Loaner E90 very good, but...
 

I just had a E90 325i loaner for a couple of days. Despite the automatic and no sport package it was quite a good drive - very light and agile, and certainly quick enough. It has me thinking once again about a 335i.

That said, three complaints:
- The new turn signal lever is still terrible.
- The manual control for the gearbox is upside down.
- You can't use cruise control when DSC is de-activated! I had no idea this was true, and since I shut off DSC every time I drove I just thought it was broken. Absurd.

1. Easily fixed with a trip to the dealer. The stalk can be set to work like regular turn stalks...

2. BMW made it -/+, when earlier automatic owners complained about having +/- as being upside-down...

3. Why would you need cruise control & DSC at the same time? Make perfect sense to me... If your cruising on the freeway, you shouldn't need to have DSC off...

1. That's cool.
2. I remember this. I think they were wrong. Irrelevant if I buy one, of course.
3. If it's dry I almost always turn DSC off, and I use cruise quite a lot. You can argue that's not very sensible of me, but what purpose does it serve to flat out not allow this?

I actually really liked the turn signal on the E90 loaner I had the other week. It took some getting used to, but after a few hours, I thought it was convenient. I like how it will flash three times for a lane change, for instance, if you tap it.

Well I guess BMW assumes that if your going to turn on cruise control, you pretty much 'checking out' and not really being a focused or attentive driver.

Thus, under that reasoning you should have all the electronic nannies you can get...

What about DTC? Can you use cruise control with DTC?

Well, for one you shouldn't be taking corners with cruise control... and if DSC wasn't there to step in when you were taking a corner too fast with cruise control on, bad things could happen? I think BMW's reasoning is to protect perhaps not the most intelligent drivers... Buying a BMW today doesn't necessarily mean you care about driving anymore...

Why do you always turn DSC off on dry days? Unless I'm doing something wildly stupid, I can't think of many times when its intervened when I didn't want it to... Sure I turn it off in the E46 Cic when I'm doing some spirited driving in the hills, but i've never had to turn it off because it was intervening during normal traffic conditions. Which makes me wonder about how aggressive you drive... ;)

I believe you can use cruise without DTC, just not without DSC.

I often use cruise to keep myself from speeding. It's doubly needed in a car as smooth and swift as the 325i.

Mercedes is the same way, when you disable ESP you lose cruise control functionality

I actually like it that way, its very similar to when you have down shift to 4th on a 5speed manual. I never like having to tap the stick foward for downshift on me wife S4 Steptronic

I agree with you. Unfortunately, the 3-series is forward-for-downshift.

Our 01 is the push-back-downshift layout as wel. Since my daily driver is manual this is intuitive. Dunno what got into BMW to change the layout, which makes cars around the essence of pure driving.