Fred's surprise Munich Trip... guess what...

[fredgroves]

**OFF TOPIC WARNING** (well it comes back on topic later if you get that far)

Well this was an interesting day. My visit to HQ today saw me bump into the Fleet Manager. He was ranting about a sales guy who had got a new car the other week and was fired shortly afterwards.

A BMW 128TI....

So with a little arm twisting, he lent it to me for my day's work today. Dog with two tails? Not much!

Strap in kids, here we go! Please read this as my own thoughts, your opinion might be different. I'm a (normally) road based worker, I drive a lot, I've driven lots of really boring cars and not many hardcore ones.

I've done about 150 miles in each of my Mk7.5 GTD and the BMW 128TI today. Good chance for a little review I think!

This was a car with 18's, Tech pack and HK audio.

Weather was somewhere between appalling and biblical unfortunately.

Outside:

Looks pretty good, definitely BMW and not VW. Can't see any angles I don't like. 18's look a bit tiny in the wheel arches but the wheels are pretty neutral - not bad but not great. This one has PS4's on it. Really like the illuminated door handles, neat BMW logo projected onto the floor from the drivers door mirror (but not the passenger door). Dynamic front grill is interesting, with it opening and closing depending on the cooling requirements of the engine (very trick!). Twin black coloured exhausts look good. Lights are LED's all round but no dynamic indicators. Red accents are nice and TI decals look good. Doors shut solidly - front and rear. Boot lid is a bit tinny though. Nice big rear spoiler. Looks purposeful.

Inside:

Feels very premium compared to the Mk8. Nice coloured lighting strips in the doors front and rear. Rear has white footwell lighting. Plastics nice quality, red TI themed stitching all over the place. M sport stripes on the seatbelts.

Driving:

First thing you notice, its very quiet inside. Very quiet. Even without the fake sound turned off. Little road noise, little real engine noise. Even the crappy rain conditions, the spray didn't seem to drum on the wheel arches.

Handling is very good, its really nippy with zero understeer. Lovely and flat round corners. Weather was appalling today so didn't really cane it but I could tell it would be a lot of fun in the dry. The 128TI only has passive dampers, no option for dynamic ones. The ride is hard, I guess thats why its flat handling. Steering feels a little disconnected but what doesn't these days.

Gearbox is less than perfect in plain drive mode. In stop start traffic it feels very mechanical, grabby and a bit lurchy. At a steady 70mph the thing keeps changing gear, its not terrible but once you've noticed it, it annoys. In sport mode its a bit better, it doesn't seem to hold it at the red line for a lifetime upshifts are more brutal but not neck breaking.

When you put it into sport mode the traction control comes off. If you want it back on, you need to come out of sport mode. That's weird. I managed some wheel spin a few times.

Quick? Probably, if you want to know about quick watch the inevitable drag race videos on youtube. All I will say is its as you would expect.

Exhaust Noise? Not really. When you start it up there is a nice little crackle. That crackle is never seen again, just sounds like any other car after that. I even tried playing in an underground carpark with the windows wound down. Nothing doing.

HK audio is weird. Its both good and bad at the same time. It either has a surround option that seems to throw bits of the audio around the car, a lot of it to the rear or if you turn that off it sounds pretty flat. The surround thing makes all of my music sound very different to how I've ever heard it before. It has a equaliser but the equaliser has no presets, only sliders to play with. Bass isn't earth shattering. By the time you get to about 75% volume the sound seems to fall apart. Sure 75% is too loud, but Dynaudio in a Mk7 is much better. The other funny is that satnav annoucements seem to come from somewhere in the middle of the dash in a tinny sort of way. Odd.

BMW Connected Music (subscription service that you get a year or more for free) is quite good. Lots of choice there.

Wireless android auto was interesting. Worked quite well, except on multiple occassions the audio playback totally fell apart. Just started making weird stuttering noises and I had to turn it off. The wireless charging doesn't keep up with the demands of wireless android auto. If you don't use the charging your phone will be flat in not much time.

The Icon Led Headlights (like Matrix IQ) are nothing short of brilliant. Absolutely incredible.

HUD is superb. Even Waze integrates with it. Barely looked at the dash itself. Maybe was a little too bright at night, I didn't have time to try turning it down, but then maybe its not bright enough for daytime. Possibly needs a day/night mode.

