Review: BMW 220d in Europe
In July 2017, I was in Europe, and after a few days of sweating/wandering around Berlin, I hitched an AirBerlin flight (keep in mind, AirBerlin was still a thing then) back to Frankfurt and picked up the car I’d hired. My reservation clearly said “manual” but the only car they had left with three pedals was an S6 Avant — a car which, I’m sure is utterly fantastic. But this was Europe, with European-size parking spaces, and I’m an American.
So at midnight me and my hired BMW 220d — equipped with the ubiquitous ZF-8 — and M-Sport package started our journey together by driving two miles to my hotel.
The next morning, after some wrong-ways down one-way streets, I found a Starbucks which sufficed as coffee. My itinerary was to head to Amsterdam, several hundred kilometers away, most of which were on glorious unrestricted stretches of Autobahn. Then I’d go to Nurgurg the two days later, drive the ‘Ring, and then back to Frankfurt to catch my flight back to the place previously known as the free world.
I’d always wanted a BMW. I convinced my Dad to drive me to South Denver to look at an E36 318i running on 3 cylinders with no door cards. I’m glad I didn’t get it. But in 2013 I thought about ordering a 128i and picking it up in Germany. While it was rear wheel drive, pretty, and naturally aspirated, it was probably far from a sound financial decision at the time. Unfortunately, there’s no BMW like it anymore.
The true horror of life is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, parched, wondering where you would be if you had only gotten cookies and cream ice cream that one night three and a half years ago in July instead of mint chocolate chip. Maybe the person at the register also liked cookies and cream and you could have struck up a conversation. They could be lying next to you now, or you could count them as a sworn enemy. But either way, they aren’t. And you’re confused and stuck lying awake thinking what might have been.
About two years ago I stumbled upon a gorgeous 2011 335i xDrive M-Sport in LeMans Blue. It’s fantastic. But the 128i still wakes me up from time to time and all can think about is the 52,000 miles on my 335i’s dashboard that weren’t mine.
I saw the 2er as the best chance anyone gets to re-try their ice cream order three and a half years later, because unlike a soggy and moldy waffle cone, you can buy one right now from your local BMW dealer. I’m a romantic. I can roll back time, I swear.
The 220d is unquestionably a BMW. It can’t pull double-duty as a nameless Mercedes like a Mercedes C-Class or a Lexus GS-LS-F-Something can. It smells Bavarian. And it it drives well. You feel in control. The belt-line is fairly high, but that’s the case with everything these days. And the torque! It was wonderful. In Nurburg, I wandered around the C-roads for a few hours while I waited for Tourist Driving to start and let me tell you, the 220d is the car-for-hire for you if you want to drift up wet mountain roads in a rental car.
Steering was excellent, road noise was very controlled. The tires on the car were all-season which meant I was limited to 210 kilometers per hour. I didn’t quite get to hit that — my usual cruising speed was around 180–190. I would call the car quick-feeling and fun to drive, but it’s not fast. You have to work for the speed, and even on the nicest stretches of unrestricted road, I never saw the car warning me I was going too fast (which is a user-option for when you change tires).
But all is not well.
The car doesn’t feel as small as you want it to feel. The rear is cavernous. In my 3er, I forget it has rear seats. It’s a sports sedan with extra focus on the ‘SPORTS’. I don’t find it particularly pretty — though the M-Sport package is at least pleasant to look at compared to the normal 2. I was told that the 220d M-Sport is the best selling 2 series in Europe. So at least people over there have taste compared to our fleet of champagne bare bones 320i lawyer leases and hipster A3s that “definitely, totally have quattro, bro”.
The climate control doesn’t have an “All” button, so you have to adjust the driver’s temperature as well as the passenger’s. On many occasions in our short time together, I’d change the driver’s setting, realize I was still cold or warm, and realize that the passenger temperature was the exact opposite of what I wanted and was still blowing on me. So much for a driver’s car.
And the gauges. In my 335, I can see everything on the gauge cluster. No matter how much I tried, I either couldn’t read the top half of the speedometer or the bottom few lines on the LCD. I’ve confirmed with other people that finding a cure for cancer is more feasible than being able to see all of your gauge cluster at the same time in a 2er.
The climate control and gauges add up, and the rest of the car just doesn’t feel correctly oriented. True north versus magnetic north. The thing I’ve always found so alluring about BMWs is the absolute pedantic driver-centricity. It’s a very finely crafted suit. The gear shift is right where your hand goes. The center console has a little extra support so your arm is supported when you’re shifting gears. The door-side rest is the perfect height. The window switches are a little beyond where your fingers rest so you don’t accidentally hit them. I’d like to imagine that on most BMW cars, the new folks would design it and invite some old incredibly German engineer to take a look at it. And they’d sit in it and simply say “it does not fit right, make it again”.
That person was on vacation with the 2 and had to phone it in. Mind you, it’s not bad. It’s definitely not that. The 2 series is probably still one of the most driver focused cars you can buy. But the definition of driving has changed and you have to keep up with the times I suppose. It’s for you and a passenger who loves climate control knobs to meander around in. It’s not the Ultimate Driving Machine. But it is pretty nice.
I’ll keep my 3 over it any day.
But who’s to say I won’t wake up again tonight still thinking about a 128i and my ice cream choices?
