Do the mechanical revisions to the latest M135i xDrive make a silk purse out of a sow's ear?
If ever a hot hatch needed some revisions, it was the BMW M135i xDrive. When the F40 usurped the rear-drive F20, it had a point to prove: that the move to a transverse four-pot and all-wheel drive was actually progress. It didn’t. It felt like a car designed by committee, then handed to a bunch of engineers to make the best of it. The concept felt contrived and the execution half-baked. As a pokey hatchback, you could argue it was broadly acceptable, but as a hot hatch it was a dullard.
And so it proves. The latest M135i is certainly quick enough - yet out-and-out performance was never its problem. The little 2.0-litre turbo delivers some pep, let me tell you, thanks to 306hp, and with 332lb available between 1,800 and 4,500rpm, it’s jolly flexible as well. The problem is that the engine – despite claims that its emotional circuitry has been switch on at last – is still dull. BMW’s fours don’t sound very nice full stop.
At least changing the settings is easy to do, because the 1 Series comes with lots of simple buttons that cover all the basics – temperature, heated rear window, power-folding mirrors and the like – and an iDrive controller is on-hand if you need to dive headlong into the infotainment menus. And because this is BMW’s older-generation iDrive, those menus are broadly simple to trawl through.
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