Quote:
Originally Posted by Fraggy
It wasn't even at the end, it was from early on that I noticed it was a tiring car to drive. You always had to keep on it... I'll explain. Parking was a pain. If you lost momentum it would nearly stop, if you tapped the gas to get it into creep mode, it might lurch faster and more than you wanted to you needed to go from a tap on the gas to break right away to not hit the car or pole in from of you. Over and over this gets exhausting.
The same problem presents in stop and go traffic as well. It was also hard to get it going from a stop. Yes, its fast, no doubt, but it took a lot of effort and noise to get going.
Sometime when pulling into a parking space, it would decide to downshift from second to first, but it would blip the throttle which would lurch you forward, again, cause an uneasy feeling of fighting to keep the car contained.
It was just simply a tiring car to drive day to day normally. There were other things too. The handling was really not all that great for all you hear about the M3. The rear seemed very soft at speed and dips in the freeway or on transition ramps really upset the car more than they should (my previously modified 335s did better). The front suspension was very soft, I was scraping it coming off the back side of a speed bump, unless coming to a near crawl. I blame that on the programming of the suspension, but it did this even on sport plus setting which should have been stiff as a brick.
There is more but Im tired of typing, lol. It was great car in many ways, but not a great car for me overall. Certainly not worth the $91k I paid for it.
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I have an M4 with the DCT (so essentially the same car as your M3) and while I would tend to agree its a car that demands a degree of attention, on the flip side its a 430hp RWD car which is designed to be a bit hardcore - so I'd be worried if it didn't. The DCT creep mode I haven't found that difficult to modulate, but I admit you have to spend a bit of time to learn how to use and remember its not a slush-matic.
As for the suspension being soft or grounding out, particularly over speed bumps, I have never once had that issue. If anything, in Sports Plus mode, the suspension is probably a bit hard for road use.
Now, does a bump unsettle the car? Yes of course it does, but thats because the suspension is stiff (remember as well the rear subframe is hard mounted to the body/chassis), so under hard throttle over a short frequency bump (like a bridge expansion joint or ridge in a road) you are guaranteed to get a bit of a wiggle on and/or TC light.
Maybe the M3 just wasn't the car for you, but I'm glad you stayed with the brand and found another BMW that was...