1995 BMW 318ti: The Shortest Path to a New BMW

From the February 1995 issue of Car and Driver.

Question: What do a practical hatch­back and a discotheque have in common? Answer: Most Ameri­cans won’t go near them.

Now, this riddle would not apply in Europe, where neither disco nor hatch­back became dirty words. Nor does it apply to stateside hipsters, who were never afraid to be seen pulsating to Patrick Hernandez or KC and the Sunshine Band, or driving a CRX, Golf, or GTV6. For those on the A-list, in fact, the hatchback seems to be enjoying a bit of a resurgence, with the recent success of the trendy Saab 900 and Acura Integra. Soon, even swanky heavyweight BMW will be joining the hatchback huddle with one of its own: the 318ti.

If you’re falling off your Recaro over the news of a BMW hatchback, perhaps you suffer from long-term memory loss or you haven’t been to Europe, where more than 50,000 BMW 316i Compacts—Europe’s version of this car—are already on the roads.

The Compact was introduced only last spring. Its success is due in large part to its price—which is about $2500 less than the next-cheapest Euro BMW, the 316i sedan. When the 318ti arrives here next spring, its base price should be $20,370, undercutting our previous bot­tom-feeder BMW, the 318i sedan, by a whopping $5070. This will be the first time a BMW has been available for 20 big ones since 1985.

Its price is low, but there’s flesh on these bones. BMW’s 1.8-liter DOHC four­-cylinder and a five-speed are standard, as are dual airbags, anti-lock-equipped disc brakes, air conditioning, and power steering, mirrors, windows, and locks. For another $2400, BMW will offer either of two upgrade packages—the semi­-loaded “Active” (BMW says that it couldn’t come up with a better name), or the athletically inclined “Sports.” The Active package includes cruise control, larger alloy wheels and tires, remote key­less entry, leather seats and door inserts, a trip computer, and a power sunroof. The Sports package includes firmer shocks and springs (which lower ride height by 0.4 inch), the Active’s wheels and tires, fog lights, and leather that covers more aggres­sively bolstered sports seats. Other options can be added individually, such as an auto­matic transmission and a CD player.

The initial investment in this car wasn’t cheap either. The new rear sheetmetal, which lops 8.8 inches off the length of the coupe, necessitated a new, more compact rear suspension based on previous 3-series’ semi-trailing arms. Instead of shar­ing the notchback coupe’s doors, with their frameless window design, BMW designed yet another set of doors for the hatch­back, with framed win­dows, mated to the four­-door’s front fenders. Inside, there’s a new dashboard that will appeal to a younger crowd, says BMW. The rear seat that cor­dons off the 11-cubic-foot trunk is split 50-50 and folds forward (but not flat) to increase cargo space.

Changes like these don’t come cheaply. Vic Doolan, president of BMW North America, figured this version of the car cost the company in the neighborhood of $500 million.

Car companies don’t employ magi­cians. To keep the sticker down, BMW pruned costs in other areas. The simpler rear suspension saves BMW a few deutsche marks, as does the glovebox, which is no longer lined with mouse fur. Its little self-charging flashlight has disappeared, too. The air conditioning now has manual controls, without separate settings for driver and passenger. The headlight and wiper switches on the dash­board are pull-type units, instead of the rotary and steering-column-mounted switches from the rest of the line. And, for the first time in a BMW, there’s a compact spare instead of a full-sized spare tire, which is removed from under the trunk.

Doolan insists that, despite this scrimp­ing, a 318ti is still true to the “driving machine” profile that BMW ads often boast. Based on a drive through the Bavar­ian countryside in a 318ti Active, it’s clear that BMW met most of those goals.

From the moment you size up its mirror-smooth paint, you can see that BMW hasn’t lowered its quality standards for its little base car. Open the door and there’s the familiar BMW business-like interior. The other 3-series cars would be lucky to share the new dash, which looks lighter and seems to reduce the console “wall” that separates the driver and passenger in the other 3-series cars. (It will remain exclusive to the hatchback.) Aside from two new cupholders in the console, nearly everything else—from the seats and their controls to the carpeting, from the door panels to the shifter and pedals—is car­ried over from the 3-series.

The 3-series car with three doors drives just like the other 3-series cars, too. The engine-speed-sensitive power steering maintains the sensitivity and progres­sion of the more expensive models. At the rear, the 318ti’s new lightweight suspension (it saves about 18 pounds) is eager to oversteer, although with a bit more nervousness than the sedan and coupe. The hatchback is about 130 pounds lighter than the sedan and coupe, and it offers the same excellent ride/handling compromise of its pricier relatives.

Those sloughed-off pounds mean the 318ti responds more eagerly to the brakes and throttle than the coupe and sedan. Despite having slightly smaller rear discs than the 318is coupe we tested in August 1992, the hatchback can stop three feet shorter from 70 mph, at 175 feet. (We were unable to test for cornering grip, but it should be at least as good as the 0.84 g of the coupe.) Sprints to 60 miles per hour take 7.8 seconds, nearly a second quicker than the 318is.

That sounds faster than it feels. BMW’s 1.8-liter four as installed in the 318ti is even-tempered from idle to its 6300-rpm redline, and it looks substantial in the neatly tailored engine bay. But it must be flogged before the torque (129 pound-feet at 4500 rpm) becomes noticeable, and it offers far less excitement than the simi­larly sized four-cylinder in the similarly priced Acura Integra GS-R. That engine, with its wild lunges to its 8200-rpm redline, makes the 318ti’s four-cylinder seem merely adequate by sporty-car standards. If that’s a problem, a fix is not on the way. Doolan says the company has no plans to fit either of the two muscular inline sixes that it offers in the 3-series.

In many ways, though, the 318ti makes sense just the way it is. Its price allows BMW a foot in the door of a market chock­full of nameplates like Integra, Golf, Probe, and Celica—a market good for at least two million sales a year, by BMW’s estimate. Furthermore, BMW already offers no fewer than seven iterations of the 3-series. If your motive is speed, and you can’t find satisfaction in the 3-series, you’d best switch brands, or clear the fog from your forehead.

The 318ti has another purpose: increasing the company’s bottom line. BMW’s assembly plant in Munich can easily turn out an additional 6000 or 7000 cars for American buyers. For those who question the notion of a high-volume BMW, Doolan has a quick reply. He says the income from this little BMW makes possible less-profitable performance cars like the recently introduced 540i six­-speed. We’ve driven that sweetheart. Enough said.

Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com