BMW 2 Series Active Tourer First Drive and Review by BMW Blog

BMW Blog goes to Austria and reviews the first BMW with front-wheel drive, the first BMW-Van and the first BMW with a three-cylinder engine as the sole powertrain under the hood: the new BMW 2 Series Active Tourer. Here is an excerpt of their review:

THE POWER AND DRIVING EXPERIENCE

BMW had two four cylinder engines available during the international media drive in Austria where we were among the first to drive the Active Tourer; the 2-liter diesel with 150 hp under the boot of the 218d and the 225i carrying a more promising 231 hp 2 liter unit. Both state of the art direct injection, high pressure or common rail, variable distribution, close to 500 c.c. per cylinder displacement, stop/start system… you name it…

The 218d showed might and willingness to respond just above 1500 rpm, setting up an overall relaxed driving context as it will be the case in most situations, preferably in Eco or Comfort modes from the Driving Experience (which only acts on throttle and steering response if you have a manual stick to shift as it was the case… but in fact it takes the optional automatic transmission to clearly feel the car´s mood really changing). If it is a more bipolar personality you want than it is better to tick the adaptive damping from the options menu which will allow you to impact more dramatically on the Active Tourer, making it more stable during cornering and also generating an overall more engaging driving experience. Or course switching to Sport mode will also make you feel more directly the road surface and most irregularities on the asphalt will be passed on to your body in a more sensible manner.

The 218d we drove was equipped beefed up tires (225/45 R18) surely wider and lower than the ones featured as standard (205/60 R16) and that undoubtedly played a role in the quite positive assessment of the handling attributes of the Active Tourer as we returned from this first drive experience around the Tyrolean mountains in Austria. The standard tire equipment will clearly allow for more body roll and that will presumably make the car feel slightly less compliant to what the BMW genes are so this is an option we would highly recommend.

The other possibility is to go for the M Sport that brings the car 10 mm closer to the ground, making driving also more engaging as it was the case in the 225i petrol engine we also had a chance to sample in the twisty but rather crowded Austrian mountain roads. Again this top of the range petrol unit corroborated the idea that the chassis development team was quite successful in the tricky mission of mitigating understeer as it is quite normal in a front wheel driven car and even to give it a bit of rear wheel driven character despite the less favorable weight distribution figures (60%-40% in the 218d and 58%-42% in the 225i quite different from the close to 50-50 partition German engineers are so keen to have) Klaus Huber, head of the chassis development, told us a very thorough job has been done with the very complex dampers to that the car would feel stable while allowing it to “step” on the road in a refined rather than merely stiff way: “The Mini is a kart, but here we wanted a refined ride, even if with a sporty feel to it.”

It is only natural that the 225i delivers a much more impressive performance envelop, as shown by the acceleration figures (240 km/h and 6,6 seconds from notch to 100 km/h). Mid-range torque is generous and allows you to easily regain pace in any gear you are using not only due to the twin scroll turbo merits but also thanks to the excellent 8 speed automatic transmission which is matched to this engine as standard. The steering wheel mounted shift paddles are the ginger on top of this tasty cake. The only exception to the overall convincing performance is the engine´s initial response, which feels more “laggy” than the 1250 fully available 350 Nm torque as stated in the tech sheet suggests.

The 218d responds in a more satisfying way from just above idle to the 2000 rpm engine speed. The new 6 speed manual gearbox deserves a clear “thumb´s up” for being fast and silent to shift back and forth and the gear ratios were put in place to make the best possible use of torque between 1600 and 4000 rpm, ending with a taller 6th gear for emissions/consumption purposes, since notwithstanding the use of aluminum in the bonnet and some chassis elements, the Active Tourer is not exactly a light car.