Free time has been fleeting this summer, but it’s essential to take advantage of the moments. Last month, my wife and I had one day to get away, but the problem was that it was on a Friday. With an aversion to crowds and having engineered my life to have weekdays off, heading to the mountains on a Friday might end in nothing more than hours spent in traffic. Worse yet, we couldn’t leave until midday. But, if you don’t try, you don’t fly, so despite my wife pointing out that our plan was crazy, we decided to head into the hills.
There was only one vehicle choice for our summer-in-a-day mission.
Those hills were the Front Range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and on the other side was Shadow Mountain Reservoir and Grand Lake. The latter is one of the most picturesque lakes in Colorado. Our plan was to rent a pontoon boat, head out to the islands in the lake, have a swim with the dogs, and dock at the quaint mountain town of Grand Lake for dinner. On the way home, we’d do a sunset loop through Rocky Mountain National Park and it’s famous Trail Ridge Road (one of the highest paved roads in the country). The Ford truck or my wife’s X5 would seem the appropriate vehicle to haul two people, two dogs, our gear, and my 1.7-meter remote control float plane to the lake, but there was only one choice—my F31 328d M Sport wagon.
The M Sport wagon had more than enough room for our gear, two dogs, and a large remote-controlled airplane.
Donning flip flops and board shorts, we loaded up the dogs and the plane and hit the road. I purchased the Estoril Blue 2014 M Sport wagon as my single-car solution in November of last year, and it has truly been a jack-of-all-trades. Since then, I’ve put about 10,000 miles on it, and it has suited my mission perfectly. Although I was reticent about the F3X styling when the sixth-generation 3 Series was released, a decade later, the M Sport variant of the wagon has aged into one of the best-looking BMWs ever. There isn’t a time I drive it that I don’t get a compliment. In mixed city and highway driving, with no regard for fuel economy, I’ve averaged about 32 mpg. And while it is noticeably slower than my previous E90 335d, it easily outmaneuvers the sedan. In fact, I have yet to meet a corner out in the real world that I’ve needed to brake aggressively for. While it isn’t slow either, the momentum style driving that the F31 requires to close the gap between more powerful cars harkens back to the days and smiles spent behind the wheels of my old E30s.
Our early Friday afternoon drive would be a tour of some of Denver’s most congested Interstates. The longer route through Rocky Mountain National Park was showing a 30-minute shorter drive time; however, an advanced timed entry slot was required between 9:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., and we did not have one. I reset the mpg computer before we left to see how efficient the 2.0-liter N47 diesel engine would be in road trip mode. We made good time through town, averaging north of 40 mpg, until we hit a dead stop in construction on I-70 on Floyd Hill. The backside of the hill is one of the steepest grades on I-70 through the Colorado Rockies, and it is a frequent cause of accidents and sun glare closures in the winter. The plan to fix it is a nearly billion-dollar project that would elevate the roadways, similar to those in Glenwood Springs Canyon. The slow crawl through construction took over an hour, and dropped our fuel economy down into the high 20s mpg. Selecting Eco Pro mode helped, but my hopes of averaging 40 mpg on the trip were dashed. Sitting at a dead stop, boxed in on all sides, is an exercise in patience, but even with sport seats, the M Sport wagon was comfortable and accommodating.
The proposed elevated portions of I-70 on the backside of Floyd Hill. Photo courtesy of CoDot.gov
Eco Pro helped preserve our fuel economy while stuck in traffic. I stayed in Eco Pro for the remainder of the drive to see how much improvement I could get.
Mercifully, the traffic eventually broke, and we turned off I-70 with a collective sigh of relief. Highway 40 over Berthoud Pass was a welcome reward where I could finally exploit the M Sport wagon’s handling. I used a few short bursts of Sport mode to get a run on the occasional crossover trundling up the pass, but stayed in Eco Pro for the rest of the time, which allowed the fuel economy to creep back into the mid-30s as I coasted down the backside of the pass. We pulled into the gravel shoreline parking lot of the marina a mere 30 minutes behind schedule.
Finally, out of the heat, clear of traffic, and at the lake!
The skies were ominous, making the water feel even colder.
