BMW 1 Series Review

The Review

Track Days Hatchbacks BMW 1 Series 1 Series Hatchback 3dr (F21 LCI, facelift 2015) M135i (326 Hp) Steptronic

Good power, nicely balanced, a surprisingly good drifting experience

Summary

Drifting experiences are always a bit of a lottery in terms of what type of car you are going to drive. Japanese? German? American? Tuned? Stock? For this experience, I was driving the BMW 235i on a wet track drifting experience. To start with, the track was a pretty basic and repetitive one. Nonetheless, I thought it would be a great opportunity to see how the 235i handles things! With over 300bhp (321) and an inline 6 cylinder supporting the 3.0 litre engine, my expectations were, surely its gonna be pretty good. I ate my words over and over as I got going. Firstly, I have been much more of a Mercedes guy in the past, so me and BMW were not super familiar with each other. However, getting in and getting started was easy. Everything was pretty comfortable inside and I had a soft and supple steering wheel to hand. On the move, the drive was good. Pulling away, I had a little smile purely related to a better than expected sound coming from the exhausts. Tuning into the drifts over and over, I was impressed. Sure we were not going fast, but the balance, handling, sound and power all put together worked remarkably well. I wanted one!!! :) Rear wheel drive, and a heap of fun. I couldn't really fault this car in any way. Nice cabin, reasonable space inside for a BMW. I wanted to keep going and pushing it around to see what it could do. I spun it a few times (my fault), but again it recovered again and again and was ready to go. I like this car a lot!

Would I recommend it? YES

Even though I just drove this car on the drift experience, I left feeling like I would enjoy driving this car day to day. It never felt like too much... whether talking about power, handling, size, sounds etc. It was just enough, which was absolutely fine for me. As a daily drive, I would definitely recommend giving this (or of course the newer M 140i a real look). Even though 4wd is the way of the world these days and from a practical perspective, this makes sense, I would still highly recommend taking a look at this, even over some of the rivals from Mercedes and Audi. The 6 cylinder sound and rear drive chain, really does make a difference.