OVER THE years as people grow older their tastes change and while this can become embarrassing for those who worry about such things, I’ve long had a policy of embracing life’s stages.
My kids are in what my mother-in-law calls the golden age of childhood. They still like me — which is nice — seem to enjoy hanging out, and still require delivering and fetching from school/ballet/soccer/play dates.
Some cars are good at doing this, but come with compromises. Big sports utility vehicles are great fetchers and carriers. We own a Jeep Commander, an elderly but magnificent tank. It has leather throughout, three rows of seats and aircon to all three rows. But its "but" is notable — it goes through diesel like the USS Nimitz, corners in a similar manner, and is about as reliable as an elderly Lancia.
It’s the same with multi purpose vehicles (MPVs). I’m currently driving a Kia Grand Sedona and the dad in me just loves it. It’s fantastic. It’s a seven-seater, but one of those seats only has a lap belt, which means you have to draw straws to decide which of your children gets mangled in an accident before setting off.
To me that makes it a six-seater.
But what a six-seater! I’ll spend more time on the Sorento another day, because it deserves more, but despite being excellent it too has compromises. It’s an MPV. It’s front-wheel drive.
...
IT IS, dare I say it, a trifle dull.
But compromise is a necessity. If all our cars were supposed to be uncompromisingly good to drive, we’d all go to work in Lotuses or a little Alfa 4C. They’re impossible to get in and out of, useless at fitting in the shopping, terrible at ferrying dogs or children, impossible to park, hopeless at negotiating road humps, incapable of using a dirt road and horrible in traffic, where all you see is the wheel nuts of the 18-wheeler centimetres from your head.
And so to a car that I have found offers a pretty perfectly balanced compromise. It will seat all five Parkers in relative comfort and accommodate our luggage for a week away. That includes what has become known in our family as the Goddamn Hateful Pram — that needs to fit into the boot lengthways if we’ve any hope in hell of getting everything in.
And the fold-up cot, an equally detestable torture device obviously designed to drive exhausted parents to garment-rending fury. This means a reasonable-sized boot is required.
But, being the king of compromise, I’d also like some shunt. I’m not dead yet, kids, and I like power. I like it because it makes overtaking safe and it means long trips can become shorter trips. It means silly fellows in hot hatches can be swatted off. And it’s also fun. There — I said it. And I’d like it to do all this without the USS Nimitz’s guzzling of fuel, if possible.
Well, such a car exists. We’ve spent a good deal of time behind the wheel of the BMW 435i Gran Coupé over the past little while and it’s come pretty close to ticking all of these rather demanding boxes.
...
THE 435i Gran Coupé is a five-door, which might be confusing — BMW recently started to add even-numbered monikers to the range to signify the coupe version. So, a 2-Series instead of a 1-Series Coupé, and a 4-Series instead of the 3-Series Coupé.
It makes sense, except the 4-Series Gran Coupé has rear doors. The explanation is that the Gran Coupé is a swoopy, lower, sportier coupe-styled version of the 3-Series with a hatchback instead of sedan-style boot.
I’m aware that this might sound impossibly complicated or just like automotive marketing nonsense, so let’s cut to the chase.
The 435i has one of the best-looking profiles on the road. It has flared haunches and a sporting line that its 3-Series brother cannot match. It has frameless doors and a bunched, aggressive stance. It’s genuinely lovely to look at.
In it you sit lower, much lower, and the car rides lower too. As a result of those lovely lines, headroom in the rear is diminished, but the children would never notice such a thing.
"Sitting behind myself", a standard motoring hack test of limited use (I’m unhelpfully tall, others are not) is not an entirely comfortable business, but there’s enough room for the seven-year-old and that’s really what matters.
Because it is a hatchback, the Goddamn Hateful Pram fits in lengthways and the boot swallows everything else.
That’s brilliant. And having the very recently discontinued three-litre straight-six turbo-charged engine linked to a silkily excellent eight-speed automatic means 225kW of shunt — enough to propel this pretty little BMW to 100km/h in 5.2 seconds — to get much faster than that you’ll need more cylinders and a whack more cash.
