Jim Miles Fast Cars

Even as it churns out those . . . things called the X6 and the 5-series Grand Turismo, BMW’s credentials remain intact. Thank the M3, which, after 25 years, remains BMW’s most bewitching product and a shibboleth against anybody who questions whether the Bavarian fun *factory has finally lost it.

To mark a quarter-century of M3s and to let journalists drive the new, not-for-U.S.-sale M3 GTS, BMW gathered a trove of coupes and convertibles representing all four generations—including the original moxie-stuffed E30, the six-cylinder E36 and E46, and the current E90-series—at the private,  3.4-mile Ascari Race Resort in Spain.

You could spend a lifetime combing the classifieds and never assemble a dream collection like this. Culled from various departments within the company, including its own BMW Classic collection, every car is a cream puff with fewer than 10,000 miles (although all were wearing modern rubber).

They have soft, wrinkle-free leather, dashboards absent of cracks and fading, engines making something like the advertised horsepower, and suspensions that digest a track without shudders or arthritic clunks. It was as though time had wrinkled and we were attending the press introduction of all four M3 generations at once.
Rare, brash, expensive when new, and often showing scars of high mileage and a hard life when you glimpse a survivor on the street today, the seminal E30 M3 came into being because of a mid-1980s racing technicality. In order to enter a hotter, more competitive 3-series in Group A Touring Car events, BMW was required to build 5000 road-legal copies for sale to the public.

*What a gorgeous collection*

The E30’s famously dilated fenders and its rump wing are instant identifiers, while everything about it feels antique and wonderfully analog. The slim, gossamer doors swing with fingertip pressure. There’s a big steering wheel with three straight spokes and a thin rim wrapped in actual rough-out leather, not the fakey-doo Alcantara found in modern cars. The plastic dash controls are knobs, bulky buttons, or old-fashioned sliders, and the big white-on-black dials lack the digital flourishes of later cars. Airbags? Not yet.

Tuned for twist, the S14 four-cylinder makes a catty purr at idle and a lynx-like wail at its 6750-rpm power peak. The E30’s five gears are short and tightly spaced to keep the engine at full meow, so most of Ascari is done in fourth and fifth, and the revs rarely drop below 4000.

By the granitic standards of modern sport suspensions, the E30 is pretty soft. Governed by light steering that answers eagerly to small inputs, the handling is relaxed but neutral. There isn’t enough power to snap it loose from the back, and—at just south of 2900 pounds fully tanked—there isn’t enough mass to overwhelm the front tires.
The E30’s acceleration—0 to 60 mph in 6.9 seconds—could probably be matched by Lance Armstrong on a good day. But the best BMWs are about overall balance and poise, lofty expectations that were created in part by the E30.

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Having wildcatted into an unforeseen vein in the market, BMW had enough confidence to grow the M3’s lineup. With the six-cylinder E36, the M3 was turned out as coupe, convertible, and sedan. More choices meant more sales, but the chasm widened between the road car and the racer.

The initial 240-hp U.S.-spec M3 was 42 horsepower weaker than its Euro counterpart with its more exotic engine, and to further hold down costs, BMW clothed the various M3 models in the same exterior sheetmetal as their base 3-seriescounterparts. Compared with the flaring E30, the E36 looks like it has exhaled.

The first six-cylinder M3 is a leap forward in technology (this model introduced SMG—BMW’s first clutchless manual transmission, which wasn’t sold here), but it’s still old enough to feel relatively primeval. The odometer has gone digital, but the new airbag lives in a giant lunchbox in the wheel. Don’t bother *looking for traction- or stability-control buttons—they’re still a generation away.

Time passes and speeds rise: The Euro-spec E36 we drove hit 115.6 mph on Ascari’s long straight—to the E30’s 110—the *mellifluous turbine underhood heard but barely felt. The E36 feels lower, wider, and much stiffer than its predecessor, with a suspension that is clamped tighter, so cornering limits climb. It’ll pitch sideways far more readily, though the steering is more insulated and a little less organic than the E30’s.

With three body styles and only a modest bump in base price over the E30, plus a slew of variants introduced throughout its life span, the E36 gets credit for being the first to spread the M3 religion far and wide.

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The M3 got its special, steroidal fenders back with the E46, but their higher tooling cost spelled the demise (temporary, it would later prove) for the slow-selling M3 sedan.

