The 335i is very much a Sports coupe. The handling is fantastic, the steering is absolutely wonderfully direct, the gearbox is stiff and direct and the performance is absolutely unbeleivable. The exhuast note is hilarously good as well - push the starter and you can hear it growling from quite far away. Therefore, somewhat unsuprisingly, it suits the enthuastic driver very well.
What it doesn't do, however, is waft about like a 5 Series when you are not quite in the mood. This is pretty obvious and I knew this in advance but what I didnt know was just how much more 'me' that was.
I always enjoyed the handling of the 5 Series and on the right road, I enjoyed pressing on in an 'enthuastistic manner'. I guess what I underestimated was just how great the 5 Series was at shrugging off this ability and going back to being a wafty-barge when you wanted it to.
The 3 Series is always ready for the next thrashing - don't get me wrong, it cruises better than most normal cars, but I guess once you've had a 5 Series thats just not enough. The 3 Series is fantastic handling car which can do normal driving pretty well. The 5 Series is a fantastic car for that normal driving but can do handling 'pretty well'. It's about striking a balance, and it seems the E92 strikes the wrong balance for me personally.
I drove about 3-4 335i's and enjoyed them all - and enjoy this one - but you dont 'live' with a car on a test drive, you are too busy being overwhelmed by the obvious postive factors like the fantastic handling and the great performance.
And given that half of my driving is short trips around town where 300bhp is useless, and the other half is up and down the M5, I think I bought the wrong car
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