What is it, exactly, that makes you identify most strongly with your car? What makes you love it most for being a BMW? Is it that three-two downshift under maximum braking approaching a ninety-degree corner on track, the notchy détente of the gearshift as perfect tactile feedback to the palm of the hand? Or is it the slightly calmer three-four upshift, unwinding the wheel coming off a freeway onramp, and for a few precious moments letting that sonorous six sing, the aria of the buried right foot?
Or is it that thunk, a deliberate door closing your cocoon? For me and many, BMW was always an aspirational brand, and I would sometimes sit quietly in the first one I ever had—an E36 M3—and simply soak up those sublime surroundings. But for others still, others of means who could afford whatever they wanted, it was the air of understatement that did it: function over form, and both over flash. From whichever end of the economic spectrum one approaches it, however, a modern BMW on a freeway at dawn doesn’t merely spoil a driver with road feel just so; it offers that driver perspective on the world, and perhaps even peace.
These days, you can deck our your new roundel-bearing ride with carbon fiber from stem to stern, if that’s your thing. And just as many women can’t resist those saucy red soles on Christian Louboutin shoes, many men spec out their new BMW with slutty red calipers. I am one of them. Worse, on many days my favorite thing in my current car is the sound system: I can’t typically get to the track or a deserted mountain road anywhere near as often as I’d like, but I can soak up that extraordinary Bowers & Wilkins setup on even the most pedestrian commute. Even LA’s legendary traffic doesn’t seem so bad with driver assist and massaging seats.
That’s a long way from that limit-of-braking traction three-two downshift, though, isn’t it? Mea culpa.
But perhaps that’s precisely the inchoate alchemy that BMW somehow weaves into the weft and warp of its wares: our cars become a prism through which we see, and relate to, the rest of this world, in all its messiness and magic, its burdens and beauty.
That, and the fact that they don’t leak oil like all my lovely Alfas did.
We cannot, of course, overlook that most elusive and ethereal element of the automotive experience: the much rhapsodized-about but slippery to define ‘road feel’. Many simply don’t care how a vehicle feels when it’s pointed straight and at cruising velocity on a freeway—but I do, and you are betrayed by the fact that you are still with me, halfway through this discourse: I suspect you do, too. Yes, those tiny movements of the wheel off center, and how the suspension is set up to react, and how all of that communicates itself to us through the palms of our hands and massaged seats of our pants. That is something I like better in a BMW, almost any BMW, than in almost any other car. One feels involved, connected, perhaps even stirred, but never shaken the way one is in, say, a Porsche GT3, lovely in so many ways but with suspension calibrated to distribute your latte joyfully over the leather dash and seats, should you have the temerity to expect it to negotiate a highway expansion joint.
It probably comes down to the same bucket in which that thunk belongs. I don’t want to drive cars that shout ‘look at me’—but I also don’t want to drive cars on which the doors close with a clang. The BMW Group makes some vehicles—the kind that feature in commercials for Grey Poupon—that would always make me feel uncomfortable owning them, even if doing so was a financial non-issue. And, there are cars from other manufacturers that offer impressive, sometimes even startling, performance on a modest budget, but whose interiors recall the worst of the plastic furniture in my college apartment. There is a spectrum of cost, appointments and performance—and for me, BMW occupies the sweet spot on it. Always has, if I’m honest.
So where does that leave us? Not any wiser, naturally: long time readers of this column know better than to expect that. But perhaps at least considering again why this unusual brand has won our hearts and loyalty. And unusual it is, have no doubt. Think I’m full of it? Go to BMW Group’s website, and pick one of the seven major subjects at the top of the page. ‘Responsibility & Sustainability’ is a good place to start, but far from the only one. Under ‘The Company BMW Group’, for example, you’ll find a heading ‘BMW Group Strategy’, and under that, a sb-heading ‘Contribution to Society’.
Give it a read. To the annoyance of some, BMW is a corporation that tries to do what it believes to be the right thing, not only in the development of its products but in its stances on social issues, even when they become contentious. That, and the fact they build the cars I like most in this world, makes me a lifelong fan.
