325iT -- The Ultimate Wagon!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Sports car-like handling, sports sedan-like performance. Superb ergonomics. And all that CARGO SPACE!

Cons: Very high MSRP -- buy pre-owned! Not as capacious as some may need/want.

The Bottom Line: 
A fantastic alternative to a minivan or, especially, an SUV. Just watch the price.

Author's Review
Background
My wife and I are expecting our first child in November (I am writing this in early November 2003), and we decided we needed a new vehicle. We owned two Acuras at the time: an old Integra hatchback and a '96 3.2TL sedan. The Integra was not suitable for carrying an infant and attendant gear. And it turned out the TL wasn't great on roominess, either, once we experimented with cramming a car seat and a stroller into it.

So we decided to buy a new car and then sell one or both of our cars later on.

Being the kind of people that we are, we ruled out the two usual suspects:
(1) minivan
(2) SUV

We like to travel light and consume as little of our environmental resources as possible. Both of those vehicles, especially the SUVs, contradict our ethos. So instead, we decide to focus our search to station wagons.

Luckily, in the last few years, the wagon has come back with a vengeance. And we're not talking about those ungainly wood-paneled land boats of yore.

Compare and Contrast
Several car makers, notably the Europeans, have several superb station wagons on the market. I've read in several magazines and web sites that Europeans have a very different attitude toward wagons than Americans do. Here in the U.S., we're smitten with SUVs and minivans. We like supersized machines that make the statement that we could go off-roading at a moment's notice. We like the ride height and the plush feel that isolates us from potholes and speed bumps. And, heck, we buy and lug around big things that need big vehicles to carry them in.

But in Europe, where everything is smaller and denser and the countries are close together and the roads were built in the Middle Ages by horses, they don't drive SUVs and minivans by the fleetful. And families tend to own only one vehicle. They love wagons.

That translates into some great machines, and my wife and I considered all of them at first.

Saab has a very sporty-looking set of wagons in the 9-5 line. Volvo of course is the de facto sport wagon standard bearer. Their V70 R model is racing car-fast (and almost $50,000 when loaded with options). Audi's A4 and A6 (and their super-powered S4) wagons are wonderful cars. And Mercedes has good wagon versions of their C-class and their E-class cars - pricey but solid and upscale. Finally, we also briefly considered the VW Passat and their Jetta wagon.

BMW has two lines of wagons: their 325 and their 5-series. The 5-series comes in two flavors: inline 6-cylinder, which carries the same engine as the 3-series but in a bigger body, and the V-8 road rocket. I test-drove a 2000 540iT, and that V-8 engine is a wonder. You simply *thought* about moving forward and you were in the next county. Amazing acceleration and power and simply superb suspension and handling.

Unfortunately, even pre-owned, a 540iT starts north of $38,000. Out of our price range. (Also, it's worth noting that the 540i has terrible fuel economy. All that power translates to a 15 mpg city rating. That's worse than some SUVs. The car also weighs about 4,000 lbs -- heavy for a car!)

But the 3-series was within our price range, and I like BMWs, having previously owned an older 3-series years ago, so we concentrated evaluating the 325iT. (We ignored the four-wheel drive 325ixT since we live in snow- and ice-free Los Angeles.) The more we looked at the 325 wagon, the faster we crossed other makes off our list, mostly because I deemed the other cars less driver-oriented.

It's worth noting that we also shopped Volvos seriously, since they're the standard bearer in the market for this kind of car. We settled on the smallest wagon they offer, the V40. The V70 is very popular, and with good reason. It's reasonably fast, has nice accoutrements, and can carry a football team inside it. But that's why we steered away from it eventually; we deemed it *too* big for our liking. It's a very long car. However, after a test drive and some more thinking about it, I deemed the front-wheel drive V40 a no-go. The suspension was too squishy and the front-wheel drive is, well, front-wheel drive. (The little turbo-charged 4-cylinder engine in that car, though, is excellent! Amazing spunk for such a small powerplant. They should make their wagon rear-wheel drive and firm up the suspension and they'd have a class winner.)

We have a winner!
So, after much consideration and test driving at various dealers (and Internet and magazine research), we settled on the BMW 325iT. Great driver's car, impeccable ergonomics, decent interior room for its class, and nice styling.

