[Jim S]

Now that I have had the car for ten weeks and covered 1,500 miles, I thought I would post another short review of my impressions and experiences so far. The car has now completed its break-in period and I have started to open it up a bit, not too much yet but sufficient enough to be able to report that it feels much more lively and responsive.

Driving Experiences
The engine has pretty well loosened up now compared to when it was new and I can really feel the difference, especially in sport mode. Give the gas pedal a bit of a hard tickle and it sure takes off like a bat out of hell. You really need to hold it back or you could easily get in trouble with the law. The sound of that exhaust note is fantastic, especially when you go up the Rev range and also when you lift off and you get all the pops and crackles from the rear of the car.
The handling of the car is pretty secure and the Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres do a great job in keeping the line on twisty roads. You can feel the extra weight of the B58 engine in the corners but not to the extent of causing the car to become unstable. The car just feels stuck to the road, in dry conditions anyway. Not sure about in the wet; not brave enough to try it.

Ride and Comfort; the Vernasco leather sports seats are super comfortable, even on an extended drive. The chassis is sufficiently compliant in comfort mode to give a fairly smooth ride but firm enough not to wallow in corners. In sport and sport plus the suspension stiffens up significantly but not to the extend that the ride becomes uncomfortable. You really do get the best of both worlds, a very comfortable cruiser or a sporty beast if you want a bit of excitement.

Fuel consumption; I don’t think anyone buying the M40i will be too concerned about fuel consumption but here are my findings anyway. Post break-in period I am managing around 30 mpg (UK gallons) with a mixture of town and open road driving. When I get another few hundred miles on the clock and start to use the full power of the car more readily I expect this to go down to about 28mpg overall. I am in the older age bracket so won’t be going too mad with the car but some of the younger and more courageous drivers might struggle to get above 25 mpg (UK, about 21 mpg US).

Issues and Problems
The main problem that I have experienced is stones getting stuck in the (front) brakes. This happened to me four times in the first three weeks of ownership and it sounds absolutely horrendous. If the stone does not come out after a short forward and reverse movement It can take quite a few miles of driving to free the stone. There is no jack in the car so I was unable to lift it up and spin the wheel to see where the stone was and get it out. BMW asked me to take the car to my dealer for inspection and to measure the dimensions of the gaps between the shields and disc rotors. This was carried out a few weeks ago. The dealer also took a video and sent everything to BMW HO for review. So far I have not had any feedback but will let the forum know if I hear anything more.

The Harman/Kardon sound system, optional in the G29, is not nearly as good as it was in other previous BMW’s that I owned. I adjusted the settings in the Logic 7 Surround equaliser, as recommended by another forum member, and this has improved the sound quality. A little bit fiddly but worth the effort to improve the basic sound.

The CR2032 battery in each remote key needed to be replaced, the first one at 5 weeks and the other at 8 weeks. A “low remote control battery voltage” warning appeared in the instrument panel when I started the engine. No big deal but worth a mention as these batteries should last years, not weeks. May just be faulty batteries, time will tell.

Driver Profiles; I discovered that in iDrive v7, unlike the previous iDrive v6, if you want to use a different driver profile on the second key, then you need to create a separate BMW ConnectedDrive account for each driver. Another option is to use the built-in Guest profile for the second key and set this up as required, but you are unable to change the Guest profile name. You can however set up a 4-digit PIN code for each profile and use the PIN code each time you want to change to another profile.

Well that’s all I have to report at the moment. It would be interesting to hear how other Z4 G29 owners are getting on with their cars.