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Old 08-24-2012, 11:21 AM   #33
victell
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Join Date: May 2012
Location: Hawaii
Posts: 11
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I drove a 135i coupe recently, turbo six, 7 speed auto (!). It was quite a drive. I really liked the size of it, the interior allowed me one of the most comfortable driving positions ive experienced - and I'm 6' 5". The size is really all you need. Anything bigger would have been just more luxurious, but not better, if you know what I mean.

And it was fast, like really fast. Everything happened in fast forward. Its abilities are quite high. High enough that your brain has to put extra concentration juice into piloting it. But pay attention and the road is yours. You can eat up road and turns with lots of confidence. The car feels good, stable and balanced. And really quick. It bangs through gears and gets up to illegal speed in no time. I tried manual shifting the 7-speed myself and it was a waste. The car is so fast and the shifts happen so quick that it requires a lot of attention. I found myself literally watching only the tach so I could shift right at redline, and I um wasnt watching the road. So I put it back in auto mode and let the puter do its thing. It is quite good, it holds gears when you want to and rev matches when braking hard. All this allows more attention on getting your braking and turn in more precise.

Braking it does really well too. Cramming the pedal just makes the car stop. You can feel and hear the abs and computer working each tire to its max. It feels really stable while doing it, not much dive either. Braking works well when diving into turns also and doesnt upset the car. And it does this, at least at the limits I was driving, without traction control. It just has good balance and setup i guess.

A few things that didnt fit so well. The really smart computer was able to sense when I was about to brake hard just before bombing into a turn and pre-pressurized the hydraulic brake system and closed the gap between the pads and rotors. This made a newly-hard and ready-for-action brake pedal. Which is awesome, but not the brake pedal my senses had become accustomed to during the rest of the drive. I repeated this on several turns and it did it each time. Who know, maybe if I owned the car I'd get used to it.

Another off-putting thing is that twice while in a hard turn the car bottomed out on the compression side over a mid-turn bump. This is probably due to the cars weight (which it masks well) and ride/handling spring/shock compromise. It only happened twice and only when driving hard, but it was still a bit unsettling for a car that does everything else so very well.

And it really does the rest well. As I guess it should for how much the thing cost. I think it would be worth it for a lease or a 2-4 year ownership experience. But after that I think you'd better have a CPO or aftermarket service contract put on it. No way would I ever even begin to think about repairing this car myself in the garage.

All in all, awesome car. If you have an opportunity to test drive one, do it. I liked the car so much from the inside and the driver experience that I didnt care as much what it looked like, a bar of Dove soap.
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