Pros: Performance, comfort, refinement, quality of materials, remains fun to drive
Cons: Styling, some of the fun gone, price
The Bottom Line: The Z4 is much more refined and comfortable than the Z3, but not as much fun to drive. The larger six better suits the car, but is too expensive.
The Z4 is available with two inline sixes, a 2.5 and 3.0, and two transmissions, a manual and automatic. In the car the Z4 replaced, the retro-styled Z3, I recommended the 2.5 with manual as the best combination of real-world driving fun and value. However, my initial review of the Z4 was based on a test drive of the 3.0 with automatic, as it was the only version available for a test drive when I stopped by the dealership. (A 2.5 manual was parked in the middle of the showroom floor.) This time around I managed to drive a 2.5 with manual, along with another 3.0 automatic. (Still no 3.0 with six-speed manual, though.) Is the 2.5 still the one I’d recommend?
Styling
Ever since I first saw spy photos of the Z4, I’ve known the styling wasn’t for me. Supposedly all of the new edges and greater visual bulk are to make BMW’s roadster less of a “chick car.” Apparently the clean, curvy design of the Z3 made it appeal largely to women who found it “cute.” Still, I strongly prefer it. Maybe this makes me less virile, but three young children is enough virility for me.
What I liked about the Z3’s design was its lithe purity. It looks like what I want, a basic roadster. The Z4 is styled to look anything but basic. Every piece of the car—headlights, doors, door handles, etc.—is connected by a large number of irregularly curved, complexly interconnecting creases. Each crease in itself is interesting, both in its shape and how it ties into various elements of the car. But there’s no unified whole here. I’m reminded of movies where the director felt the need to pack in as many “neat” special effects as possible, one on top of the other. These usually aren’t good movies. And this isn’t a very good design. It might be far more sophisticated than that of the Z3, but it’s just busy busy busy.
The basic shape isn’t too good, either. With the Z3 the rear quarters always looked a touch small, like the rear end of a bulldog. This was fixed a bit with a mid-cycle freshening, but never entirely eliminated. With the Z4 the front to rear balance is not only worse than it ever was with the Z3, but the hard crease along the top edge of the rear fender makes the rear of the car look even smaller than it is. I also don’t care for the hump in the center of the trunk lid, even if this does help trunk room. Maybe mid-cycle they can fix both of these issues by raising the rear fenders an inch or two.
Some designs look better in the metal than they do in photographs. Not this one. It looks better in photographs because the photographers have done their best to capture the Z4’s best angles. In person it looks bulky, weird, and busy. The Z traced by the creases on the left side is just too precious. At best a fashion statement that will soon look very dated. In my opinion, BMW’s should have timeless designs as they have in the past.
Inside I have fewer issues. To begin with, the quality of materials is far better than in the Z3. I was reminded of those in the ritzy 745i. Trendy metallic trim is used to good effect on the steering wheel spokes, door pulls, and various other places.
Unfortunately, the styling of the interior also reminded me of the 745’s. The instrument panel’s design is extremely horizontal, with a wide slab of aluminum or wood extending from door to door. This slab is wonderfully finished, but while it would look awesome in a Buick sedan it looks terribly out of place in a roadster. The sedan-like theme continues with Camry-like climate control knobs in a row along the bottom of the instrument panel and the absence of a smooth flow down the center stack into the center console. I personally like the dash to cleanly flow into the center console, even in a sedan. And while I’ll grant that a horizontal theme makes an interior feel roomier, and so it can make sense in a sedan, I see no such need in a roadster. In a roadster I personally favor a cockpit-like interior, and this isn’t even close.
I’ve sat in or driven both wood and aluminum trimmed cars. As in the 7, the matte finish wood recalls fine Scandinavian furniture in design and finish, and sure is purty, but it just doesn’t belong in this car, at least not in this car as a sports car. (Maybe it’s not really a sports car?) The aluminum is much more in character, and I suppose the standard trim is also better.
A few ergonomic issues result from the artsy fartsiness of the interior. The instruments are deeply set into a pair of binnacles. These binnacles angle up, but I’m looking straight into them. Consequently, the upwards angle of the deep holes cuts off the bottom half of the two minor gauges that occupy the bottom of the tach’s hole. Why do they angle up? Was this aspect of the design handled by a seven-foot-tall designer? Beats me. An unusual lapse for BMW.
Second, the thick metallic finished door pulls are artfully thick and semicircular in section. With a semicircle you get two sharp edges. To whit: these door pulls are not comfortable in the hand. What happened to the German design religion of form follows function? Some might blame it on the American chief designer, but BMW’s senior executives must sign off on everything he creates.
