user: BMW Broadens Its Horizons With New 4-Series
Jan. 24, 2014 6:44 p.m. ET

THERE IS JUST NO gainsaying BMW BMW.XE -1.65% Bayerische Motoren Werke AG Germany: Xetra €80.62 -1.35 -1.65% Jan. 27, 2014 5:02 pm Volume : 1.70M P/E Ratio 10.13 Market Cap €52.68 Billion Dividend Yield 3.10% Rev. per Employee €721,448 01/24/14 BMW Broadens Its Horizons With... 01/23/14 Year of the Horse: Gift Guide 01/23/14 The U.S. Bobsled Team's German... More quote details and news » BMW.XE in Your Value Your Change Short position product planning. Remorseless, incremental, dead-eyed. Oh, you have market share? I'll have some of that. BMW would be a fantastic bridge partner.

Having secured dominance in the premium compact sport-sedan segment—the 3 series is perennially the best-selling car in its class world-wide—BMW is heading down-market, with guns blazing. Example: Last week in Detroit, BMW introduced the 2-series, the new entry premium coupe starting at $33,025, which replaces the 1-series coupe.

Doing so leaves the No. 1 slot temporarily vacated in the U.S. market, but the Bavarians are in full territorial-acquisition mode. In the next few years the company will likely roll out a number of B-segment sedans, coupes, convertibles, wagons and crossovers based on common front-drive architecture shared with the Mini (BMW owns the Mini brand). This brace of globalized baby BMW's will countermove Mercedes-Benz's and Audi's own alphanumeric proliferation (Mercedes CLA, GLA and B-class; Audi A's and Q's). The German luxury brands are warring over the $30,000 price point like something out of Tacitus.

If only there were another car company, a people's car company, that had a history of over-delivering German excellence at a price in the U.S. VW, alas, has chosen to irradiate its entire fleet with deadly Hertz rays.

“ A car like our test car, the BMW 435i, is sort of beyond critique. ”

Can I be practical for a minute? What happens to the upsold Hondas and Toyotas of the world when the German luxury brands start selling kick-ass cars in the U.S. market for $35,000? In other words, all-in, competitive on price? All the German luxury starter kits I've driven lately have been really tempting propositions. They are expertly made, well provisioned in the cabin, drum-tight and fun to drive. Yeah, OK, they aren't rear-wheel drive but unless you are Walter Röhrl you are never really going to exploit the difference. And you can certainly order them with all-wheel drive.

In any event, BMW has rather comically run out of numbers, and thus the reordering in model nomenclature. And that's why the car for the week, the 2014 BMW 435i, was formerly known as the 335i Coupe.

Henceforth, two-door and four-door coupes (i.e., with a coupe-like silhouette) and convertibles will carry badges beginning with even numbers—like the 2-series and 6-series—and four- and five-door sedans/wagons are odd-numbered, e.g., 1-, 3-, 5-series.

Oh, but you have only just fallen down the showroom rabbit hole. Would you like xDrive (all-wheel drive) or no? Would you like the new "M Performance" variant, which is a tarted-up, lightly breathed-upon tuner version short of the full-blown M cars? BMW has some gender-bending body styles, too, including Gran Coupe and Gran Turismo.

The hyper-locality of BMW model names has been ridiculous for some time.

Here is a quick sketch of the 4: The 4-series is a two-door based on the sixth-generation 3-series that made its debut in 2012. The 4 coupe is a tick longer than the outgoing 3 coupe, over a wheelbase stretched 2.1 inches, with wider front and rear track. Apropos the coupe silhouette, the 4-series's sweeping roofline is 2 inches lower than the current sedan, and the two-door's bodywork is more heavily draped over its sport-calibrated suspension (twin-pivot strut front, and five-link rear), with closer wheel well clearances and lower ride height.

So it is fair to say the biggest difference between the way the 3- and 4-series present themselves comes down to stance, with the coupe flying closer to Earth. The 4-series has the lowest center of gravity of any BMW in production (I'm assuming that doesn't include the i3 electric car).

Engine choices in the U.S. are two: the 428i's turbo 2.0-liter four (240 hp), with an MSRP of $41,425; or the 435i's turbo 3.0-liter in-line six (300 hp), starting at $46,925. An eight-speed automatic transmission is standard but the increasingly rare and anachronistic six-speed manual remains on the menu. All-wheel drive is a $2,000 option with either engine. From there, the universe of trim, color, equipment packages and performance mods (hotter software, shinier exhaust stingers, bigger wheels, bluer brake calipers) takes on the intricacies of a Buddhist mandala.

A car like our test car, the 435i, is sort of beyond critique. First off, it is for grown-ups. Suave, quietly powerful, a masculine car held in gentlemanly reserve. A sleeper. Frankly speaking, I'm not an enthusiast of some of the surface detailing on this car. The lateral light lines running below the window canopy and above the rocker panel—for dynamism, as the Germans would patiently explain—don't really pay off. And the 4-series looks nose-heavy. The boomerang-shaped air vents behind the front wheels should be bigger. OK, so not entirely beyond critique.

But again, BMW makes it easy to dial up, in very fine increments, just how obvious you want to be. Our car ($57,225) was fitted with the new "M Sport" bin of parts, including: 19-inch forged aluminum sport wheels; adaptive M suspension; sport seats; blue brake calipers; and a deep-breathing lower grille and front bumper with openings that could Hoover up a raccoon. In "Estoril" blue, our car glowered, cat-eyed and not amused, with the optional LED headlight assemblies (Lighting Package, $1,900), integrated into the twin-kidney grille.

The interior is all good, too, another example of BMW's evolutionary excellence in cabin design, with unstintingly fine materials, great switchgear, close tolerances and thoughtful human factors. BMW's latest navigation graphics, combined with a better, brighter multicolor heads-up display, really relieve the driver's workload. I do wish BMW and Mercedes-Benz hadn't both chosen to float the cars' LED flat screens above communized center consoles. But the 4's driving environment is faultless, smart and contemporary.

At the heart of this car is BMW's sonorous, serene 3.0-liter twin-turbo in-line 6, without question one of the world's best engines, putting out 300 hp and 300 pound-feet of torque from 2,000 rpm until 5,000, rendering talk of torque curves obsolete if not quaint. Fed through the multiples of an eight-speed automatic transmission, this engine hurls the 435i to 60 mph in 5 seconds with chilly, impossibly lubricated burr that rises through several octaves and smacks lustily against exhaust tract resonators. With four modes of driving dynamics available—ECO PRO, COMFORT and SPORT—the 435i can be very tame and very efficient (23/33, city/highway). But a lupine snarl is only one stab of the gas pedal away.

The chassis dynamics folks turned up the wick on the 4-series, with revised spring rates, roll stiffness, pick-up points and, most particularly, steering feel. Nagged by doubts about the response and sensitivity of its electric-assist steering systems, BMW has retuned its variable-rate e-steering system (Dynamic Handling Package, $1,000) to offer crisper attack just off center and then to vary steering effort and rate depending on the vehicle's telemetrics.

As a hamburger chain once said, have it your way. If nothing in the 4-series line tempts you, perhaps you'll wait for the inevitable convertible version, or the 425-hp M4, which was introduced in Detroit and was instantly deemed the Felon-Maker.

Whatever 4 you want, BMW's has your number.
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assistant: A new group of globalized baby BMW's will countermove Mercedes-Benz's and Audi's own proliferation. And BMW's 4-Series looks strong.