Then there’s the drive.
It can do town quite happily.
Just leave the car in comfort mode and you can pootle about not being hugely efficient, it is true, but good enough.
I found that the 435i Gran Coupé was happiest when able to stretch its long legs, though.
As a freeway cruiser it’s pretty excellent, relying happily on its 400Nm of low-end torque to burble up the rolling hills.
...
WHEN the road gets twisty and challenging the car comes into its own — this is real BMW territory and this thing is just a couple of clicks better than its 3-Series stablemate. It’s taut, precise, flat and wonderfully communicative.
Rear-wheel-drive makes for a proper performance car experience, and will reward a talented driver who’s in a hurry.
I found that I switched between the various driving modes quite often in this car.
During freeway runs with the cruise control on I would select "eco-pro", which would save a bit of fuel through careful management of the aircon and throttle settings, because — well, why not?
In town I used "comfort" and when the road got twisty I’d select one of the sports modes and use the manual levers to change gear.
In terms of complaints, there are very few. It’s hard to get in and out of compared to a normal family car and every now and then the aircon would lose its mind and blast hot air at me on one of those sweltering Cape Town summer days.
The 435i Gran Coupé is a pretty immaculate example of automotive packaging.
It’s impossible to have it all in a car (it’s why wealthy enthusiasts have so many cars — each one does a different job), but as a cleverly put together compromise for the family-minded owner with petrol in their veins I’ve not yet come across a car that has quite the breadth of talent as this one.
It’s been fantastic.
The BMW 345i Gran Coupé is happiest when able to stretch its long legs. As a freeway cruiser it’s excellent, and when the road gets twisty and challenging the car comes into its own, says the writer. Picture: BLOOMBERG/GIANLUCA COLLA
OVER THE years as people grow older their tastes change and while this can become embarrassing for those who worry about such things, I’ve long had a policy of embracing life’s stages.
My kids are in what my mother-in-law calls the golden age of childhood. They still like me — which is nice — seem to enjoy hanging out, and still require delivering and fetching from school/ballet/soccer/play dates.
Some cars are good at doing this, but come with compromises. Big sports utility vehicles are great fetchers and carriers. We own a Jeep Commander, an elderly but magnificent tank. It has leather throughout, three rows of seats and aircon to all three rows. But its "but" is notable — it goes through diesel like the USS Nimitz, corners in a similar manner, and is about as reliable as an elderly Lancia.
It’s the same with multi purpose vehicles (MPVs). I’m currently driving a Kia Grand Sedona and the dad in me just loves it. It’s fantastic. It’s a seven-seater, but one of those seats only has a lap belt, which means you have to draw straws to decide which of your children gets mangled in an accident before setting off.
To me that makes it a six-seater.
But what a six-seater! I’ll spend more time on the Sorento another day, because it deserves more, but despite being excellent it too has compromises. It’s an MPV. It’s front-wheel drive.
...
IT IS, dare I say it, a trifle dull.
But compromise is a necessity. If all our cars were supposed to be uncompromisingly good to drive, we’d all go to work in Lotuses or a little Alfa 4C. They’re impossible to get in and out of, useless at fitting in the shopping, terrible at ferrying dogs or children, impossible to park, hopeless at negotiating road humps, incapable of using a dirt road and horrible in traffic, where all you see is the wheel nuts of the 18-wheeler centimetres from your head.
And so to a car that I have found offers a pretty perfectly balanced compromise. It will seat all five Parkers in relative comfort and accommodate our luggage for a week away. That includes what has become known in our family as the Goddamn Hateful Pram — that needs to fit into the boot lengthways if we’ve any hope in hell of getting everything in.
And the fold-up cot, an equally detestable torture device obviously designed to drive exhausted parents to garment-rending fury. This means a reasonable-sized boot is required.