Compared with its predecessors, the E46 feels thoroughly modern, the march of progress leaving its tracks in the form of a much higher button count. There’s a stability-control button, a sport button for a livelier throttle response, automatic *climate control, and optional navigation. An electronic redline indicator cleverly increases along with the engine’s oil *temperature.

Despite the increasing luxury, this M3 never lets the froth *isolate the driver from the machinery. With 333 horsepower from the 3.2-liter six, the E46 finally offered the same output as the Euro version. Stand on it, and its uniquely kazoo-like engine rip instantly knocks you back a decade as the gray-faced gauges dance.

Wheels were growing and tire sidewalls were shrinking. The 46’s ride is a jaw jangler on busted surfaces, but it has a more neutral, less oversteer-prone feel around Ascari than the E36 and barrels through a slew of corners with friction-free steering and cool composure. Fishtails happen—oh, yes—but they come on more gradually than in the E36 and are easier to ride out.

For many, the E46 is the ultimate M3. It’s bawdier and less refined (and less expensive) than the current V-8 cruiser—and has a proper inline-six, the engine type BMW spent half a century perfecting.

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The 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee is the newest, and we opted for the full, double-chili-with-onions Overland V-8 this time (we tested a low-option V-6 model in the September issue). Of the $45,240 as-tested price, the Off-Road Adventure II package (skid plates, a full-size spare, off-road tires, and 18-inch wheels) is responsible for just $275. Clearly, Jeep wants you out there getting dirty.

Kia’s Borrego is from a dying breed: the big, body-on-frame, not-too-pricey SUV. This loaded Limited is the test’s only other V-8 and the cheapest, at $40,790, with no options taken or needed. The aging Nissan Pathfinder now also offers a V-8, but we instead locked and loaded a more well-rounded, $43,655 deluxe LE with a 4.0-liter V-6, which also kept its price closer to the $40K mark.

An indicator of change in the truck segment: Toyota’s new-for-2010 4Runner has the only solid rear axle in this group. The Trail model is the get-muddy version, with sparse exterior decoration and blacked-out fender flares. Our $40,957 copy was outfitted with the $1750 kinetic dynamic suspension, which automatically disconnects the anti-roll bars when more wheel travel is needed

4th Place; Kia Borrego:

The Borrego—the truck, not the fault—suffers its own tremors, induced by everything from large rocks to hairline pavement cracks. Kia endowed the Borrego with carlike handling, quick steering, and restrained body lean but, in doing so, stiffened the suspension to the point of distraction. Granite slabs bend (as we saw in one cut in a canyon wall where the rock layers had been deformed by  tectonic pressure into a perfect horseshoe), but the Kia’s springs do not.

As with the Grand Cherokee, the Kia’s 4.6-liter V-8 sucked up more fuel but returned acceleration times barely better than the V-6 Toyota’s.  And Kia has tuned the Borrego’s gas pedal to be almost lifeless for the first few inches of travel. Unless you floor it, the V-8 wakes up more slowly than a teenager on Saturday morning. Many times, we rolled away convinced that the parking brake was still applied.

It’s only been on the market for two years, but the Borrego interior seems outdated, a simple slab of black plastic and metal-like trim accents that functions but doesn’t excite. However, the front and rear seats were praised for noteworthy comfort and roominess—the big Borrego’s best selling points aside from its price and 7500-pound tow capacity.

The A/C came and went for the rest of the afternoon as we roostertailed across sand dunes and eased down the backs of steep pressure ridges using the Borrego’s multimode four-wheel-drive system and electronic hill-descent *control.

Less eager to be an off-roader than an on-road family hauler and apex duster (it produced the best lane-change and skidpad scores), the Borrego, like the Big Mac or the Whopper, trades mainly on its size and price

3rd Place; Nissan Pathfinder:

The truckish Pathfinder thrives here. It lacks the ground clearance and electronic terrain-tuning fandangles of others, but the overhangs are clipped, and the visibility from the command chair is good. A rotary switch on the all-business dash—there’s just a quick splash of dark faux wood in the acres of black plastic to hint at luxury—directs the transfer case.

Even without locking differentials, the scramble traction is reliable as the anti-lock brakes work to halt wheelspin. A softly calibrated throttle allows you to ease the Pathfinder up shelves and over rocks with only occasional scraping underneath.

