BMW 1 Series review (17/04/2013)

FOR a car that was originally intended to fill a gap in BMW’s model line-up, you’d have to say that the 1 Series has been something of a surprise to many — not least of whom was the German giant itself.

First seen back in September 2004, the 1 Series initially sold some 39,000 units that year and then went on to rack up consecutive yearly sales in the hundreds of thousands, peaking last year when it chalked up a total of 226,829 sales across its 3 and 5 door hatchback, coupe and convertible models.

For a car that was initially perceived as a stop-gap at the bargain basement end of the BMW market, aimed at plugging the hole left by the upwardly mobile 3 Series, that’s a fairly stellar performance by anyone’s standards. And when you consider that the range has played a vital role in BMW becoming the leading luxury brand in America, you can see just how important the 1 Series has become for the company. For all its successes, the baby Beemer was not exactly without fault. Sure it did bring one unique element to its segment in that it was the only vehicle in the class to offer rear wheel drive, but that factor — a huge plus point in many drivers’ eyes — also led to packaging difficulties as stuff like the transmission tunnel led to a decidedly cramped rear passenger compartment.

However, given that the majority of the car’s buyers appeared to be either thrusting young upwardly mobile things or women of a certain age and social status who liked the idea of a small car with a blue and white propeller badge on the bonnet, it was still somewhat of a surprise that it sold as well as it did. But sell it did and that despite any character faults it might have had.

The 1 Series has now gestated into a second generation and a design team led by Adrian van Hooydonk oversaw the development of the new model into a much leaner looking and more purposeful machine. It has lost some of the slab-sided look which characterised the original, is quite a bit more passenger-friendly and has been significantly beefed up in terms of the quality of the materials utilised throughout the interior.

The car we tried was the 114d Sport in three door format, but as the name might imply, it is not, in fact, a 1,400 cc turbodiesel. Rather, it is a 1.6 litre (1,598 cc, to be exact) which outputs some 70 kW (95 bhp) a 0-100 kph capability of 12.2 second and a top speed in excess of 190 kph. Those are not exactly hugely impressive figures, but what will raise a fair bit of interest is that CO2 emissions are only 112 g/Km and it will return a very decent 4.1 l/100 km (65.7 mpg), implying that what you have here is both very economic and very tax friendly.

But are those factors enough to persuade drivers to purchase? I would not be so certain.

Sure the handling has been improved and the car has a nice, tight, grippy feel about it, but I’d have to say that the run-flat tyres do take away from the experience. On billiard table surfaces they’re not bad, but on anything less they completely ruin the ride. In fact, I’m sure Ben Hur’s wooden-wheeled chariot had a better ride on poor surfaces than this machine.

On top of that there is the price factor. Now I know that we are in the premium end of the market here, but when you take on board the 29,680 list price, you find that add-ons don’t come cheap.

The test car, for example, came with a Black Sapphire paint job and Coral Red Dakota leather upholstery and those two extras alone brought the cost up to a smidgen over 32K. Suddenly, somehow, the idea of a small car with that blue and white propeller badge might not sound so attractive.

We’ve driven quite a few of the premium competitors in this segment in the recent past and I’d have to honestly say that this particular Beemer, while a very decent overall proposition, does not cut it enough for me to issue an unstinting recommendation.

I may be that the car’s economics will make a lot of sense to people and they will be further persuaded by the decent residuals which will be on offer when they come to trade it in, but I feel that the overall quality of the product does not make it an automatic class leader in the same way some would say the 3 Series or the 5 Series are.

It is certainly a contender, but not the comprehensively outstanding one I was expecting. That, of course, is not to say BMW will not sell shed-loads of them (because they will), but if I was shelling out my own hard-earned, I’d be looking closer at what the opposition has on offer and, given the growing sophistication of some of its non-premium competitors, I’d actually be looking out of the premium box altogether.