How my BMW Z4 'Handschalter' makes my front door feel old school
Why shedding its hard-top past was a move in the right direction for the current Z4
Hello, Mr Blue Sky. The arrival of spring and the accompanying appearance of ambient temperatures in double figures has played to the strengths of both the upper and the lower portions of the Z4: more opportunities to enjoy driving with the roof retracted, and more grip down at tarmac level to get the best from the chassis.
It’s been a while since I ran a convertible long-termer – the last was a Nissan 370Z Roadster in 2011-12, and a couple of years before that was a previous-generation Z4, the one with the folding hard-top – and I’d forgotten how immersive the experience of driving an open-top car can be. It’s more intense for your senses, and can make you feel like you get more out of a short blast than you would in an equivalent coupe.
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It particularly helps when the drop-top in question comes without significant compromises. As mentioned last month, the current Z4 is not one of those wobbly convertibles of yore, where you could feel the shell flexing and the suspension struggling as a result. Ditching the folding hard-top for this G29-generation Z4 was a good move too. That older, E89 Z4 always felt like it suffered for having one, not least because it resulted in a car that weighed 1580kg, back in the days when 1580kg was heavy. And while the sDrive 35i model I ran had a 49:51 front-to-rear weight distribution with its roof up, stowing it shifted goodness knows how many kilos of metal and glass behind the rear axle line, and high up in the boot to boot. A damp track session demonstrated this didn’t do the already aloof handling any favours, the car proving eminently spinnable when DSC was disabled, much to the amusement of my colleagues. Well, until they took turns in the driver’s seat and did some pirouetting of their own.
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The Handschalter, meanwhile, doesn’t have that cloud of compromise hanging over it. It’s 30kg lighter, and the car feels how it looks – as if its weight is positioned low and spread wide. A ‘virtually perfect’ 50:50 weight distribution is claimed, and lowering its fabric roof will have much less impact on this.
It’s still not the most nimble-feeling car through direction changes, however – driving it back-to-back with our Boxster makes you acutely aware of this. Yet that’s not to say it doesn’t like to have fun. It simply prefers a more considered approach: fast and flowing is its forte, and it can be very rewarding when you find its groove. In some ways it makes you a better driver, as you’re always planning your moves to get the best from it.
On a completely different note, I can’t say I’ve ever found a significant advantage to connecting a car to a manufacturer’s phone app before, but that changed this month. Having parked up in town and walked a good 10 minutes away from the Z4, the dreaded ‘Did I lock it?’ doubt crept in. Opening up the My BMW app provided the answer. I had locked it – of course I had – but if I hadn’t, I could have done the job remotely from my phone. Handy. Now I just need a similar app for my front door. And maybe another that can tell me if I’ve left the oven on…
| Total mileage | 9508 |
| Mileage this month | 1455 |
| Costs this month | £0 |
| mpg this month | 28.2 |
This story was first featured in evo issue 333.