Accommodations
The Z4 is a couple inches longer than the Z3 to encompass a roomier interior. And it is roomier. It’s now small rather than extra small. Fine by me. The Z3 was one of the few cars that I drove with the seat all the way back. I can still drive the Z4 with the seat all the way back, but one click forward is optimal for my 30” inseam legs. People up to six feet in height should be reasonably comfortable.
The seats certainly won’t let anyone down in that area. They’re plenty comfy. What they aren’t is plenty bolstered. With the Z3, BMW offered heavily bolstered seats as part of the sport packages. With the Z4 they’re calling the standard and only seats “sport seats.” They aren’t. They’re much closer in shape to the Z3’s standard seats than its sport seats. At least the interior remains narrow enough that if you slide out of the seat you can’t get very far before making contact with something else. I suppose they’ll put better seats in the M version, but I don’t see why I should have to spend tens thousand more dollars just to get seats with good lateral support.
One thing I really liked about the Z3 was its driving position. The Z3’s bodywork is very low, so there’s absolutely none of that “in a hole” feeling present in an Audi TT and, to a lesser extent, in a Mercedes SLK. With the Z4 the bodywork is a bit higher, but the view out is still better than in the others. My only issue was the rear view mirror. Unlike in a Mazda Miata, this mirror does not sit smack in the middle of the windshield, but it still blocked my view forward a bit unless I put the power seat in its lowest position. Then again, I would have put it there anyway. Thankfully BMW did not get to trendy with the windshield rake. It remains fairly upright, not as much as a Honda S2000’s but upright enough that the A-pillar is not in your face.
As in the Z3, the view forward is defined by the long hood that actually appears to rise as it travels away from you. Like in an old Jag. For me, this adds to the character of both cars.
Pads for knees have been thoughtfully placed on each side of the transmission tunnel. However, they’re so far forward that I’m not sure even very short drivers will come into contact with them. Is it the thought that counts?
One feature I asked the salesmen about with the Z3 was the ability to turn off the passenger airbag. I have young children, and when they’re a little older I’d like to be able to take them for a ride. The Miata and Corvette have such a switch, but the Z3 did not. Dealers could install a switch at their discretion, but most were reluctant. Well, the Z4 has such a switch, so dealers are now spared this tough decision.
The elimination of the spare tire (tires are run-flats) and the humped sheetmetal enable a trunk with nearly double the volume of the Z3’s. Still not commodious, and not practically shaped, but the additional volume certainly increases the car’s practicality.
In small roadsters I personally don’t see a need for a power top. That said, the power top in the Z4 is pretty slick. There’s no need to manually operate anything. Push the button, and it quickly disappears. Like with the Boxster and MR2, the front section of the top is hard, so when retracted the top provides its own cover. No fussy boot to mess with. The rear window is glass with a defroster.
On the Road
In this section I’ll first review the 3.0 automatic, then discuss the 2.5 manual.
There’s no doubt about it, the 225-horsepower 3.0-liter is an amazing engine. It feels much more powerful than its ratings suggest it should, easily rocketing the Z4 to 80 miles-per-hour even saddled with a slushbox. It feels and sounds great at just about any RPM, part throttle or full throttle. The engines in some competitors may produce more power—Nissan’s six and Honda’s four come to mind—but no one else with the partial exception of Lexus seems to be able to put out engines with such a delightful midrange. I care less about the numbers than how an engine sounds and feels, and BMW’s inline sixes are perfect on both counts.
I don’t mean to infer that this is a loud engine. It’s only loud when you want it to be, under fairly heavy throttle. At idle it’s silent. I had to check the tach to be sure it was running. On the highway the fifth gear keeps RPM low, 2700 at 80. This contributes towards making the Z4 surprisingly well-suited for long distance cruising. The Z3 is borderline here, and cars like the S2000 and Miata, well, I love them but I’m not sure I’d like to cover a few hundred miles of highway in one.
As slushboxes go the GM-supplied five-speed is a good one, with quick, smooth shifts and not a hint of indecision during my test drives. The Sport Package in the cars I drove includes larger wheels and tires, stiffer suspension tuning, and “Dynamic Driving Control.” The last toggles the steering effort, throttle sensitivity, and (with the automatic) transmission calibration between normal and sport settings at the touch of a single button. I played with this button a lot. I looked for, but did not notice, any change in the steering and throttle. I don’t doubt that these changes were there, but taking one lap through the curves of my favorite industrial park alternating between the two settings I could not feel a significant difference. Sometimes I thought I felt some difference, but it was so small it could have just been the placebo effect talking.
