The test drive car is the one on the right; the left is a 325i.
The 335i pumps out 306bhp and 400Nm from its twin-turbo 3.0L I6. In this particular example, piano black wood and a brown interior completes the classy picture, while a stealthy black exterior exudes the horizontal shoulder lines of this very elegant coupé.
Firstly, I had the opportunity to be a back-seat passenger. Apart from a rather tedious semi-electronic function to move the passenger seat forward, the rear legroom is simply cavernous. It could be because our sales rep was a petite woman who sat in front of me, but I felt I had more space than even in a E46 sedan. It is simply amazing, how they manage to make the coupé this spacious. If one were to pick this over the sedan, I'd go as far to say that he wouldn't be making much of a compromise.
The car starts with a rather muted burble, and at low revs the engine doesn't sound as if it was a twin-turbocharged monster. Go above 3000rpm however and you start to realise this ain't a normal E92. Pity for the traffic, my dad had some runs up to 6000rpm and then we were out of road. The engine's linear torque curve pulls the car forward and it felt as if the engine didn't need to overcome any inertia at all. At 100km/h, the engine hummed at 1,300rpm and the car was whisper silent, nothing to complain about here.
Although I didn't have the opportunity to try the manual override myself, I feel that it is quite confusing because you can downshift or upshift using either the left or right paddles. I'm sure one would get used to it after a while, but why not make it a simple one button, one function affair?
While experiencing the amazing engine, I got to see the seatbelt extender operating. It's pretty cool but I agree it can be kinda flimsy, especially if you have pesky kids on board who would play with it. I also felt the materials used, and they were all adequate, but not particularly exceptional. For this price of SGD238,000 (USD153,000), I had expected more product differentiation from the 325i coupé, like a stitched leather dash, or something like that.
Looking at the exterior a little more carefully, I start to appreciate the beauty of this coupé, but it definitely could do better with a higher shoulder line, I think.
Overall, this car is incredibly all-rounded with space for 4, sufficient power and quality. However, I feel that the car is lacking something like an X-factor, a distinctive quality that sets this apart from all other cars.