Befitting Nissan’s sporting self-image, the bolstered bucket seats are firmer in this one, the perforated leather resembling a Porsche’s. Power-adjustable pedals in our LE helped compensate for a lack of a telescoping steering wheel. Like the Borrego, our Pathfinder had a third row of seats but to the detriment of legroom in the second row, which was singled out as the prison cell of this group. The third row, meanwhile, is an acrobatic exercise to access. Adults need not apply.

Way back in 1986 when it was new, the Pathfinder had quick reflexes and unexpected nimbleness. But the current generation appeared in 2005 with no love of sealed roads. Vague steering and a lot of tire yowl in turns keep the speeds down. When floored, the 4.0-liter V-6 scores par—7.5 seconds to 60 mph—but head winds and uphill grades of any measure excite the transmission to fits of shuttling into and out of overdrive. The ride gets cantankerous on rough surfaces.

2nd Place; Toyota 4 Runner:

Sport-utility sales popped soon after the 4Runner all but invented the segment in 1984. The 2010 revision carries forward a lot of tradition: Along with that live-axle rear end, its transfer case is also the only one shifted via an old-time hand lever.

Elsewhere, however, buttons abound on the Trail model. Besides a locking rear differential, there’s multi-terrain select, a four-position knob that lets the driver tailor the throttle and traction control to various surfaces, from solid rock to moguls and mud and sand; active traction control, which gets the power to the corners with traction off-road; and crawl control, a sort of off-road cruise control. A hill holder helps you get moving gracefully again after you’ve stopped.

The helpers work precisely as advertised to get the 4Runner where you want it, but robotizing the off-road experience seems to suck out the fun. Our younger testers were less interested in the driving aids than the 4Runner’s useful slide-out cargo tray and the stereo’s “party mode,” which pumps more power to the tailgate speakers.

That’s a problem because, at 40 large for this truck, there are few other visible frills. The cockpit is laminated in black plastic, accented by a silver-painted shingle on the console (as in almost every Toyota), and the seats are cloth-covered. It’s highly functional, modern, attractive, and spacious—especially in the elevated back seat—but it’s not terribly expensive-looking.

The 4Runner’s strength is placidity in all situations, whether running smoothly and quietly at 75 mph down a freeway or plodding at 2 mph over alluvial debris. An especially elastic suspension complemented by high-profile tires isolates the cabin from knocks and vibrations while stepping easily over trail trouble. The downside is a sloppy unwillingness to corner or hold to a straight line at speed.

Still, our group agreed: Were it their own money, a 4Runner Trail that could be stripped down to a lower price would be their pick for running the jaws of the San Jacinto.

1st Place; Jeep Grand Cherokee:

Whether crossing the San Andreas on a rocky two-track trail—or on one of the bustling freeway arteries that passes above or through it in cuts characterized by gruesomely distorted rock layers—the Grand Cherokee has the cool demeanor of a luxury sedan on stilts.

An airy interior of piped leather and genuine timber trim, with a high button count, is an order of magnitude more posh than that of the other trucks here. Is it only $1585 more than our ancient Pathfinder? It looks about $20,000 more (and weighs 565 pounds more). You get a load of niceties for the extra cash, including a power tailgate, parking sensors, a power tilting-and-telescoping steering wheel, and adaptive cruise control.

Overlands also have the Quadra-Trac II all-wheel drive with an electronic rear limited-slip differential and Selec-Terrain, a system like the 4Runner’s, which preps the car’s electronics for various surfaces. From behind the wheel, the Jeep feels just as expensive as it isn’t. Back in the DaimlerChrysler days, the only unit-body truck in this test was separated at birth from the next-generation Mercedes-Benz ML, with which it shares a stiff, carlike platform.

It polished off a freeway and a winding road with the same harmonious, unflustered control as it did rolling through rock-strewn washes of the San Andreas Rift Zone, only about 60 miles from downtown L.A. Pumped up on its air springs to its full 10.6 inches of clearance, an Overland rarely drags its belly, though sharp impacts do occasionally crash the suspension against the bump stops with a jarring thud.  And, as in the Borrego, the Jeep’s fuel-inhaling V-8 returned near-V-6 acceleration times.

Still, the Jeep is our favorite. It’s an everyday do-it-all of high caste that doesn’t mind getting grimy.