We also managed to snare an amazing price on a 2003 certified pre-owned model from a dealer in Glendale, California, near where we live. Only 7,250 miles on the odometer!

What's our car like to drive and use?

The Ultimate Driving Machine? Believe it.
BMW lovers are fanatics. With good reason. These are wonderful driver's cars. The engineers run that company, and it shows in the designs. No front-wheel drive models, terrible cup holders ("you should be driving! not sipping a latte!"), very firm seating. The cars are not punishing like pure sports cars, but they're not plush or cushy. They are designed to be driven, fast and hard.

The 325i sport wagon (BMW refuses to call it a "station wagon") has not been filed down just because it's a wagon, I'm pleased to report. We've owned it for two weeks now and it drives exactly like the 325i sedan. The only difference is when you look in the rearview mirror and see that you've got that cargo area behind you.

I've read that BMW sells more manual transmission cars than most auto makers, and I believe it. Owners of these cars love to drive, and with the arguable exception of some of the new "clutchless" sequential shifting systems, a stick shift gives the most control and driver involvement.

However, my wife doesn't want to drive stick, and, realistically speaking, we drive around a lot in Los Angeles traffic. I.e., we stop, go for four inches, stop, and go for another four inches, rinse repeat. So we [happily] opted for the 5-speed automatic transmission with Steptronic.

Those who are familiar with this transmission set up know that it's about as perfect as an auto tranny can get nowadays. Pull the wood-knobbed and leather-booted lever into "D" and just drive. The transmission is what BMW calls "Adaptive Transmission Control", which means computers sense your throttle input, braking, etc. and shift according to how you're driving (aggressively or in stop-and-go gridlock or casual boulevard cruising, etc.). I find it works quite well -- smooth and precise, no jerking or poorly timed upshifts.

If you want automatic but want to drive a bit more aggressively, we can slap the lever toward our right leg and it goes into Sport mode. Essentially, in this mode, the gears hold closer to redline before upshifting, downshifts more aggressively, and won't go into 5th gear at all. Toggling back and forth between full automatic and sport mode is simple and quick and works very well.

To choose your own gears, while in sport mode, you nudge the lever forward to downshift one gear and backward to upshift one gear. You can sequentially shift through the gears this way, and while the engine won't let you redline and damage itself, it also won't upshift for you. I find this shifting mode (called "Steptronic" by BMW) useful once in awhile, fun sometimes, but in no way a substitute for a true manual transmission.

Still, if you want an auto most of the time, this is the one to get.

Our car's steering feel is magically precise without overboosting or too much effort required. I'd read a couple of years ago that the current generation 3-series was first calibrated with too much power steering, that that magical and much-vaunted BMW feel had been lost. I've also read that the 2003 and 2004 models returned the steering feel that had been lost. I can say unequivocally that I love steering this car. The balance between input, road feedback, and ratios is perfect.

The suspension on these wagons is actually stiffer than on the sedan, to compensate for the longer wheelbase and heavier curb weight. The car also sits slightly lower than the sedan. And the front/rear weight distribution isn't 50/50 as in the sedan; it's biased slightly toward the rear. This is actually good because you gain added traction to the drive wheels, especially when powering out of corners and turns. Given the body styling (sheet metal), the lowered ride height and long roof line combine to give the car a sleek, hunkered-down look that's also a bit muscular. Aesthetics are subjective, but I think our sport wagon looks better than the 325i sedan!

Our car came equipped with BMW's "Premium Package" but not the "Sport Package". The Premium package adds a bunch of luxury and convenience features, all of which we actually love (more below). I test-drove a pre-owned model equipped with the Sport Package, and I can say it was different alright. Stiff and low, very taut. However, for a vehicle that's going to carry my wife, our parents occasionally, and our baby, I felt the Sport optioning made the wagon *too* stiff. It was sports car-stiff, like my friend's Porsche Boxster. Given that the "regular" 325 wagon is already stiffened up from the sedan, I'd say you can forgo the Sport Package. Unless you don't care that much about ride comfort and really want to drive it like a two-door sports coupe most of the time.

Now, on to the goodies that come with the Premium Package...

The interior is very nice but it's not Lexus-plush or Audi-slick. It's a bit business-like, albeit a Fortune 100 business, and the executive suite at that. But I couldn't accurately describe it as a warm, inviting comfy place. But I like that. It's for driving, and everything is designed around that and what you need and do when you're driving. Some nicer touches are the real Myrtle wood trim on our model and how the interior lights fade up and fade off rather than just clicking on and off. There's also good interior lighting in the cargo area and on the inside of the rear door (good for when you've got the back opened up at night and are trying to un/load gear).

