carmudgeons.com - I drove a Z4 M Coupe this weekend

I was teaching at an autocross school this weekend and among the cars I drove was a Z4 M Coupe. Beautiful deep blue color, stock other than a set of stickier-than-stock Kumho XS street tires.

First visual / tactile impression: The interior of the car was really nice. It had stitched leather on some parts of the dash and the doors, and it all felt very high quality. The steering wheel is actually ridiculous. It's insanely thick, and I don't think I have particularly tiny hands, but the shape of it was all wrong. The wheel was at least a nice diameter, smallish but definitely fitting with the character of the car.

Driving impressions: Very tricky car to drive. Without even using the "sport" mode (why BMW includes this I have no idea), the DBW throttle was extremely jumpy, nonlinear and hard to modulate. It feels as though BMW programmed it to give 50% throttle opening for 10% of pedal travel. I'm sure it makes the car "feel" faster, but with, what, 330hp in a 3100-ish pound car, why? It made me really miss the Z06, which had an extremely long-travel but very linear throttle pedal. You could really steer with the throttle on that car; it felt like you could add increments of ten horsepower just with a little squeeze on the throttle. In the BMW it felt like it was all or nothing. Hard to balance the car like that. Steering feel was nice compared to every other BMW I've ever driven, but still had that weird numb feeling as you got to the limit of grip. Could have been the tires, as Kumhos have never been known for having great feel, but I'm not sure.

As far as the handling goes, it was better than most BMWs and miles better than the abomination of chassis tuning known as the E46 M3, but it still had that weird soft springs with tons of compression damping and big sway bars feel to it. Snappy turn-in, but with the rear end wanting to come around with any application of throttle. I found it very hard to use the power that the car had unless it was pointed in a perfectly straight line. Overall, the car felt particularly nose-heavy. I think that a regular Z4 3.0 would be a more enjoyable car, what with the lighter engine over the nose.

Brakes were good. The ABS systems in BMWs seem to be pretty good on the whole. Not sure they'd hold up for a track day, but for an autocross, no problem obviously.

I still hate the sound of the S54's exhaust. The car sounds amazing from outside as long as it's coming towards you, but going away it just reminds me of a fork in a garbage disposal.

Interesting but useless data point: on this short school course, I ran a best of 32.1 in the car. An NC Miata with a set of lowering springs was also there, and I ran a 32.2 in that car. Kind of surprised me, but the Miata was perfectly balanced and was able to use all of its power on all parts of the course, where in the BMW I was always feathering it. I can't believe the NC didn't come from the factory with the suspension this guy had - it was perfect! Totally predictable, balanced, light on its feet and a complete joy to drive. It had me thinking crazy thoughts of a lowered NC with big wheels and tires and a turbo kit :)

The looks of the Z4 still haven't grown on me, but the coupe version is certainly more tolerable, and in a dark color some of the more weird styling cues were hidden.

This M Coupe guy comes out to a lot of autocross schools so hopefully I'll get a chance to drive the car again and see if it grows on me.