My wife has taken delivery of a new 2014 328i xDrive Sportswagon. Deep blue with beige leather. I thought I'd throw some initial thoughts up here for anyone wagon hunting.
A little background, my wife is extremely single minded in what she wanted: a traditional looking station wagon, period. That limited her choices to a Mercedes, Audi, VW, and BMW. If Subaru still made a wagon, that would have been her first choice. Mine too.
We've accumulated about 550 miles on it so far. It has a 2.0 DIT engine similar in spec to my 2014 XT's, an 8 speed auto, leather, parking assist, NAV, cold weather package, dual power seats w/memory, and an incredible lumbar adjustment.
Break-in fuel economy is 32 highway, 24 city, 93 octane.
The pro's so far:
xDrive : We picked the car up in Maine, about 94 miles away from home on a snowy Saturday. Driving down a very snowy, messy I-95 the xDrive system with all season tires felt as secure on the road as her 2008 OBW that I drove up there to trade-in. That was a pleasant surprise.
Seats: a very good grade of leather, several notches in quality above my XT's.
Seat Adjustments: Plenty of range to find a sweet spot, and the range of the lumbar adjustment is something to be felt to be appreciated, especially if you have a bad back.
Engine: we haven't tromped on it much yet, but so far power is more than adequate, and very similar to my XT's.
Heated steering Wheel: I know, who needs one of those? After using it, I'd have to say its a lot more appreciated than I would have thought.
Heated seats: They come up to temperature quick, and maintain it well.
Climate control: Warm's up quick, totally unobtrusive, and very quiet.
Human Factors Engineering: This is really subjective, but I think they've done a great job on the dash, everything on there is very intuitive. I especially like that they've included a limited subset of the NAV's display on the dash proper so that you don't need to look at the NAV screen. The main control knob that accesses the computer and accesses many features of the car is a lot more intuitive than I thought. It's still a hard drive based NAV system, and there's a lot of room left over to upload your music to it.
Auto Parking Assist: I don't know that she'll use it much, but it does work as advertised, including centering itself in the parking spot after it's done. More useful perhaps, is its ability to recognize if a parking spot is big enough as you slowly drive by. She could do a great job of parallel parking her OBW with no rear view camera, so she'd be fine with this car, especially given its large size rear view camera.
Automatic Rear Gate: I wish my XT was either more like this one, or fully manual. It has the "swing the foot under the bumper feature" that actually works, and moves open and closed like it means it, i.e. quick.
Voice recognition: So this is how its supposed to work...... my car has it, but its useless. This one worked out of the box.
Keyless entry, PB start: Very similar to my XT's, except it has the auto start stop feature. You can turn that feature off after you start the car, or you can have the dealership program it to default to off. Our next stop at a dealership, Off it goes.
Headlights: They swing a few degrees left or right, and she got the HID's (or whatever their equivalent is).
Moon roof: Large, panoramic style. Lets a lot of light into the cabin.
Drivability: Okay, there's a reason they're called the Ultimate Driving Machine.
Fit and Finish: You get what you pay for. Have not found a single flaw yet.
4yr/50K free maintenance.
Cons:
Tires: They ride good, and handle better than I would have thought. But, they are Run Flats, so unless one goes flat in the driveway, its a throwaway item, no repairs. Ride on it too long and you'll be replacing a wheel as well.
Engine noise: Externally, park this next to my XT when its running cold, and they both sound like crap. Better noise insulation internally, but from the outside, nothing special.
DIY Maintenance: Not. Friendly. At. All. I knew it before she got it, but for pity's sake you need to run a program to measure the engine oil (no dipstick). In fairness, my XT doesn't have a front diff dip stick, nor a CVT dipstick. Seems to be an unfortunate trend.
Oil change interval: Under the free maintenance its done at 15k, 30k, and 45k. No way am I letting a DIT engine go that long between changes. I will let it go to 7.5k, then pay to get it done. So I'll be paying for every other one. At $79 for OEM oil and filter, its no worse than my Subaru dealer's.
Ground clearance: Lower to the ground than her OBW, by a couple inches it looks.
Size: Its smaller overall than her OBW, a casual glance at it parked in the garage shows that. A little less room in the cargo area.
My biggest concern is the amount of electronics in the car. Too many microprocessors and actuators. All the manufacturers seem to be headed in a similar direction, but BMW certainly has its fair share.
My second biggest concern is carbon build up with their DIT engine. From following the BMW forums there are a lot of heads coming off after 50k for a cleaning.
We spent a lot of time going over the options list, and arrived at a pretty sane set of them. Base price on the wagon was 41K (3K more than my loaded XT), to which we added about 10k in options. The reason we ended up getting one 90+ miles away was the dealer's willingness to order a car, and then take about 4k off the top. He also gave us a decent price for her trade-in.
Summary: She's thrilled with it. She has a commute that goes between a half hour and an hour and a half each way, depending upon traffic. When she was agonizing over the price, my suggestion was get something that will make you feel comfortable, and that you'll be happy with. She works hard and waiting until your too old to enjoy the fruits of your labor never made sense to me.
