BMW Z4 review

The seats haven't just been yanked out of a saloon. They're bespoke to the Z4 and have electric bolsters to plug you solidly into the car whatever your girth. You sit low to the ground surrounded by premium leather. Mouldings for the dash and door cards are also different from the rest of the BMW range, but, as with the 8 Series, maybe not different enough to make the Z4 feel really distinctive. It seems people want their BMW to be fully BMW-esque in all particulars.

So, in the Handschalter Pack the manual gearlever is plucked from the BMW parts bin, and in all Z4s the iDrive, the virtual instruments and the climate controls are 'version 7.0'. If you want something super techy that’s bang up to date, you won’t have to wait too much longer for BMW’s Neue Klasse cars and their Panoramic iDrive and Operating System X.

Still, this previous generation infotainment is an easy system to manipulate in most ways. Our fingers are less frustrated fiddling with hardware buttons for climate, and an actual rotary controller and shortcut buttons for other stuff, than they are when jabbing at the newer all-touchscreen systems. That’s not to say that the Z4’s 10.25-inch central screen isn’t touch sensitive, but we love the ability to choose between two input methods.

But whatever was wrong with clear round dials? The rev-counter is an odd polygon, with red-on-red markings, a short needle and a back-to-front movement. It's absurdly hard to read, and this in a sports car. A navigation diagram sits between the speedo and rev-counter, but if you know where you're going you can't reconfigure that real estate to show anything more useful.

Folding hardtops were invented when soft tops were too easily penetrated by the weather and vandals with Stanley knives. These days a well-done fabric roof really is all you could want for coziness, and the yobs are too busily engaged in social media bullying. Wearing a cloth cap does no harm to the Z4, and it usefully increases the boot size to 281 litres too. Plenty of space for that new set of golf clubs. 

Roof-up at motorway-speed-plus-VAT, there's a mildly turbulent hiss of rushing air, but otherwise its insulation, warmth and general stormproofing are beyond serious reproach. Spend 15 seconds pressing a button to lower the cloth but keep the windows up and the neat little between-the-rollhoops wind deflector in place. That way you can still enjoy the excellent stereo at big open-roof speeds. Even on a parky day there'd be no call for one of those airscarf gadgets.