April, 2004.
Last week I went down to my local BMW dealership to have a peek around in the new 5 and 6 series. I fiddled around with some stuff in the new 5, the tail lights are gorgeous on that car.
I quickly hopped in the 645Cic they had on the showroom floor. It looked amazing in real life. The exterior is starting to grow on me, but I still do not like the rounded nose. Standing directly behind it the two big exhaust tips look menacing, and the all 4 fenders were accented just enough to give it a real sporty edge. One other big thing I liked about the 6 was the side markers; they flow perfectly with the lines of the car.
The interior is posh. I was really impressed with the luxury; everything is right at hand as well. The gauge cluster is very clean and attractive, it reminded me of a nice modern, yet classic watch (but not in the IS300 chrono-crap disgusting way). A very appealing thing to me was that the hand brake was very accessible, yet by no means intrusive. The iDrive system is pretty cool too, if you can’t figure his version out you are going to have some big problems in life. The only thing I didn’t like about it was it wasn’t as fast as I was, if they are going to go ahead and have a system like that they should at least make its response time lightning quick so nerds like me who memorize commands can zip through as fast as we want.
The leather was two tone, and at first I didn’t’ really like it, but it grew to me after about five minutes of sitting in the car. Although the car is pretty big, there is still not that much room in the rear seats, but who cares anyways, almost the entire reason I bought a coupe was so I wouldn’t have to haul my friends around. Another eye catcher is the outrageous cup holder. This has its pros and cons; if you usually drive with a beverage this is the cup holder you’ve always dreamed of, but if you don’t, it kind of sticks out. I guess it’s only fair that it had nice aluminum trim. That was another thing I could’ve done without, I really like the color of the trim, but there was way too much of it around the manual climate control stuff.
Once I got done playing around inside the gracious salesperson I was working with handed me the keys. Even fifty feet away from the car I could still feel a lot of power from the car by just holding the keys, though it could’ve been because it is not everyday the keys to an $80k+ car are handed to an eighteen year old kid like me. I turned the key and I FELT THE RUMBLE. Simon insisted on rolling the windows down, which I thank him for because the sound of this car is wonderful. (Note: it was the 645ci that I was driving, not the convert)
Out of the parking lot there was a little gap between cars in the oncoming traffic and Simon told me to punch it. I hesitated, I don’t know the car, and I certainly can’t pay for it. Next time I found a larger gap and got on it, it was then I realized I could’ve made it into the previous gap no problem. Even for a steptronic in DS mode this thing got up and shifted quickly.
The thing I was really looking forward to trying out was the Active Steering system. Into the first turn I was instructed not to use the brakes, and again I thought to myself $80,000+ $80,000+, not good. But I did as I was told and wow this thing is sweet. The active steering is really really cool, and it definitely deserves more credit than it currently gets. At speed the lock to lock is significantly smaller than it is at a creep.
After driving the 6 I really started to like it, even though I didn’t when it first came out. Once you feel the active steering, and the power, you will quickly overlook the strange trunk, if only they would fix the front end and drop the price $60,000.
-Special thanks to Simon at BMW Motorwerks for being so accommodating-
Last week I went down to my local BMW dealership to have a peek around in the new 5 and 6 series. I fiddled around with some stuff in the new 5, the tail lights are gorgeous on that car.
I quickly hopped in the 645Cic they had on the showroom floor. It looked amazing in real life. The exterior is starting to grow on me, but I still do not like the rounded nose. Standing directly behind it the two big exhaust tips look menacing, and the all 4 fenders were accented just enough to give it a real sporty edge. One other big thing I liked about the 6 was the side markers; they flow perfectly with the lines of the car.
The interior is posh. I was really impressed with the luxury; everything is right at hand as well. The gauge cluster is very clean and attractive, it reminded me of a nice modern, yet classic watch (but not in the IS300 chrono-crap disgusting way). A very appealing thing to me was that the hand brake was very accessible, yet by no means intrusive. The iDrive system is pretty cool too, if you can’t figure his version out you are going to have some big problems in life. The only thing I didn’t like about it was it wasn’t as fast as I was, if they are going to go ahead and have a system like that they should at least make its response time lightning quick so nerds like me who memorize commands can zip through as fast as we want.
The leather was two tone, and at first I didn’t’ really like it, but it grew to me after about five minutes of sitting in the car. Although the car is pretty big, there is still not that much room in the rear seats, but who cares anyways, almost the entire reason I bought a coupe was so I wouldn’t have to haul my friends around. Another eye catcher is the outrageous cup holder. This has its pros and cons; if you usually drive with a beverage this is the cup holder you’ve always dreamed of, but if you don’t, it kind of sticks out. I guess it’s only fair that it had nice aluminum trim. That was another thing I could’ve done without, I really like the color of the trim, but there was way too much of it around the manual climate control stuff.
Once I got done playing around inside the gracious salesperson I was working with handed me the keys. Even fifty feet away from the car I could still feel a lot of power from the car by just holding the keys, though it could’ve been because it is not everyday the keys to an $80k+ car are handed to an eighteen year old kid like me. I turned the key and I FELT THE RUMBLE. Simon insisted on rolling the windows down, which I thank him for because the sound of this car is wonderful. (Note: it was the 645ci that I was driving, not the convert)
Out of the parking lot there was a little gap between cars in the oncoming traffic and Simon told me to punch it. I hesitated, I don’t know the car, and I certainly can’t pay for it. Next time I found a larger gap and got on it, it was then I realized I could’ve made it into the previous gap no problem. Even for a steptronic in DS mode this thing got up and shifted quickly.
The thing I was really looking forward to trying out was the Active Steering system. Into the first turn I was instructed not to use the brakes, and again I thought to myself $80,000+ $80,000+, not good. But I did as I was told and wow this thing is sweet. The active steering is really really cool, and it definitely deserves more credit than it currently gets. At speed the lock to lock is significantly smaller than it is at a creep.
After driving the 6 I really started to like it, even though I didn’t when it first came out. Once you feel the active steering, and the power, you will quickly overlook the strange trunk, if only they would fix the front end and drop the price $60,000.
-Special thanks to Simon at BMW Motorwerks for being so accommodating-
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