One day I hope to buy a BMW Z3 2.5 as a second car. (Click on link to read my review of it.) Sure, it’s far from perfect, but I like the driving position and find it great fun to drive. Among small roadsters it’s my personal favorite.

Others did not share my enthusiasm. Especially other men. They criticized the Z3’s dated rear suspension, somewhat cheap interior (considering the price), and overly cute styling.

When time came to redesign the Z3, BMW responded to these criticisms. They sought to make the new car, renamed Z4 in line with BMW’s new policy to assign even numbers to two-doors and odd numbers to four doors, more technically perfect and more macho.

Since the Z4 was replacing one of my favorite cars, I test drove one as soon as I could. Do the changes make me want one even more than I want a Z3?

BMW Z4 Reliability

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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 chic 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 a third child coming any day now 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 way too 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 when the car was freshened mid-cycle, 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 trunk, 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. The official photo you see on this page captured the car's very best angle. In person it looks bulky, weird, and busy. The Z traced by the creases on the left side is just way 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 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 such can make sense in a sedan, I see no such need in a roadster. In a roadster especially I want a cockpit-like interior, and this isn’t even close.

I sat in a wood slab car in the showroom, and drove an aluminum slab car. 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? Beats me.

Second, the thick metallic finished door pulls are artfully thick and are semicircular in section. With a semicircle you get two sharp edges. To whit: these door pulls are not comfortable in the hand. What ever happened to the German religion of form follows function?

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. I estimate that 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 fit to the Z3’s standard seats than its sport seats. At least the interior remains wide 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. The 2.5 is the one I’d prefer to toss around—fun at legal speeds.

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

I wanted to drive the car in the showroom, a 2.5-liter with a manual transmission. But it was in the showroom. The only other Z4 the dealer had was a 3.0-liter with an automatic. That’s the one they were using for test drives. I imagine most people would prefer the larger, torquier engine, and even that many of them will want an automatic, but I’ve driven both the 2.5 and 3.0 in the past and while the stronger engine was definitely a blast I found the 2.5 more enjoyable in regular driving since I had to work the shifter more to get the most out of it. That BMW charges about $6,000 for the larger six doesn’t help its case either in my book.

Still, driving the 3.0 auto wasn’t a total loss, since the last Z3 I drove (and reviewed) had the same powertrain. Guess what? The 225 horsepower six is still an amazing engine. 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.

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𤺹/40-18s in front and 255/35-18s in back 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, perhaps some others). This 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 Sport Package in the car 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 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.

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.

In sum, the Z4 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.

Pricing

The heavily optioned Z4 3.0 I drove listed for $46,745. Edmunds suggests that the typical discount is only a couple hundred dollars. So this is a very pricey roadster. I can easily see doing without some of the options. I’ve already mentioned the power top. But as far as I’m concerned the power seats, automatic headlights, automatic climate control, and rain sensing wipers make even less sense in a small roadster. This thing is outfitted like a luxury sedan. Personally, I feel that with roadsters less is more. Oh, almost forget—the automatic transmission can also take a hike. Before I can say whether the xenon lamps (available soon) are worth $700, I’d have to drive the car with and without. Also, would I be driving the car much at night? Hmmm, convertibles can be very nice at night. So let’s keep them and the seat heaters. And the $1,200 sport package I guess, though without test driving the car with and without I cannot testify to its value. Outfitted this way, the Z4 3.0 lists for $43,820. ($475 of this is for metallic paint, by the way. All prices here include metallic paint.)

I suspect that the 2.5 is still plenty of fun. Fit one with the sport package (more necessary here if only to fill the wheel wells—the car won’t look right with 16” wheels), xenon lamps, cloth/leather upholstery, and heated seats, and the sticker runs to $38,080. Getting warmer, but still a bit close to forty large for my comfort.

A similarly equipped Z3—but with leather instead of leather/cloth (the latter saves $300 with the Z4) and no xenon lamps—listed for $34,670. A Z3 3.0 with the same equipment listed for $40,820. So prices have gone up about $2,500.

A Mercedes SLK320
with the xenon lamps and heated seats lists for $47,985. Add another $4,295 for a very pricey sport package. A trick roof, and more cleanly styled than the Z4 (what isn’t?), but not nearly as good a car as the BMW. The higher price just adds more reason to pass on this one.

An Audi TT 225-horsepower quattro with the xenon/heated seats package lists for $40,760, undercutting the BMW by a few thousand. The TT is great looking, but I can’t stand the “deep in a hole” driving position, and reviews I’ve read imply that it doesn’t handle nearly as well as the BMW. If styling is not a factor, the BMW is worth the extra money.

A standard, 228-horsepower Porsche Boxter with 17" alloys, heated seats, and xenon headlamps lists for $46,925. I initially didn't compare the price of the Porsche, figuring it was much higher. Seems I was wrong. Porsche does offer a very wide range of very expensive color and trim options, but if you can resist these the Boxster is only about three thousand more than the similarly powerful Z4 3.0. The 258 horsepower Boxster S is more out of range at $54,690. I haven't driven the Boxster, but think that BMW might be getting a bit close in price.

For purists on a limited budget such as myself the toughest challenge for the BMW comes from the Honda S2000. Though the Honda is very quick when kept near its 9,000 RPM redline, it’s much more comparable to the 2.5 than the 3.0. Even so, it’s less money: $33,060. Edmunds suggests that dealers still get a couple grand over sticker, but I see no evidence of this around here. As with the other cars here, sticker or a bit under should now be possible. So, the Honda or the BMW? The Honda is a much higher strung, less luxurious (even with standard power top and leather) machine. It’s more fun to drive all out, but not as enjoyable driven casually or long distances. Styling is very clean, but dated to my eye. So personal priorities will have to make the call here. Personally, I’d go with the Honda if only because I can’t stand the styling of the Z4.

Then again, I prefer the Z3 to all of them, and don’t mind buying used.

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, then by all means buy this car if you can swing it financially.

As for the number of stars, the styling gets two, performance and comfort get five, and driving enjoyment rates at least four. So despite the styling I’ve got to give the car four overall.

To learn more about my reliability research and sign up to participate in it, or to perform thorough up-to-date new car price comparisons, visit www.truedelta.com. A link to this website and alphabetized links to my other vehicle reviews can be found on my profile page.

Amount Paid (US$): 46,745
Model and Options: Z4 3.0 automatic with most options