The cool, clear waters of Shadow Mountain Reservoir were a splendid relief from the summer heat. We crossed the lake and throttled down, drifting into the shoreline of one of the islands on the southern flank of the reservoir. The silence was piercing and a stark contrast to the rumble of bumper-to-bumper traffic just a short time earlier. The solace of the moment was only disturbed by a nesting osprey sounding off to let us know who the king of the island was. The dogs let themselves in for a dip, while our entry to the frigid cold waters was much less graceful. I tried to remember how miserably hot it was down in the flatlands was as my muscles spasmed uncontrollably in shock. Soon, my pulse slowed down, and the heat of the summer and the frustrations of the morning were gone. The peace of the moment was bliss, perhaps even made better by having suffered a little to get there.
Loki dog goes insane any time the RCs are flying!
A stick is a must to keep things afloat.
Rejuvenated and refreshed, we fired up the boat and puttered towards the canal that connects Grand Lake to Shadow Mountain Reservoir. Out in open water, I stopped to burn a few batteries with the RC float plane, which drove Loki dog insane. Fortunately, we were far enough away from the islands not to shatter the peace. Grand Lake is Colorado’s largest and deepest natural lake, formed by retreating glaciers eons ago. The town on its north shore that bears the same name is less than a mile from Rocky Mountain National Park and close to the headwaters of the Colorado River. Historically, water on this side of the Continental Divide would flow through the Colorado River to the Gulf of California, but Grand Lake drains East of the Divide through a 13-mile tunnel that is part of the 1930s-era Colorado-Big Thompson Project (known as the CB-T). Legend holds that before the CB-T, the waters of Grand Lake were as clear and blue as the Bahamas—or perhaps an Estoril Blue M Sport wagon—but they are now more Black Sapphire Metallic in BMW speak.
We stopped for ice cream in the town of Grand Lake before heading into Rocky Mountain National Park.
The western gateway to the park is a small slice of Americana.
It would be a 3-hour drive home, but the only traffic jams from this point on would be from wildlife grazing on the shoulder. Before we headed into the park, we made one last stop in Grand Lake for ice cream. With the sun retreating below the horizon, traffic in the park was blissfully sparse. We chased the sunset as we climbed up Trail Ridge Road, passing through alpine meadows, coniferous forests, and aspen groves, and eventually reaching the high tundra above the tree line. Along the way, we saw elk herds on Milner Pass and a moose wading in Poudre Lake.
With the sun slipping below the horizon, we had Rocky Mountain National Park all to ourselves!
Well, almost all to ourselves…
The stretch above tree line is not for the vertically phobic, as a mere white stripe is all that separates the edge of the pavement from thousands of feet of abyss. With no traffic and clear of wildlife, it was moments like this that one must savor. The road draped its way across the rolling tundra, and the M Sport wagon was keen to oblige as we gently drifted from apex to apex in comfortable silence. Of course, a little restraint was in order to be respectful of the park and prevent the dogs from soiling the interior. It was, yet again, an example of the M Sport wagon being the perfect single-car solution.
Trail Ridge Road lived up to its name.
For the long descent down the eastern faces of the mountains, I put it in back in Eco Pro and watched the mpg slowly climb. I was hoping for an average of 40 mpg, which, on paper, shouldn’t have been a problem, but the long stretch in traffic ruined that. As we rolled back into the flatlands in the town of Lyons, the computer was showing 38.1 mpg for the trip, up from a low of 29.2 mpg in the worst of the traffic. That dropped to 37.3 mpg by the time we pulled into the driveway. That’s still an impressive figure given a fully loaded wagon, large roof box, and my bouts of spirited driving.
At the end of the drive, I was able to claw the mpg closer to my goal of 40 mpg for the trip.
What’s more impressive is that I was able to scratch my enthusiast itch without compromising the comfort of my wife or the dogs. Make no mistake, the 2.0-liter diesel wagon is nothing close to an M car, and I’ve done the same trip with virtually the same payload (sans the RC airplane) in an E90 M3 sedan. But there is something magical about the diesel. On paper, it only makes 175 horsepower (that’s only five horsepower more than my M20-powered E30s made), but out of those two liters, it squeezes 258 lb-ft of torque—that’s only 37 lb-ft less than my old E90 M3 sedan. I would still rate the overall feel and momentum driving required closer to the E30 than an E90 M3, and the F31 is more vague and less visceral than both of them. However, those are compromises I’m willing to live with to have an all-wheel-drive diesel BMW wagon that looks the business. In these times of personal financial austerity, I don’t think I could have found a better single car for the mission.—Alex McCulloch