Got my new snow tires

[lemming]

Originally Posted by JST

It's an '08. It's specced almost precisely the way I would have ordered one: Jet black, black interior, black carbon fiber leather trim, CWP, PP, moon roof and (amazingly) rear sun shades. The one option it has that I wouldn't have gotten is nav, so I am suffering with iDrive--it's bad, but not as bad as Audi's system.

This was a car that the dealer had to pull from another store, so I got a decent but unspectacular deal on the cap cost. It's a lease, which means I got BMW's 0.00025 MF--that's 0.6 percent interest, which is pretty hard to beat. Two year residuals were terrible, but three year numbers weren't so bad. If I like this car, I may end up just buying it out--the total amount of interest/rental I'm paying over the life of the lease is less than $1000.

Compared to the 335? Puttering around town, there's not THAT much difference. This car actually has a higher-strung engine, so at part throttle in a highish gear it's not quite as punchy as the twin turbo. Just taking it easy, there's a bit more gear whine, the clutch is a bit sharper on engagement, and the shifter is a tad heavier. The engine is kind of touchy until it has some heat in it; in the cold, it's a bit stumbly. Oh, and the gas mileage is laughably bad. So, you kind of think, what's the big deal?

But.

Then you get on it, and holy christ it's fast. Like I said after my initial drive, the engine is really the defining characteristic of this car, and it's a honey of an engine--it revs amazingly quickly, has power all over the place, and makes a sound that is...well, it's like that scene in Bullitt that you watch over and over again, where the Mustang is charging up and down the hills just outside of San Francisco, and the V8 makes this great low, staccato roar, which is awesome, and then during the shift there's a brief beat, a moment of quiet, and then BOOM the roar is back, except instead of a movie it's enveloping you, and then you look down and you're going 70 over the limit. Whoops.

I mean, this car is hilarious. It's a BMW sedan, except that some guys in Germany were thinking to themselves "what would a BMW sedan be like if it were also an American muscle car built in the 60s?" This is that car.

i'm jealous.

my future car is tied to GM, though, so i have to wait for hooliganism to return to my commute.

bad mileage, huh?



that makes me laugh.

[Alan]

Originally Posted by JST

It's an '08. It's specced almost precisely the way I would have ordered one: Jet black, black interior, black carbon fiber leather trim, CWP, PP, moon roof and (amazingly) rear sun shades. The one option it has that I wouldn't have gotten is nav, so I am suffering with iDrive--it's bad, but not as bad as Audi's system.

I'm reading your post and thinking to myself my god this guy thinks exactly the way I would, your openess, your honesty, the way you compare the m3 to the 335 ... it is amazing how clear as an M3 owner you see it and yet I relate to just how much an M3 is ahead of the 335 ... numbers are close but the M3 is a few steps ahead of the 335 ...

then I read the Idrive comment and think ... huh is he new to this concept ... he does realize without an idrive we are stuck with the dumb little button on the stalk to chose a handful of options compared to an incredible amount of choices idrive is giving us but then you say it is not as bad as the Audi system ... ok sorry but i have to say that Audi's MMI was a lot better then bmw's idrive ... Bmw even changed their system to what seems to be a step towards MMI ... I haven't tried it yet but the reviews seem to show it looked very similiar to the MMI I had in my A6 ...

Ok I'm done with my rant ... how about more pics of that M3 with the new wheels !!! I know I am not the only one dying to see them !!!

[JST]

Originally Posted by JST

No, that's right. 0.0025 is 6 percent, which would be about what you'd expect for a "normal" BMW lease. This MF is 0.00025, which is 6 tenths of 1 percent. That's the BMW loyalty rate--the rate for non-BMW FS customers is something like 0.0004, so still pretty good.

The payment on just the car (with taxes and fees out of pocket) is in the mid 7s. Given the free money interest rate, I rolled everything into the lease, so it ended up being a bit more than that.

Lol remember when they couldn’t sell M3s to save their lives? Good times.

[SARAFIL]

Originally Posted by JST

Lol remember when they couldn’t sell M3s to save their lives? Good times.

Trip down memory lane…. You definitely can’t get one today with that type of lease program