Quote:
KenH said:
Given that BMW have absolutely no history at all of delivering a car that comes anywhere near the Cayman S in terms of handling I am somewhat sceptical of any claims that magically they have at last managed to compete with the Z4M (albeit with a bunch of ad-hoc, owner-specified changes). And for anyone old enough to care I include the E30 M3 in the list of disappointments.
I have bought 23 new BMWs so far, including a large bunch of M cars, looking for the "promise", but I have yet to find it.
Blimey, I am not sure how to respond to such a comment, you obviously have a viewpoint borne of personal experience and therefore no amount of debate is likely to change it. I presume you also own a Cayman S, judging by the tone of your comment.
Handling is a 'subjective' judgement, so we would have to agree on a common definition before we could even begin to discuss the topic.
Personally I prefer the handling characteristics of a front-engined rear wheel drive car, but when I first drove a Cayman I loved the approachable way it drove. I even wrote about it for a magazine a few months ago, but whilst I have owned several of Porsche's mid-engined models I still prefer the involvement and greater satisfaction achieved from driving a rear-engined Porsche. After owning and racing various 911s (GT3, 964RS, 993C2 etc) I find the Cayman a little too easy to drive. I guess that's part of the reason why I preferred the Z4MC, because there was more satisfaction borne from driving it well.
On the purely subjective view of handling, I also own an M3 CSL and having also owned a 996 GT3 before it I know which one I would vote as being the better handling car. So BMW's history of building fine handling cars is pretty clear in my experience.
Both manufacturers have pretty admirable records of building very succesful racing cars; BMW being the most succesful touring car brand in history and Porsche being the most succesful sports car brand. So I personally don't see any contradiction in crediting them both as being able to build damn good (and exciting) cars to drive.
The "bunch of ad-hoc and owner specified changes" that I applied to the Z4MC arose as a consequence of driving 6 seperate cars provided to me by BMW's Press department and comparing them against a similar number of cars provided by Porsche (Boxster S and Cayman S models). Then by comparing them in the same conditions, I was able to come to my own conclusion as to whether there was a fundamental advantage of one brand over another, or (as I found) that due to a daft decision by BMW they had lumbered the Z4MC with a rather obvious handicap. The changes I made were obvious to anyone with a modicum of car set-up experience and I feel show BMW to be the penny-pinching organisation that they seem to have become. But the dynamics of the car when driven with suitable tyres are far from being below par.
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