Another one of those "Boy is this a cool-ass-car" threads - Perhaps from a bit of a different angle than before though.
So my girl has been in the market for a vehicle for around 8 months since a box truck pulled out in front of her and took a 1/4 of her car with it down the road. Her previous car was an 02 IS300 6spd. I drive a modded 14' Explorer Sport. Neither of us have ever had a car coming close to the performance of this vehicle so there is a steep learning curve on how to deal with it in many respects. As an aside - we started out looking at a used 14 335i (once she had decided on a BMW). I'll save the whole how we ended up at an M3 story for another day but suffice to say it wasn't on my radar for her at all when this whole process started!
After going through MANY, and I do mean many drives and dealerships, we ordered a F80 out of market with a dealer recommended by a few folks on these forums - Long Beach BMW. Everything worked out great. Ordered car on 9/4/2014 , Car arrived to dealer on 11/19/14. Our CA was Khoi Diep, he was easy to work with and responded to my many emails and questions promptly throughout the whole process.
Options ordered:
AW on Black Extended/Carbon
Exec Pkg
Driver Assistance +
Adaptive Susp
19" Black wheels
Enhanced BT
HK Sound
Pwr Sunshade
Moonroof
We flew down to the LA area this weekend to pickup the car and drive it back. I ended up driving the 300+ mile journey from Pasadena back to the bay area. Except for the crappy post turkey day traffic in some spots, it was great.
A few scattered notes and thoughts -
I keep hearing from her - Wish the seat belts were height adjustable. I tend to agree, though its not a problem for me - seems like a silly thing to leave out.
This thing pulls pretty freagin hard - in 6th gear!!! Not used to that..I know its a crap comparison but wow, in her old IS you'd have to shift to 3rd to feel like you were doing anything! The ONLY thing I can think of to say with the IS as a pro over the M3 is that when you got that thing moving you could really hear the engine go - wherease with the M it's all about the exhaust - I don't really remember feeling like I could hear the engine if that makes any sense at all.
Holy-ish were the wheels dirty with brake dust. Hoping that's just initial. I cleaned the wheels prior to our departure. When we arrived home there was a thick coating of muck on the front 2, rears wernt bad at all. There was a heavy rain in the LA area when we left, not sure if that helped or hurt actually.
Holy crap is it hard to keep under 112mph or whatever when there's wide open dry and clear road ahead in this car! And not flooring it when passing a slow truck on the 5 is just as hard :) I believe I managed pretty well though!
There were some sections of I5 where I felt i was going to get shaken to death by the aggressiveness of the suspension. We all know the road is crap but wow, it was seriously loud and jerky. Something else she'll (we'll) have to get used to - Luckily that was an exception, and not the rule for the duration of the trip.
Idrive - prior to leaving, we'd connect the USB to her phone (Samsung S4) and the system would crash and reboot (screen goes black, maybe 10-15 seconds go by then BMW logo and animations start) like clockwork every few minutes. I haven't had a chance to dive into this - Going to have to look into resetting it if at all possible.
6Spd - I love the shifting. So much easier to shift around than the old Lexus...Getting used to that extra gear and the ratios will take a bit.
Neighbors - We live in a townhome with the tandem garage on our first floor. I recently upgraded my exhaust system on my car (14 Explorer Sport TT) and it is quite a bit louder. Our neighbors arent fans of my car and how loud it is - now they have the M to contend with as well - especially sucks for them in the morning when we have to swap the order of the cars for her to get out...yea, Urban Jungle living, gotta love it.
After reading some of the talk on full vs extended leather - I had her really questioning whether or not we should have ordered the full leather. After being with the car and seeing it. It definitely isn't a deal breaker. Not sure if it would have really been worth the money for either of us BUT full leather sure is nice. The soft touch plastic/rubber stuff on the dash is nice enough, especially with a slight sheen after cleaning/protectant.
We are used to a feature in my Explorer where depending on which keyfob you use, the car will setup the seating, mirror, and display settings. So if I unlock the vehicle with "my" keyfob, the driver seat goes all teh way back and mirrors to my programmed position etc and when she uses her keyfob, the vehicle setups up according to how its programmed for her. I sort of assumed this was a standard thing with "comfort access" but seems I was mistaken. Not sure if similar features are available within BMW at all or just on higher end cars but man, I miss it already. Somewhat similarly, really miss adaptive cruise control - sucks it is not available with the 6spd. I found myself getting too close to comfort on accident a few times forgetting that the vehicle would not brake for itself if it detected a vehicle in front of it.
Random questions:
Sport interior lighting - wth does this do? I spent 5 minutes swapping between Sport and Classic and couldn't figure out what was changing!
Camera Views -
We have Drivers Assistance + - for some reason I thought there was some sort of 360 view option - I have only seen where you can see the rear cam + the 2 front fender cams - are there any other views possible? I may have gotten the system confused with X3 or 5 that we test drove (forget which one)
I guess that's it. After the full trip we have about 800 miles to go before it can really be opened up on the road... we'll see how that goes.
Overall, I think this car will be a winner. I would love to drive it more often but I am a really tall guy and getting in and out of that thing on a daily basis would be maddening - even if its cool as hell :-)
We're going to baby it as she's planning on it lasting 10 years...we'll see.