Long windy review, thanks for reading.
A little background, my wife is extremely single minded in what she wanted: a traditional looking station wagon, period. That limited her choices to a Mercedes, Audi, VW, and BMW. If Subaru still made a wagon, that would have been her first choice. Mine too.
We've accumulated about 550 miles on it so far. It has a 2.0 DIT engine similar in spec to my 2014 XT's, an 8 speed auto, leather, parking assist, NAV, cold weather package, dual power seats w/memory, and an incredible lumbar adjustment.
Break-in fuel economy is 32 highway, 24 city, 93 octane.
The pro's so far:
xDrive : We picked the car up in Maine, about 94 miles away from home on a snowy Saturday. Driving down a very snowy, messy I-95 the xDrive system with all season tires felt as secure on the road as her 2008 OBW that I drove up there to trade-in. That was a pleasant surprise.
Seats: a very good grade of leather, several notches in quality above my XT's.
Seat Adjustments: Plenty of range to find a sweet spot, and the range of the lumbar adjustment is something to be felt to be appreciated, especially if you have a bad back.
Engine: we haven't tromped on it much yet, but so far power is more than adequate, and very similar to my XT's.
Heated steering Wheel: I know, who needs one of those? After using it, I'd have to say its a lot more appreciated than I would have thought.
Heated seats: They come up to temperature quick, and maintain it well.
Climate control: Warm's up quick, totally unobtrusive, and very quiet.
Human Factors Engineering: This is really subjective, but I think they've done a great job on the dash, everything on there is very intuitive. I especially like that they've included a limited subset of the NAV's display on the dash proper so that you don't need to look at the NAV screen. The main control knob that accesses the computer and accesses many features of the car is a lot more intuitive than I thought. It's still a hard drive based NAV system, and there's a lot of room left over to upload your music to it.
Auto Parking Assist: I don't know that she'll use it much, but it does work as advertised, including centering itself in the parking spot after it's done. More useful perhaps, is its ability to recognize if a parking spot is big enough as you slowly drive by. She could do a great job of parallel parking her OBW with no rear view camera, so she'd be fine with this car, especially given its large size rear view camera.
Automatic Rear Gate: I wish my XT was either more like this one, or fully manual. It has the "swing the foot under the bumper feature" that actually works, and moves open and closed like it means it, i.e. quick.
Voice recognition: So this is how its supposed to work...... my car has it, but its useless. This one worked out of the box.
Keyless entry, PB start: Very similar to my XT's, except it has the auto start stop feature. You can turn that feature off after you start the car, or you can have the dealership program it to default to off. Our next stop at a dealership, Off it goes.
Headlights: They swing a few degrees left or right, and she got the HID's (or whatever their equivalent is).
Moon roof: Large, panoramic style. Lets a lot of light into the cabin.
Drivability: Okay, there's a reason they're called the Ultimate Driving Machine.
Fit and Finish: You get what you pay for. Have not found a single flaw yet.
4yr/50K free maintenance.
Cons:
Tires: They ride good, and handle better than I would have thought. But, they are Run Flats, so unless one goes flat in the driveway, its a throwaway item, no repairs. Ride on it too long and you'll be replacing a wheel as well.
Engine noise: Externally, park this next to my XT when its running cold, and they both sound like crap. Better noise insulation internally, but from the outside, nothing special.
DIY Maintenance: Not. Friendly. At. All. I knew it before she got it, but for pity's sake you need to run a program to measure the engine oil (no dipstick). In fairness, my XT doesn't have a front diff dip stick, nor a CVT dipstick. Seems to be an unfortunate trend.
Oil change interval: Under the free maintenance its done at 15k, 30k, and 45k. No way am I letting a DIT engine go that long between changes. I will let it go to 7.5k, then pay to get it done. So I'll be paying for every other one. At $79 for OEM oil and filter, its no worse than my Subaru dealer's.
Ground clearance: Lower to the ground than her OBW, by a couple inches it looks.
Size: Its smaller overall than her OBW, a casual glance at it parked in the garage shows that. A little less room in the cargo area.
My biggest concern is the amount of electronics in the car. Too many microprocessors and actuators. All the manufacturers seem to be headed in a similar direction, but BMW certainly has its fair share.
My second biggest concern is carbon build up with their DIT engine. From following the BMW forums there are a lot of heads coming off after 50k for a cleaning.
We spent a lot of time going over the options list, and arrived at a pretty sane set of them. Base price on the wagon was 41K (3K more than my loaded XT), to which we added about 10k in options. The reason we ended up getting one 90+ miles away was the dealer's willingness to order a car, and then take about 4k off the top. He also gave us a decent price for her trade-in.
Summary: She's thrilled with it. She has a commute that goes between a half hour and an hour and a half each way, depending upon traffic. When she was agonizing over the price, my suggestion was get something that will make you feel comfortable, and that you'll be happy with. She works hard and waiting until your too old to enjoy the fruits of your labor never made sense to me.
Long windy review, thanks for reading.