The seats are firm and comfortable, their leather of high quality (but not baby-butt soft). Both front seats are power-adjustable in our model (8-way) and the driver's seat has three memory settings, which are automatically set by the two keyfobs. Set the seat -- and the mirrors and the climate control -- to how you like them and hit one of the memory switches. Then lock the car with one of the keyfobs. The next time that keyfob is used to unlock the car, the seat and mirrors and climate control automatically set themselves to that setting. Handy for us since my wife and I have vastly different body types, so she uses one keyfob and I use the other.

The Premium Package also gets you the Harmon-Kardon 10-speaker stereo, and I love it. I've read in many places that the standard, non-premium stereo in the 3-series are terrible. The CD player is single disc, but it's pre-wired for a changer that installs in the cargo area. The sound quality of the system is excellent, with particularly good spatializing. It's not quite audiophile level but it's close. You can change the volume and select radio presets or change CD tracks using steering wheel-mounted controls, too. And the volume goes up and down according to internal noise level (this feature, which works well, can be defeated manually - heck, you can even set by how much you want the auto-leveling function to go up and down by).

All this is great so far, but if you're a driving aficionado (or a BMW fanatic), you want to know what the powerplant is like. Rest assured, this is why I persuaded my wife to seriously consider this car as we shopped around...

The 2.5-liter inline-6 is a marvel. It's silky yet energetic, refined yet robust. I could use a bit more low-end torque, but get it above 2,200 RPM and you're singing just fine. Plus, there's more and more power as the tach swings upward all the way to its redline. You slap the gear shifter into Sport and hold your gears and you can wind this baby up and up and it just keeps giving you more and more power.

It's a great engine, and it gets 28 mpg on the highway, to boot.

I recently carried three adults plus five large suitcases in the car over the course of about 25 miles of freeway and surface streets, and the car drove *exactly* the same way it does when it's just me inside it. No lagging, no huffing, no swaying, no groaning. *That's* a great engine and chassis.

The owner's manual, which comes in a beautiful leather attache that fits snugly into the glove box, has an entire separate "Technology" booklet. Sort of a series of mini-white papers on the various technological wonders of the car. This is going to sound silly, but that booklet, and knowing you own the car that that booklet is describing, is worth like five grand of your purchase price right there! :-)

I won't cut-and-paste from the booklet or attempt to summarize its content, but to suffice to say that there's plenty of fairly in-depth explanation of how the "Valvetronic" system works (throttle-by-wire effect) and how the "VANOS" system optimizes power throughout the band and at any speed. The bottom line is that it all works: the engine is beautiful.

Back to the body...

The cargo area isn't the most plentiful around. It's slightly smaller than the Volvo V40's but larger than the Lexus IS300 SportCross, which we looked at for 10 minutes and then crossed off our list. It's big enough for our needs, but if you've got a larger family, I'd suggest you seriously judge whether there's enough carrying capacity for you.

(I have to confess, though, that I do love what it says on BMW's web site. On the home page for the 325iT, it says in large letters: "If it doesn't fit, you don't need it." That's sort of our philosophy, but to each their own...)

Worth noting is that BMW's designers took advantage of the 3-series wagon's longer wheelbase and lack of a traditional trunk in a very smart way. The rear seat bench of the wagon is placed farther back than in the sedan, coupe, or convertible. The result is that the wagon's rear seats have the most room of all of the 3-series variants.

You'll be impressed by how comfortably adults can sit back there, and we love how easily our rear-facing child seat settles in [in the center of the bench]. And, yes, the rear seats are LATCH-equipped. There's a tradeoff in cargo space because of this farther-back rear bench placement, but I'd take more legroom over a few more inches of cargo capacity any day. I carry people more often than I carry 42-inch television sets. (By contrast, the Volvo V40's rear seats had minimal legroom but a large-ish cargo area. Wrong design decision.)

Other niftiness
Our model was pretty loaded because of the Premium Package, so we're enjoying the various options and features. Some other ones worth noting:

- Rain-sensing windshield wipers. There's an infrared sensor built into the back of the rearview mirror base that measures the transparency of the windshield. It works pretty darn well.

