Short Take Road Test
It used to be easy to write about the BMW 3-series. For the most part, we knew what we were gonna say before we ever got in the car. On the other hand, there were nuances about the character of the car that were extremely hard to put into words to convey just how good these cars feel. But we'd try, and it usually came out in the form of unbridled praise for perfect steering, elegant interior simplicity, and a brilliant ride-and-handling balance.
Maybe BMW got bored of hearing the same thing over and over again, because suddenly we had to come up with new words to describe the 3: controversially styled, technologically overwrought, and now this: quicker with the automatic.
Fantastic as an Automatic
Yes, the 335i's ZF-sourced six-speed automatic is among the world's very best transmissions, and we can't heap enough praise on it. Responsive and quick to act, it is the perfect autobox for this kind of car. In normal automatic mode, shifts are virtually invisible, but the character changes dramatically when prompted. Deputy editor Dave VanderWerp says, "Full-throttle downshifts are quite severe, but to me, that's fine when I'm pushing the pedal all the way to the floor. The automatic generally does a single multigear kickdown instead of stopping off at other ratios along the way." We also noted snappy rev-matching throttle blips when downshifting using the manumatic function (or paddles), and in the sport-shift mode, it eagerly takes the liberty of automatically downshifting during braking to set you higher in the meat of the power band whenever your right foot returns to the other pedal.