The Idrive interface I found a bit too text heavy and tricky. The main display was cluttered. Sat nav display isn't very clear at all. I expected more. Not sure if this car had the biggest screen you can get. If you could get a bigger one I'd suggest you do.

Hello BMW! That works really well, all sorts of things you can control with it. It understood what I said pretty much every time even with my accent and using it for navigation or choosing media or radio stations or well, anything, was flawless, speedy and didn't need button pushing at all. Shame her voice seems to come from the same weird tinny speaker as the sat nav.

Reversing assistant - what a hoot! It remembers your last maybe 50m of forward travel, then when you press the button it will drive you backwards up the same way you came in. You do the throttle it steers. Really good. I was nervous but it is dead accurate. BTW the rear view camera gets fouled by bad weather really easily. No idea where it is physically located but most of today its been a blurry mess.

Windscreen wipers on auto seem to have a mind of their own. Annoying.

Had numerous error messages about the forward camera being unavailable. More than just it seemingly giving up, it throws up an annoying message on the central display that you have to click on to make go away. Did it about 5 times today. Could be muck on it, but don't think so. Think it was just seeing scenes it couldn't understand and disabled itself for saftey reasons. Unreliable.

Seats - terrible. Sorry BMW these suck. You sit on them, not in them. Loads of adjustments, it makes no difference. Anyone that wants to sit on the floor, you certainly can. They have adjustable thigh support.

Fuel economy for me mainly taking it easy and with a lot of motorway and A roads I managed an average of 30 MPG. Not great.

Handing it back to the Fleet Manager, I had a few glances back and off to the Mk7.5 GTD...

Less premium inside.

AID is much clearer, much better than the BMW. MIB unit is better, but I have navpro.

Car is much noisier on the road but its not as bad as I thought it might be. Can hear road noise and of course the oil burner itself.

Handling definitely not as flat, a little bit of body roll. I'm on 18's with no DCC. However its also a much smoother ride. Much smoother. Still pretty nimble.

Seats.... oh the luxury! I worked out its because you sit in them, the side bolsters on the squab are deeper and extend further forward, it actually grips you (even though the BMW has adjustable width on the vertical bolsters for shoulder width)

Mk7.5 LED headlights seem like they are candle powered after the BMW trick ones.

I'm missing the HUD. Really missing the HUD.

Stereo (non-dynaudio) seems very front heavy sound, but I get stereo sound which sounds like stereo sound. I don't think surround is much use other than movies.

The Mk7.5 of course has ACC. I missed ACC today.

Manual seems a bit clunky after an auto box for most of the day. But its ok.

Have to say on the on ramp to the motorway the GTD's massive torque didn't seem to be much slower than the more BHP equipped BMW. Interesting.

So the big question.... vs the Mk8 GTI drove the other week.

BMW wins on build and interior quality, external looks and that amazing reversing assistant that I have probably used the one and only time I ever would use it.

Golf wins on gearbox, ride comfort, seats are even better than the Mk7.5, steering feel, instrumentation and seat comfort. It wasn't dark when i drove the Mk8, but expect the lights to be as good as the BMW. Has front and rear swoopy indicators.

My suggestion - get a Golf Mk8 GTI and add some bits to it if you want some of things I talked about the BMW having over a base Mk8. Definitely add the HUD I think.

I couldn't have the BMW because of the seats. Shame. The least technical part of the car and the most important.

Only thing I worry about with the Mk8 seem to be software problems and having keyless entry (the BMW has remote control entry and keyless start).

Does the Mk8 clubsport ride like the 128TI? No idea, but if it does, I'd not buy one. Well, not without DCC.

I wrote this to brain dump the day and help me try and figure out what to do now. Before you ask, I've no idea right now!

Sorry if it was too long and boring!

Glad that job today took me to HQ though....

[SRGTD]

Great brain dump Fred. For a moment, I thought I was reading one of Exonian’s posts - that’s a compliment Mr Ex as I enjoy your longer posts.

Both the BMW and the mk8 GTI are no doubt very capable driver’s cars and for anyone considering either of these as their next car IMO there isn’t a clear cut winner. There are no doubt areas where the BMW is better than the GTI and vice versa.