- Auto headlights. I hate these things in most domestic vehicles [that I drive when I rent on business trips]. I can turn on and off the headlights myself. But this auto feature is fail-proof and is a good safety asset. You can choose to do the headlights totally manually of course.

- Bi-xenon auto-leveling headlights. Very trick and way cool. Get this option if you can. Many xenon lights are high beam only, but these are xenon in both modes. The light is super-bright and man does it illuminate the road ahead! The auto-leveling function is cool: Sensors monitor the pitch of the car's nose, the car's overall ride height, and the braking action going on and translate all that to little electric motors that swivel the headlights up and down to compensate for dive or lift. So the lights are always shining the same distance on the road ahead no matter what the car is doing. Told ya it was trick.

- Simple-to-operate trip computer that calculates average mpg, average speed, outside temp, clock, and driving range (how far you can go on the remaining gasoline).

- The glass hatch of the rear gate can be opened separately from the entire door. This is convenient for loading smaller items into the back such as groceries.

- The car comes with a tool kit, a warning triangle, and a rechargable flashlight that plugs into a slot inside the glove box.

- There's a multi-position retractable cover, like a horizontal window shade, that you can pull to cover the contents of the cargo area. It also hase a vertical net-like shade that you can pull upward and attach to the ceiling to prevent a dog or stuff from getting into the backseat. And when you fold down both rear seats to make the cargo area huge, this same cover device can be repositioned to then pull up a safety net that will block anything from unwantedly flying from the cargo area into the front seats. It sounds ungainly but when you do the Transformers routine with this piece, you go "Ah, that's cool!"

Also worth mentioning:
- The steering wheel tilts and telescopes manually.
- Roof rails come standard and attached but you need to purchase cross bars to actually make the rails useful for anything.
- The cargo area is fully carpeted, plus you can lift the floor up and there's even more space.
- Standard wheels are a very good-looking 205/45-tired set of alloys. The sport package option gives you even lower-profiled tires.
- Our car is equipped with BMW's Dynamic Stability Control as well as traction control. This system of computers and sensors monitors wheel slippage, braking force, and vehicle pitch and yaw, and instantaneously applies the brakes to individual wheels or cuts power from the engine to prevent skids. It's only cut in once (you know because a warning lamp on the dash illuminates to tell you the system is doing its thing) and I didn't notice it -- except that I was accelerating onto a slight uphill that was wet and the car didn't slide out. You can manually defeat the system with a center stack-mounted button, but we always keep it turned on.

Highly recommend, if.
We are loving our car and believe we made the right choice. Our baby seat fits fine in the center of the rear seat and our baby gear (stroller, etc.) fits easily into the cargo area. And we can still pack four adults into the car, and with that engine, it drives as if it were empty.

I enjoy the sporty, taut handling and the communicative steering feel. (Reviews of BMWs always say the same things -- "taut steering", "communicative road feel", "solid construction" -- and there's a reason. All BMWs feel this way.) I don't feel like I'm driving a baby-mobile; I feel like I'm driving a refined sports car.

I'd highly recommend this car to anyone who loves to drive and needs some carrying capacity.

What I'd strongly caution the prospective buyer about, however, is the price. We got a fantastic deal on a slightly used model. It was certified pre-owned, so the new-car 4-year full maintenance program still applies, and there's an extended 6-year warranty to boot. Our car only had 7,250 miles on it and you cannot tell it's not new. At the price we got it at, frankly, it was a steal.

If you cannot get a good deal, even though I love this car, I'd call it over-priced. The sticker price for our car when it was brand new was $38,055. That's a lot of money for a smaller-sized wagon. Put it this way: We wouldn't have bought this car at that price.

But at the price we did get it at, we're grinning like Cheshires whenever we drive it.

Update
My wife and I recently drove our car on a round-trip mini-vacation from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay area. We took along our infant son.

The car was wonderful on the straight, long stretches of Interstate 5, and the engine performed strongly during the two mountain-pass sections out of LA and into the East bay (those readers familiar with the I-5 drive know what sections I'm talking about).

It was easy to get up to 90 mph, the interior was that quiet and the handling that stable. The cruise control works very well. And passing at high speeds was always a secure feeling.

We averaged about 28 mpg during the interstate portions of the journey.

A great car.