Note that I did not list the transmission change among those I couldn’t detect. This one I could easily detect. In “sport” the automatic transmission holds on to gears much longer, and does not upshift when you lift off the throttle heading into a turn. Benefit: when you need power coming out of each turn, it’s RIGHT THERE. It’s just like leaving a manual in low gear through a turn. Very nice. The only downside is that the transmission in “sport” also refuses to shift into fifth when driving about town, at least not at any speed I drove the car at (and I got over 100 on the highway), and generally holds keeps RPM higher than I’d want in normal driving. “Upshift already!” So you’re not going to want to just leave this puppy in “sport,” unlike most such settings.
The Z3’s rear suspension was taken from the 1980s 3-Series. It was a dated design prone to sag, dance, and oversteer. With the 3.0’s torque passing through it, I often felt that only the standard stability control saved me from disaster. Great white knuckle fun, but the thrills were a bit cheap. The 2.5 fit that car better. On the flip side, I never drove the 315-horse M engine in the Z3, but imagine that must have bordered on sheer lunacy.
The Z4 has the much more sophisticated rear suspension of the current 3. This suspension is far more stable. It easily channels the 3.0’s torque to the pavement. I was still able to get the stability control to kick in, but most of the time I had to work at it. Fewer thrills, but much more refined. Maybe too refined? I don’t find the 3 as much of a kick to drive as many people do because it’s so composed. I have to drive too fast to get the fun to start. Happily, the Z4 falls somewhere between the Z3 and 3 in this area. I had more fun driving the Z3, but the Z4 is technically a much, much better handling car, and is still great fun to drive. Probably the perfect balance between subjective and objective criteria.
At least with the sport package’s wider tires (225/45-17s all around with the 2.5, 225/40-18s in front and 255/35-18s in back that better fill in the wheel wells with the 3.0), the Z4 sticks very well to the pavement. Handling is very balanced, with little in the way of understeer or oversteer. If anything, it’s too hard to provoke a little rear end drift. I suspect that even the 2.5’s standard tires, 225/50-16’s all around, stick plenty well. The composed, balanced chassis lends a big hand here. As does the stability control if you do something truly stupid. The Z4 can be driven very fast very easily and very safely.
In aggressive driving I was able to get the stability control to kick in a few times, but never felt it was intrusive. Some stability control systems kick in way too early and way too often. Not this one, especially not when using the “DTC” setting for a little more wheel slip. Whenever it kicked in I was glad that it did. Those who want to live fully on the edge can turn the system off by holding the DSC button down for ten seconds. (I didn’t figure this out on my own—while driving the car I couldn’t figure out how to turn the thing off. Pushing the button quickly just toggles the system between the standard and DTC setting.)
One unqualified weakness of the Z4 is its steering. It’s an electrically-assisted (rather than hydraulically-assisted) unit, like those in a small but growing number of other cars (Honda S2000, Saturn ION and VUE, Chevrolet Malibu, Toyota Prius, Mazda RX-8). The Z4’s system is very precise, and certainly feels smoother and more refined than the Z3’s, but the detailed sensations that made the Z3’s steering wheel feel so alive are largely gone. More so than with the suspension, there’s too much luxury car here, not enough roadster. The type of assist is not entirely to blame. The systems in the S2000 and RX-8 are significantly better.
Even with the sport package’s low profile tires the Z4’s ride is quite comfortable for this sort of car. A definite improvement over the Z3’s. The car danced a bit across especially corrugated pavement, but that’s about the extent of the ride’s flaws. The Z4 is quiet for a roadster as well. I’ve already mentioned that engine RPM are low in top gear. With the top up, a lining minimizes wind noise (though it seems that this lining only comes in the power top). With the top down, buffeting is considerably lower than in the Z3. The taller bodysides likely help here, but I suspect a great deal of development work went into designing the windshield and body to channel the airstream away from the interior. (To further reduce buffeting, I believe a wind blocker is available as a dealer-installed option.) I drove the car on a chilly fall morning, yet remained quite comfortable even on the highway even with the windows down. Okay, the heated seat helped a little…but I was still surprised at the overall level of comfort with the top down.
This level of refinement does have a downside. Quieter, smoother cars don’t feel as quick as they are, and the Z4 is no exception. The 3.0 doesn’t feel as blazingly quick here as it does in the Z3. Mass might play a small role: the Z4 is nearly a hundred pounds heavier. But I suspect that tests will find it about equally quick. The reduction in sensation is the real culprit. Keeping the bad sensations out also keeps out some good ones.