For me, it would come down to priorities, and I accept that one person’s priorities will be different to another persons. If I was spending a significant amount of time in a car as you do under normal circumstances, then seat comfort and adjustability would be very near the top of my list of priorities, as would the overall financial cost of ownership. The spec differences between the two cars can be levelled up, but obviously at a cost.

Keyless needn’t be a worry in the GTI as it can be temporarily disabled - I do this as my car had keyless as standard; I wouldn’t have spec’d it as an option as it’s something I could easily live without.

Agree it’s a dilemma, but not a bad dilemma to have.

Good luck in making your decision .

[Daz Auto]

Enjoyed that, thanks.

My wife has not allowed me to drive her 218i M Sport yet.

BMW definitely has the best interior. Though, I know what you mean about the seats.

I'm not sure about test driving the Mk8 as I may want one.  However, I did have several test drives in the original Mk7 and it never appealed.

[Yusee]

interesting read. Doesn't look a dilemma to me. Buy the Golf!

[Splashalot]

Does BMW have the same seats in all 128 versions?

To me it ^ reads like your heart is with the mk8, it will just take your head some time to catch up!  Give VW 6-12 months to sort the software issues, then voila, problem solved. 

[king monkey]

The 128 is definitely on my radar so I found that really interesting Fred. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Interesting what you say about the seats. I always felt the same about my S3: you sat on them, not in them. At the time my brother had his Mk7.5 gtd and I can remember getting it in and it brought back how good my gti seats had been. Suppose we all would expect the bmw to feel more premium but it seems that the driving experience in the Mk8 is the thing that’s consistently being the saving grace.

[ar899]

Thanks for the update Fred. I too find your experience of the seats interesting. One aspect of the Mk 8 that seems to be partly overlooked in the many reviews I have seen is how good the new seats are. I only had a short test drive but found the seats to have a nice feel and were very comfortable. Ride a bit harsh but I assume that can be fixed by DCC. As someone who is interested in a motorway mile muncher, comfort is high on my list.

[Daz Auto]

I had a look this morning - on the 2 series - the camera is part of the boot opening handle and it has no protection. You can actually see it sticking down to one side of the handle. The Golf definitely has a better designed camera integration.

[fredgroves]

Thanks for the interest guys and taking the time to read my rather long post!

In summary, the major flaws for me were the terrible seats and the hard ride. Other things are just niggles that all cars have vs different ones.

I've scrapped the 128TI from my list. Definitely not happening.

I'll try and answer your questions in a sec.

[fredgroves]

SRGTD,

On price, the BMW is cheap. My spec for it was cheaper monthly than pretty much anything I've looked at. Good to know I can kill keyless on the Golf, I would certainly do that.

Daz Auto,

Glad you agree on the seats! I thought it was just me! And you've spotted why the camera was a mess in gopping weather on the motorway. Not a good design really. Cheap some might say...

Yusee,

I did like the Mk8 Golf GTI.... maybe I might have some more options to come yet  though ;-)

Splashalot,

The 128TI has two seat options in the UK. The ones I had yesterday and the same thing in leather. These are the same seats as the 118i, they are the design they use for non-M cars. In Europe you can option the M Sport seats they use in the M135i. Those are much nicer but look odd because they don't have the TI branding on them (neither does leather) which means the interior is all over the place - TI logos and red stitching on everything except the seats. Looks weird, I've seen this in the showroom!

As for heart set on the Golf, it clearly was the starting point because my Mk7 and Mk7.5 have been the best cars I have had ever - I genuinely feel that. Its a tough act to follow, even for VW.

king monkey,

Yes, seats are very important. The minis we have in my house are all terrible for that. I guess the F40 is showing its heritage.

The Mk8 GTI rides well and handles well - it really does. The 128TI rides very hard but because of that, handles very well. Getting that balance right is a tricky job. I think VW are actually the masters of everyday performance and the Mk8 is a step up.

AR99,

A fellow road warrior! Yes, the Mk8 seats are great but on the other hand, I remember you not liking the noise. The 128TI is superbly quiet but the seats are terrible and the ride a LOT harder than a Mk8 GTI on 18's and standard suspension. Over potholes the BMW was jarring and over brick paving on my factory's industrial estate it was like being in a washing machine.