But, being the king of compromise, I’d also like some shunt. I’m not dead yet, kids, and I like power. I like it because it makes overtaking safe and it means long trips can become shorter trips. It means silly fellows in hot hatches can be swatted off. And it’s also fun. There — I said it. And I’d like it to do all this without the USS Nimitz’s guzzling of fuel, if possible.
Well, such a car exists. We’ve spent a good deal of time behind the wheel of the BMW 435i Gran Coupé over the past little while and it’s come pretty close to ticking all of these rather demanding boxes.
...
THE 435i Gran Coupé is a five-door, which might be confusing — BMW recently started to add even-numbered monikers to the range to signify the coupe version. So, a 2-Series instead of a 1-Series Coupé, and a 4-Series instead of the 3-Series Coupé.
It makes sense, except the 4-Series Gran Coupé has rear doors. The explanation is that the Gran Coupé is a swoopy, lower, sportier coupe-styled version of the 3-Series with a hatchback instead of sedan-style boot.
I’m aware that this might sound impossibly complicated or just like automotive marketing nonsense, so let’s cut to the chase.
The 435i has one of the best-looking profiles on the road. It has flared haunches and a sporting line that its 3-Series brother cannot match. It has frameless doors and a bunched, aggressive stance. It’s genuinely lovely to look at.
In it you sit lower, much lower, and the car rides lower too. As a result of those lovely lines, headroom in the rear is diminished, but the children would never notice such a thing.
"Sitting behind myself", a standard motoring hack test of limited use (I’m unhelpfully tall, others are not) is not an entirely comfortable business, but there’s enough room for the seven-year-old and that’s really what matters.
Because it is a hatchback, the Goddamn Hateful Pram fits in lengthways and the boot swallows everything else.
That’s brilliant. And having the very recently discontinued three-litre straight-six turbo-charged engine linked to a silkily excellent eight-speed automatic means 225kW of shunt — enough to propel this pretty little BMW to 100km/h in 5.2 seconds — to get much faster than that you’ll need more cylinders and a whack more cash.
Then there’s the drive.
It can do town quite happily.
Just leave the car in comfort mode and you can pootle about not being hugely efficient, it is true, but good enough.
I found that the 435i Gran Coupé was happiest when able to stretch its long legs, though.
As a freeway cruiser it’s pretty excellent, relying happily on its 400Nm of low-end torque to burble up the rolling hills.
...
WHEN the road gets twisty and challenging the car comes into its own — this is real BMW territory and this thing is just a couple of clicks better than its 3-Series stablemate. It’s taut, precise, flat and wonderfully communicative.
Rear-wheel-drive makes for a proper performance car experience, and will reward a talented driver who’s in a hurry.
I found that I switched between the various driving modes quite often in this car.
During freeway runs with the cruise control on I would select "eco-pro", which would save a bit of fuel through careful management of the aircon and throttle settings, because — well, why not?
In town I used "comfort" and when the road got twisty I’d select one of the sports modes and use the manual levers to change gear.
In terms of complaints, there are very few. It’s hard to get in and out of compared to a normal family car and every now and then the aircon would lose its mind and blast hot air at me on one of those sweltering Cape Town summer days.
The 435i Gran Coupé is a pretty immaculate example of automotive packaging.
It’s impossible to have it all in a car (it’s why wealthy enthusiasts have so many cars — each one does a different job), but as a cleverly put together compromise for the family-minded owner with petrol in their veins I’ve not yet come across a car that has quite the breadth of talent as this one.
It’s been fantastic.
Change: 1.83%
Change: 2.16%
Change: 1.83%
Change: 2.13%
Change: 1.75%
Data supplied by Profile Data
Change: 1.44%
Change: 1.29%
Change: 1.83%
Change: 0.00%
Change: 1.13%
Data supplied by Profile Data
Change: 0.07%
Change: 0.41%
Change: -0.03%
Change: 0.00%
Change: -0.11%
Data supplied by Profile Data
Change: -0.12%
Change: -0.43%
Change: -0.66%
Change: 0.00%
Change: 1.42%
Data supplied by Profile Data