A couple of cell pics attached of our new "baby".
So my girl has been in the market for a vehicle for around 8 months since a box truck pulled out in front of her and took a 1/4 of her car with it down the road. Her previous car was an 02 IS300 6spd. I drive a modded 14' Explorer Sport. Neither of us have ever had a car coming close to the performance of this vehicle so there is a steep learning curve on how to deal with it in many respects. As an aside - we started out looking at a used 14 335i (once she had decided on a BMW). I'll save the whole how we ended up at an M3 story for another day but suffice to say it wasn't on my radar for her at all when this whole process started!
After going through MANY, and I do mean many drives and dealerships, we ordered a F80 out of market with a dealer recommended by a few folks on these forums - Long Beach BMW. Everything worked out great. Ordered car on 9/4/2014 , Car arrived to dealer on 11/19/14. Our CA was Khoi Diep, he was easy to work with and responded to my many emails and questions promptly throughout the whole process.
Options ordered:
AW on Black Extended/Carbon
Exec Pkg
Driver Assistance +
Adaptive Susp
19" Black wheels
Enhanced BT
HK Sound
Pwr Sunshade
Moonroof
We flew down to the LA area this weekend to pickup the car and drive it back. I ended up driving the 300+ mile journey from Pasadena back to the bay area. Except for the crappy post turkey day traffic in some spots, it was great.
A few scattered notes and thoughts -
I keep hearing from her - Wish the seat belts were height adjustable. I tend to agree, though its not a problem for me - seems like a silly thing to leave out.
This thing pulls pretty freagin hard - in 6th gear!!! Not used to that..I know its a crap comparison but wow, in her old IS you'd have to shift to 3rd to feel like you were doing anything! The ONLY thing I can think of to say with the IS as a pro over the M3 is that when you got that thing moving you could really hear the engine go - wherease with the M it's all about the exhaust - I don't really remember feeling like I could hear the engine if that makes any sense at all.
Holy-ish were the wheels dirty with brake dust. Hoping that's just initial. I cleaned the wheels prior to our departure. When we arrived home there was a thick coating of muck on the front 2, rears wernt bad at all. There was a heavy rain in the LA area when we left, not sure if that helped or hurt actually.
Holy crap is it hard to keep under 112mph or whatever when there's wide open dry and clear road ahead in this car! And not flooring it when passing a slow truck on the 5 is just as hard :) I believe I managed pretty well though!
There were some sections of I5 where I felt i was going to get shaken to death by the aggressiveness of the suspension. We all know the road is crap but wow, it was seriously loud and jerky. Something else she'll (we'll) have to get used to - Luckily that was an exception, and not the rule for the duration of the trip.
Idrive - prior to leaving, we'd connect the USB to her phone (Samsung S4) and the system would crash and reboot (screen goes black, maybe 10-15 seconds go by then BMW logo and animations start) like clockwork every few minutes. I haven't had a chance to dive into this - Going to have to look into resetting it if at all possible.
6Spd - I love the shifting. So much easier to shift around than the old Lexus...Getting used to that extra gear and the ratios will take a bit.
Neighbors - We live in a townhome with the tandem garage on our first floor. I recently upgraded my exhaust system on my car (14 Explorer Sport TT) and it is quite a bit louder. Our neighbors arent fans of my car and how loud it is - now they have the M to contend with as well - especially sucks for them in the morning when we have to swap the order of the cars for her to get out...yea, Urban Jungle living, gotta love it.
After reading some of the talk on full vs extended leather - I had her really questioning whether or not we should have ordered the full leather. After being with the car and seeing it. It definitely isn't a deal breaker. Not sure if it would have really been worth the money for either of us BUT full leather sure is nice. The soft touch plastic/rubber stuff on the dash is nice enough, especially with a slight sheen after cleaning/protectant.
We are used to a feature in my Explorer where depending on which keyfob you use, the car will setup the seating, mirror, and display settings. So if I unlock the vehicle with "my" keyfob, the driver seat goes all teh way back and mirrors to my programmed position etc and when she uses her keyfob, the vehicle setups up according to how its programmed for her. I sort of assumed this was a standard thing with "comfort access" but seems I was mistaken. Not sure if similar features are available within BMW at all or just on higher end cars but man, I miss it already. Somewhat similarly, really miss adaptive cruise control - sucks it is not available with the 6spd. I found myself getting too close to comfort on accident a few times forgetting that the vehicle would not brake for itself if it detected a vehicle in front of it.
Random questions:
Sport interior lighting - wth does this do? I spent 5 minutes swapping between Sport and Classic and couldn't figure out what was changing!
Camera Views -
We have Drivers Assistance + - for some reason I thought there was some sort of 360 view option - I have only seen where you can see the rear cam + the 2 front fender cams - are there any other views possible? I may have gotten the system confused with X3 or 5 that we test drove (forget which one)
I guess that's it. After the full trip we have about 800 miles to go before it can really be opened up on the road... we'll see how that goes.
Overall, I think this car will be a winner. I would love to drive it more often but I am a really tall guy and getting in and out of that thing on a daily basis would be maddening - even if its cool as hell :-)
We're going to baby it as she's planning on it lasting 10 years...we'll see.
A couple of cell pics attached of our new "baby".
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