Overall, the Z4 3.0 performs very well and comports itself with much greater refinement than the Z3. A car for long drives as well as short quick ones. I still find the Z3 more fun, but this is clearly a better car.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, with the Z3 I recommended the 2.5 for a couple of reasons. First of all, you get to extra-legal speeds in the 3.0 so easily that it’s hard to have fun and stay out of trouble. With the less powerful 2.5 it’s much easier to have fun at somewhat legal speeds. Then there’s the price. The 2.5 and 3.0 are basically the same engine in two different sizes. Now, when you buy a shirt or a pair of shoes different sizes tend to cost the same. Not so with engines. BMW charges about five grand for the larger engine, even after adjusting for standard equipment differences. That’s too much in my opinion.
However, I would still recommend spending the cash if the 2.5 was a dog. The Z4 is a bit heavier than the Z3, and is much more refined, which tends to dampen driving enjoyment. I’ve often found that big horsepower is necessary to have fun driving a refined vehicle. Put another way, to keep the level of driving enjoyment constant as refinement increases, horsepower must also increase. Does this rule out the 2.5 in the Z4?
In my view, not quite. Even more than with the 3.0, the 2.5 is less fun to drive in the Z4 than it was in the Z3, for the reasons just discussed. The larger engine better suits the more massive feel and more grown-up character of the Z4. Still, the 2.5 is no dog. At least with the manual is accelerates the car quickly, if not explosively. (It would help if the 2.5 sounded as sporty as the 3.0 does.)
The shifter in the Z4 is not especially good. Compared to those in the S2000 and RX-8, its throws are long and its feel is imprecise. This is typical of most shifters, but in a roadster especially I like a great shifter. The Z4 3.0 has a different transmission with a sixth gear, so its shifter might differe as well. For 2004 a clutchless manual is a new option. I have not yet driven a BMW with this transmission, but plan to this spring.
The 2.5 with manual is still the one I’d personally buy in the Z4—it’s performance is more than adequate and the price is much lower—but then I wouldn’t be buying this car. The type of person who appreciates the Z4’s flashy macho styling and big car refinement will likely be much happier with the 3.0.
Pricing
A 2.5 manual with Premium Package (power leather seats, cruise, power top, BMW’s version of OnStar), Sport Package, heated seats, and metallic paint lists for $40,070. Edmunds suggests a typical dealer discount of about $600. A similarly equipped 3.0 lists for $45,670.
For my review of the 2003 I compared the prices of competing vehicles. Unless prices have changed substantially for 2004, the Porsche Boxster and Mercedes SLK remain a few thousand more expensive, the Audi TT is a couple thousand less expensive, and the Honda S2000 is far less expensive with a sticker under $34,000 (and dealers now discount these).
Personally, I’d opt for the Honda. It’s much more fun to drive than the BMW or Mercedes (I haven’t driven the Porsche and Audi), offers a better driving position, and costs much less. The Honda’s weaknesses include a peaky engine and a noisier, busier ride. Updates for 2004 should mitigate these some, but they no doubt remain. If you intend to use a roadster as a daily driver, then perhaps the BMW is the way to go. But if driving enjoyment is your top priority, then I’d go with the Honda.
An even less expensive option (under $20,000 with rebates and discounts) is Mazda’s Miata. Like Toyota’s MR2, the Miata is an entirely different class of car than the others here, with even less refinement than the Honda, a very tight cockpit, and much slower acceleration. It can still be great fun to drive. I just personally wish seats were mounted a bit lower and the rear view mirror was not so obtrusively located.
Ultimately, an excellent combination of styling, performance, driving enjoyment, comfort, and price has yet to appear. GM has a number of budget roadsters under development, and a successor to the Miata is on the way. Maybe one of those will blow the market wide open?
Last Words
The Z4 surprises with the quality of materials, all-around performance, comfort, and refinement. But I can’t get past the styling, and some driving enjoyment has disappeared along with the Z3’s faults. If you don’t mind the styling, or even like it, and value refinement in a roadster (i.e. plan to use it for commuting and/or long trips), then by all means buy this car if you can swing it financially.
The 3.0 is more fun to drive than the 2.5, even with an automatic, and the larger engine is more suited to the overall character of the car, but the lower price of the 2.5 largely compensates. If you’re interested in the Z4 I’d drive them both.
As for the number of stars, the styling gets two, performance gets four (with the 2.5), comfort gets five, and driving enjoyment rates four. So despite the styling I’ve got to give the car four overall.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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