davant

I recently saw the 325xi at the San Francisco Auto Show and liked it enough to visit BMW of San Francisco for a look at the "Sports Wagon". Much to my surprise they actually had one in stock and the salesperson offered me a 30-minute test drive. The MSRP was about $45500. The car was dark green with very nice "terra" (medium brown) leather seats and contrasting black dashboard with forests of wood. Throttle response was surprisingly lazy from a standing start, even in "S" mode. "Geartronic" 6-speed automatic was very smooth on upshifts but it downshifted abruptly when coming to slow stops. Handling was quite good but not what I expected. Ride was brittle and hard perhaps due to run flat tires. Very quiet interior at 80 MPH. iDrive was as awful as I had imagined. BMW free scheduled maintenance warranty still covers "wear and tear" items for full 4-years or 50K. I got back into my 5 and 1/2 year old B5 A4 Avant and it felt pretty good...actually better in many ways than the new BMW. Guess I got that out of my system...(On the other hand, BMW of San Francisco is like Nordstrom and the dump known as Royal Motors Audi is like Wal Mart...$80000 A8's sitting next to $15000 Mazda3's!)

KEVIN97A4

I stopped reading at the 4th line...44k for a 325xi? SKIP