TxMike said:
inTgr8r said:
I absolutely loved the look of the new one at first glance....
the infatuation is wearing off though.
Same here. Some of the look is starting to seem a bit odd to me. The front grill does look awfully big, especially in the silver color, although darkening it does help some. And the rear has some oddness around the bottom, like the design was not quite thought out all the way. Also, I'm not wild about the look of the roof when it's up...just seems too round, too much "SLK". :|
But there are still some gorgeous lines on the car. I do like the smoothed out "non-slashed" sides. The way the big "bangle-slash" with the big side roundels was done, was always a weak point of the old design in my eyes. I would have been quite happy if they'd just dropped that element, and left the rest the same.
Very similiar in thoughts; from the first look, I thought there were many small improvements and only a few minor things wrong. This is the same way I thought about the Z4 when it first came out; it's not a Z3, but there are both good and not so good points about it.
Anything I can say about the new design would be mostly positive; I was never high on the Bangle slash either and the new model has removed that. Both the front end and the rear are neither better nor worse than the 2003 Z4 I have. I like the center brake light mounted in the trunk, but like my tail lights better. Not sure why the new front end air intakes on either side do not match the car color; looks odd. They could certainly do away with the S Drive badge; it just takes away from the looks for no reason. Keeping with the classical roadster look, long bonnet and seat close to the back tires is definitely good.
From the inside viewpoint, I have to wonder why they have a handle to close the door, very similiar to the existing one, on the passenger side, but none on the drivers side; again, it looks odd. The I drive dial and buttons on the center concole are always negatively amusing and, from loaners, a pain to use. Wonder what the console looks like on a manual.
One aspect I thought they could improve upon was interior storage and take a lesson from Porsche; have some nice door pockets and center storage besides the center rear, which I don't know if that is still on the new model.
The new hard top looks very SLK or Lexus SC ish; good for a hard drop top, but not as good as the soft top. Still, if it doesn't take up too much room in the trunk, I could get along with it, but the current trunk size is just a bit small for getting two nice suit cases in, yet the Boxter fits them fine.
If the bottom line Z4 has taken a jump to about $45k, that is a serious jump; my 2003 3.0 was like $42k base while the 2.5 was like $34k. A $13k jump is more like an entirely different vehicle line and, unfortunately, maybe getting out of the price range that I wish to be in. If it takes $60k to get the non M Z4 with a few features, they have exceeded the range I was looking for.