535i Loaner

[Pinecone]

I took the M3 in for the passenger air bag recall. BMW in its infinite wisdom seems to have NO idea what part is installed in what car, so they take your car, disassemble the dash, find out what is there, and then they order the new one. Which then takes 1 - 2 days or so. So I have had a 2013 535i over the long weekend (and the rest of the week as it will be Sat before I can get back to the dealer).

Annoying things -

It defaults to auto engine shutdown start up. Just plain weird to have the engine shut off randomly.

I cannot get the nav to get out of perspective mode to map display. I get to the other, but pushing the iDrive does not change the selection.

If you do something wrong, it displays an error message, but you have to hit the iDrive to get back to nav, even if you "fix" what you did wrong.

They switched the radio/phone and cruise controls on the wheel. Radio/phone is on the right now (on the left in the E46).

The shifter makes no sense. How many years have automatic transmissions be PRND???? This one assumes at start up you are in neutral, so you push FORWARD for REVERSE. Shifter works like you are in manual mode or SMG shifter, in that it comes back to center every time. From reverse to drive is pull it back once. So what happened to neutral???? For Park, you push a button on the top of the shifter. And to shift, you have to push a button on the side of the shifter, some of the time. And if you don't push the buttom when it wants you to, see the error message annoyance above.

iDrive, some things scroll by twisting the iDrive. But things like lists, look like you would step through them by pushing it forwards or backwards. And many left/right things seem backwards to me. Like if a menu is open in nav, you push right to make the menu go left to hide it.

This thing is HUGE. A BOAT.

It has Sport and Comfort, but sometimes it seems to be confused. I pushed Sport and it seemed very floaty on the suspension. So I pushed Comfort and it was more controlled. Pushed Sport again, and it really finally seemed like a Sport setting with a bit tighter and stiffer setup.

When you get in after the car has been sitting in the sun, the AC does not ramp up to full blower. You have to push Max A/C to get that. And Max A/C auto sets the temp setting to 60. So if you don't turn Max off, you can cool your beverages.

They have an MPG guage on the dash, but it isn't really MPG, it is a vacuum guage like the E36 MPG. This is on the right. One the left, you have selectable digital read outs that include instantaneous and average MPG, and those are real MPG numbers.

The bottom of left guage has an analog range indicator. A red bar that shows you how many miles to empty. Right next to this is the fuel gauge. WTF?!

Likes -

Good power.

The dash is semi driver oriented, in that the center section is slightly angled towards the driver, not the flat dash they had for a while.

Not bad gas mileage. When I picked it up (12K miles on it) the average MPG readout was showing 24.3. I drove it for a while, then reset it and am seeing over 25 in mixed driving. And I have been standing on it at times.

Typical BMW, it doesn't feel happy until at fairly high speed.

Who cares -

"Keyless" entry. You have to use the fob to lock the car, but if you walk up with the "key" in your pocket, you just pull the driver door handle and the car unlocks.

Power trunk, push on hold the fob button and the trunk unlocks and opens. Push a button on the trunk, and it closes and locks.

Start/stop button. Really? WHY?

Efficient Dynamics. Huh? Seems that to save energy, the battery is charged using regenerative braking when you are off the gas or using the brakes. No idea if the system is smart enough to charge using fuel if needed. And the "mpg" gauge has to tell you this by going into the Efficient Dynamics range of the gauge when this is happening.

Overall, better than expected, but not enough to make me want to buy another BMW.