Well, I did it.
Shoved a deposit on an M135i a few weeks ago and finally collected it during the bank holiday weekend as I’d just been too darned busy beforehand.
Probably the car I should have bought last year but for a few reasons I didn’t. It was more for people reasons I stuck with VW last year and bought a TCR and I enjoyed using it for around five months putting on a fair few miles until I did my back in.
I’m not going to sit here and bleat on about what a fantastic purchase I’ve made. I have no emotional connection to BMW (aside from a soft spot for sporty Minis) and I think the only BMW I’ve ever really liked was the mid-80’s 325i aside from an admiration that BMW actually produced something like the previous M135i and M140i in this day and age.
I’m a VW person at heart and this is a GTI forum so I’ll quickly run through a few things as to how the cars compare back to back.
Firstly looks. The mk7 wins hands down for me. The mk8 doesn’t do anything for me at all in any of the specs seen so far. I hope the 8R pulls the rabbit out of the hat though.
The M135i has the look of one of those horrid BMW SUV’s with the middle slimmed out like a three layer sponge cake with the central layer removed.
It kind of looks ok to me and the back end looks good. Both of my sons said independently it reminded them of a Golf proportion wise. The car has a lot of details you just don’t see in photos.
At night the BMW turns the tables and easily wins, and not just because you can’t see it properly in the dark!
Inside, quality wise it’s more A3 than Golf in most areas. The plastics feel very familiar BMW and Mini, the iDrive is intuitive, the display graphics are sharper and have better definition than the mk7(.5) but the screens seem smaller.
The leather is soft and supple, the steering wheel is nice to hold and has decent paddle shifters as standard.
The one area Sootchucker has focussed on, the gadgets and tech, are a step up from the mk7 but only marginally so. There is only so much information you can play with before you realise quickly you don’t need it or use it very often and in fact it’s the most simple display that is actually the most useful one - the HUD.
A bit like moving from an Android to iOS or vice versa, you quickly learn what you need to and most of the rest of it becomes white noise unless you spend ages sat in stationary cars fiddling with buttons and screens.
Oh, yes, it has plenty of buttons to press!
But how many buttons do we need to press once our ideal settings are found day to day? How many programs do we actually use on our washing machines? Maybe the mk8 designers weren’t so wide of the mark after all. I still think the mk7.5 is a happy medium.
A gadget freak like Sootchucker will love the buttons, sub-menus and random features in a 135i but once I’ve played around with them once or twice I find it all a bit meh and tend to leave it in a convenient setting and not fiddle around again.
With the Tech and Plus packs there are plenty of features you could play around with such as infinitely variable sound system and a variety of park assistant features I’ll personally probably never use.
The gadgets are certainly there if you want to play around with them but I’m sure the novelty would quickly wear off and aside from clearer graphics it hasn’t moved on massively from the mk7.5
The HUD is really useful though and information displayed can be minimal or quite a bit.
I’ve gone for absolute minimal as there are only so many maps I want to glance at, so many different screens and so much driver info.
In fact with this car one feature is quite hard to read but has almost become redundant.
The rev counter.
This engine is all about torque.
This is the feature that won me over.
Where the normal GTI engine has plenty of torque over a really useful range and the R/TCR engine is all about revs, the 135i is free revving but lower revving than the R engine but feels really potent because of the torque delivery. It’s probably no quicker at all than a Golf R against a stop watch but is very satisfying to drive. Whether it’s by design or not I don’t know but it feels like a bigger capacity engine.
From inside it sounds like a bigger capacity engine too. Unlike the tinny VW Soundaktor which makes a noise like a misfiring VW Beetle flat 4, the 135’s engine noise comes in through the hi-fi speakers and is programmed to sound somewhere between a V8 and straight 6.
The gearbox is a proper auto and at normal speeds I prefer it to the DSG. It doesn’t change up quite so early and nor does it have that annoying clutch slipping effect at times when using low to medium throttle pulling away.
Kickdown is a bit slower than DSG but is countered for when the engine torque kicks in once on song.
Very early days here so far so I’m still familiarising.
Suspension and steering feel much busier than on a mk7 Golf.
Both feel more Mini which belies the car’s underpinnings.
The car feels sharp and alive but less relaxing than a Golf.
I’m not sure if it’s the high torque and LSD shunting power constantly about but it feels fidgety at times.
Mine is on 19’s with no adaptive suspension and the ride is very firm.
Firm and jiggly on bad surfaces, noisy at times too but not jarring or crashy.
Unlike the TCR it doesn’t jar my back over sudden irregularities but it does transmit sudden bumps through its firm suspension more as noise than anything.
The demo on 18’s I tried last year was much more compliant but also looked crap as the car needs 19’s to look right.
I considered a 24 month PCP (that’s quite long enough a commitment to one car for me) on a new car but in the end I stuck to my old habits of buying a well priced already registered dealer stock car that a sales manager needed shot of.
25% cheaper than list price, a couple thousand on the clock, no finance agreement to tie me in...
It works for me. Bank loans are still cheaper than PCP and allow flexibility to modify the car as I fully “own“ it or I can sell it whenever I please.
I have no plans to do any mods to the car, it doesn’t even need a pedalbox.
I’m sure the lure of returning to VW won’t be too far away, but then again maybe not? Let’s see what the 8R is all about VW as I sure don’t like what I’ve seen so far.
