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.

First off, I turn it off because it's no fun. In both my S4 and my X5 I find it intervenes when I'm getting into the throttle on corner exit, and frequently in very tight turns. I'm driving briskly but not very close to the limit, and it happens and it annoys me. In the S4 (and every rental car with TC or ESP) I shut it off (in the dry) for my own entertainment. In the X5 I don't bother, on safety grounds.

The process that BMW's design forces is: hold down the DTC button for 3 seconds, drive until you want to use cruise control, push DTC button, engage cruise, disengage cruise, hold down DTC button for 3 seconds, repeat. For those of us who find DSC genuinely annoying it's a pain. Obviously for normal highway driving I don't find either DTC or DSC to be an issue, but most of my driving involves a mix of environments.

I should be clear: I liked the car very much. It is likely the best line of sports sedans available for any price.

The shift directions changed in 2002. Personally, I like the current layout since it "feels" better when you take into consideration the physics of accel and brake. It's something you get used to. I misshift all other cars' manual automatics because I'm used to the one in my X3.

I like the electronic turn signal. I think by far the BIGGEST problem people have is when they try and make a lane change but push it too far (past resistance point) and thus it does not self-cancel. Then instinctively, they push it too hard in the other way, so the other signal comes on. The vicious cycle repeats itself.....

Of course, you must resist the urge to push the stalk too hard when you mess up. But that's okay. I already use lots of brainpower when driving; remembering not to shove it too hard isn't a burden. I've never had a problem except when I make intersection turns. I have a habit of manually cancelling the turn signal before it self-cancels, so hitting the stalk in the other direction on my friend's 325i creates minor confusion, but it's rare.

As for the DSC and cruise, well I leave DSC on 95% of the time and 100% of the time while cruising on the highway. I just hate how BMW put cruise on a stalk now. I bang my knee into it all the time and the cruise symbol comes on in my friend's 325i and I don't know how to shut it off. Of course, it doesn't do anything because I don't set it, but it's just an ergonomic flaw.

...another ergonomic flaw i experienced was with the light control knob.

a lot of the time, my knee hits it, and it presses in :rofl:

...hurts my knee too

Why does BMW design it that way? To me it seems like "cheap build quality" instead of whatever BMW intended it to be. I do think the light switch is too low, small, and out of sight. Heck, the entire dashboard design of the E90 isn't as driver oriented as it used to be.

BMW calls the dash in the E70 semi-control opposed to what could be found in the E46 and E39. I find it acceptable in the E70, but there is no reason to use the design in any of the cars other than the 7.

I have DSC on 100%. It really does its charm in the winter. It dosen't go off when I drive in dry conditions. When I'm in my convertible, it rarely goes off, almost never, even under very hard acceleration from a stop. I drove a Lexus RX330 in the snow once, and I was kinda pushing it to it's limits, and every time the DSC would activate (often, lots of snow) it would go "beep beep beep!" It drove me nuts! But basically, I know there would be hundreds of more crashes if it weren't for stability control. I think it's the best automotive safety invention behind the airbag and seatbelts.

I turned the 3 turning signal flashes off. It bugged me.
In un-related news, I decided to turn the backup camera back on to see if it was better. It wasn't. It was worse. The resolution sucked, and like every 3 times it was activated, it would make the colors all weird, like black was red, green was blue, etc...it was really funny. Every 5th or so time, it wouldn't even turn on, and I'd see a black screen. So I turned it back off. I'm not going to go to the dealer because of it, I never use it any way. (I use the PDC vehicle diagram).
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