Kumbi-M on Cars

Whether you are taking your children to school or meeting the executives at the Gary Player Golf Club, the BMW G20 3 series will fit in perfectly.

The BMW 3 series has always been a best seller of the BMW floors and the G20 should not struggle to beat the numbers set by its predecessors.

There are currently 2 derivatives of the G20 3 series; the 320d and the 330i, but BMW will be rolling out the 318, the 320i, the 330d as well as the loved M340i. We are still to hear from BMW whether there will be an M3, but I mean, there has to be one. We have seen some renderings of the M3 and one can only hope that BMW knocks the M3 out of the park.

The starting MSRP of the standard 320d is R649 000 with the M Sport edition I drove starting at R684 000. BMW says that this is the most intelligent BMW 3 series ever built and with the technology in the particular 320d M Sport I drove, I could not agree more. The 320d is claimed to do about 4.8l/100km but because of my heavy foot, I was averaging about 6.2l/100km which, in my opinion, is still not too bad. You put your foot down and you get a 0-100 time of 6.8 seconds being delivered from the 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbodiesel engine which delivers 140kw and 400nm of torque with a top speed of 240km(its predecessor the F30 had 135kw and 380nm of torque), The 320d M sport has an 8-speed automatic transmission and is a Rear wheel drive.

This BMW has to be the most satisfying car I have driven in this class at any speed, the particular 320d M Sport I drove was even more exceptional and is way better in sport mode with the car being very smooth, sticking to the road brilliantly, barely rolling and shrugging off any bumps that may come your way.

When it comes to the Interior of the 3 series, BMW had a lot of catching up to do, their rivals were always way ahead of them, and not only did they catch up, they left their rivals with their jaws dropped, it looks brilliant! They have taken the statement “don’t be driven by technology, drive it” and they have owned it.

The digital dashboard in the G20 3 series sticks out unlike the predecessor which had the dull round traditional dials, as well as a very intuitive 7.0 interface which is very responsive and does not lag while the display is high quality. You also score gesture control in some models and this means you can show off to your friends by using your left hand to control the volume or skip tracks. I think it is quite a bummer that you need to add on the Seat Heating option, that leather unfortunately gets quite cold and it would be great if they could give us seat heating as a standard feature.

Overall the G20 is a perfect Business Saloon and I would highly recommend it to anyone. Yes you can get any other car in the same segment but I think BMW went all the way with this 3 Series.

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