn stiff to actually help you make fast progress on a real country road - you spend more time making tiny steering corrections and wondering how that much bump steer can come out of normal-sized tires than you will enjoying the smooth engine.  Also a thumbs down to the clutch-release delay valve that BMW installs in their stick-shifts, which makes driving a manual easier for beginners, and jerky and slow for people that know how to drive.

And boy, is the 3.0Si's motor a peach.  Like all BMW sixes, it sounds like silk ripping as the revs climb, and there aren't any of the unpleasant vibrations associated with, say, Nissan's VQ37HR motor in the 370Z.  Unfortunately, there's also not the unbelievable grunt that the VQ possess either.  It's still only a 3.0L, but with Valvetronic (BMW's version of variable valve lift) and double VANOS (variable cam timing on both cams), you'd expect there to be more low end torque, or more top-end scream, or both.  The Si never pins you in your seat like the Cayman S's motor, but that's not especially surprising considering the power difference.  Driveability issues?  Of course not.  It's as smooth as a bottle of $500 cognac, and you find yourself holding gears longer than normal both for the sound, and to have some torque pulling out of corners.  Would this car be a total monster with the Z4 M's S54 straight-six?  Probably so; the S52B34 may also be short on low-end torque, but the additional revs and power would have to sound and feel magnificent in a 2-seater like this.

What's odd about the whole Z4 experience is the weight balance.  BMW claims the 3.0Si has exactly 50/50 weight distribution front to rear with the manual transmission (49/51 with auto), but in the Z4 you feel like you're sitting directly above the rear axle.  The car is more prone to understeer than oversteer, thanks to the staggered tire sizing, but you'd have to be going fairly idiotic speeds on the road to find that out.  But sitting that far back, with that much hood up front, makes the Z4 a surprisingly difficult car to place in turns.  It just feels odd, and takes some getting used to compared to the Cayman.

It's hard to really get comfortable driving a Z4 hard on a back road.  In the normal mode, the suspension is too soft and the steering's too light.  In Sport mode, the steering and throttle are fantastic, but again the suspension is too stiff to be useful.  It's an odd compromise for a BMW, a company that's long prided itself on it's ride/handling compromise.  Surely some of the blame can be attributed to the standard-fitment runflat tires, which have ridiculously stiff sidwalls to support the load of the car with no air in them which wreck the ride on basically any car so equipped.  On the up-side, the brakes are unusually good for a BMW, and there's almost no chassis shake at all.  You can tell that a lot of effort went into the design of the Z4 as regards chassis bracing - crawling under and around the Si reveals a plethora of braces tied in at multiple locations, and as a result the car feels all of one piece on the road.

So the Z4 isn't really a hard-core sports car, but honestly, that's ok.  Most of the joy of owning a svelte two-seat drop top like the Z4 comes from relaxing drives in the countryside, the (quite good, I must add) stereo playing your favorite album, and the sounds of that classic straight six tickling your ears.  If you were looking for something more brutal, well - BMW did sell the Z4M.  Or comparable money will get you behind the wheel of a good condition (AP2) S2000, which is a loud, bouncy bucket of VTEC that's not all that great for commuting, but hard to touch when it comes to thrashing it.  For posing and cruising potential, an SLK350 has the Z4's card pulled; that folding metal hard-top might be heavy, but it's quiet as a coupe inside with the top up, the ride's better, and the extra engine size gives it more low end torque.  For a car that's designed to split the balance then, the Z4 3.0Si does well.  But if you were expecting a Grand Am race car, you'll be sorely disappointed.