Review By Joe Lorio
Our test BMW 328i sedan was equipped with performance rubber, which made it pretty much worthless in the snow. We ran our Four Seasons BMW 330i sedan with Dunlop Winter Sport M3 winter tires and the car performed flawlessly in the white stuff.
Speaking of the 330i, the 328i basically has a detuned version of its 3.0-liter, 255-hp engine. It's a sweetheart of a powerplant but the 328i version does feel like it's breathing through a restrictor. It doesn't quite have the lovely pull or sparkly personality of the now-departed 330i. Still, it's a great package and I love normally aspirated engines.
I really like this BMW, and it's one I would consider buying with my own money. But the price is a bit high if you want something less than poverty spec. For $34,425, you do without power seats, Xenon headlights, 17-inch wheels, folding rear seats, leather, or lumbar adjustment. If you want lumbar adjustment, you need to spend $3350 for the premium package. That's just plain crazy. BMW should at least give us a simple manual adjustment as standard. Speaking of manual adjustments, the standard seats are like a Rubik's Cube to figure out. I'm not anti manual seats, but the BMW seats are very complicated to adjust. The $995 power front seats option is money well spent.
I still find BMW's sport suspension a bit too aggressive in regards to the rebound setting on the dampers, but the 3-series still is the best driving car in the class. The rest of the segment just doesn't offer the communicative steering and wonderful chassis balance of the 3.
2009 BMW 328i
