Life with a BMW 1 Series: 4000 miles in Munich's Golf rival

And even if it doesn’t have that cab-rearward, long-snouted uniqueness of the old RWD cars, I think we can all agree that the F70 looks much smarter than the dumpy, snorty F40. I imagine my car is representative of what you will typically see of the F70 on the road, considering that there’s only the choice of 120, 123 xDrive and hot M135 xDrive variants now, and British car buyers apparently have an incurable addiction to sporty-looking, big-alloyed specifications and like their transport to reflect their gloomy surroundings.

Yes, there are no fewer than four shades of grey on offer. Hat tip to anyone brave enough to order the purple. The F70 being more of a heavily updated F40 than an all-new car, my 120’s engine is the familiar ‘B38’ turbocharged three-cylinder petrol unit, albeit now with a 48V mild-hybrid system, connected to a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox with paddle shifters.

MHEV technology promises to simultaneously improve performance and economy, and indeed the car serves up a healthy 154bhp and an impressive 53.0mpg officially, up from 134bhp and 47.9mpg in the equivalent old 118i.

It sure feels a lot punchier than I had expected upon seeing a low cylinder count. Moreover, BMW claims that “the agility, steering precision and cornering dynamics of the new 1 Series benefit from the increased rigidity of the body structure and the chassis connection”, plus my 120 has been further enhanced by the M Sport Package Pro, including M adaptive suspension (the ride seems very firm even in default mode, but apparently this actually “further increases the vehicle’s dynamic potential without compromising comfort”) and M Sport brakes (red calipers mean you can’t miss ’em).

The car’s interior has also exceeded my expectations, despite that startling £43k price as tested. Thanks to the Technology Plus Pack, BMW’s dashboard-topping Curved Display, which combines the digital instrument display with the infotainment touchscreen, has grown slightly larger and is packed with every gizmo I could imagine.

The cream-coloured upholstery looks fabulous (Veganza faux leather is mandatory but also comes in brown, red and black or in combination with Alcantara).

And although many will see them as tacky, I’m a fan of the M Sport tricolour stitching and ambient lighting panels on the dashboard. (I might add that the appropriate sections flash red if you’re about to open your door into somebody’s path – one active safety innovation to be welcomed.)

There’s also – and I know this sounds silly – that new BMW aroma. I can’t think of another brand that has such a distinctive one. It’s easily recognisable and, I think, really rather nice.

But yes, this is coming from someone who loves to smell a freshly printed magazine… I must say there is one thing I’m miffed about in here: the lack of adjustable lumbar support for the driver.

I mean, come on. These things really are of the utmost importance: BMW’s market research has revealed that the average 1 Series customer is most interested in interior luxury and accommodation.

The likes of you and I, meanwhile, naturally prioritise driving enjoyment. Various 1 Series have sat at varying places on the spectrum over the years, but it seems to me that this one might be capable of pleasing everybody. I do hope it will prove me right.

Update 2 

The new pope is Catholic, the UK won zero points in Eurovision’s public vote and, in other truly shocking news, I have fallen in love with a small sporty car.

I must admit that it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows between me and my BMW 120. There have been a couple of disagreements.

But as with all healthy relationships, we have agreed on some compromises. Or rather, I have made some compromises to suit its demands…

The first disagreement involved the other (true) love in my life. Whenever we got in the car together, she would have to stand on the pavement waiting for me to open my door, sit down and press the unlock button before she could follow suit.

Why? The key fob unlocks only the one door, and trying to change this to all four doors within the touchscreen menu prompts the message: ‘Function only available with BMW ID’.

Yes, to change this fairly basic – and fundamental – setting, I first have to hand over my personal data to a monolithic corporation. My colleagues have noted this with other BMWs and Minis, and none of us likes it.

My girlfriend works in the tech industry and always says “if you don’t have to pay for something, you’re paying for it with personal data”, but in this case I have already (in theory) paid £43,000 for the something in question.

BMW may well claim that the purpose of the ID is the easy transfer of a driver’s personal preferences between cars, and that indeed is a potential boon for repeat customers. But as far as I’m concerned, no function should ever be locked behind a data gate.

But anyway, I gave BMW my name and email address and now I can share the wonders of central locking with my passengers. Such is life nowadays. The second compromise I’ve made concerns parking.

I was really struggling when trying to parallel or bay park slowly into a tight spot, because if the car came to a halt when in reverse, it would require a daft amount of accelerator pedal travel to bring the engine back to life.

So I go into yet another on-screen menu to deactivate the engine stop-start and auto hold functions, and suddenly parking has never been easier – not least because my car is equipped with a military-grade arsenal of parking aids (part of the £2750 Technology Plus Pack).

I would have been happy with audible sensors alone, but there’s also a camera suite that offers me top-down and panoramic views with coloured proximity indicators and even curved lines that change as I move the steering wheel – not to mention a system that will automatically drive the car into a bay or parallel space if I want it to.

I tried this and was impressed – although I did chicken out and hit the brakes before the car adjudged the manoeuvre to be complete. You can fall in love quickly, but it takes time to build trust, I guess.

Update 3

It’s almost amazing that I have written several reports on the same car and not felt the need to discuss the user interface.

So radically has design in this area changed that nowadays it’s frequently the main focus of a car review – often because physical controls have been ‘moved’ onto a touchscreen with consequences that we’ve found less than gratifying.

That just isn’t the case with the 1 Series, despite it too having succumbed to that trend in the transition between its third and fourth generations.

The lower row of buttons (for the audio) and the upper one (for the climate control) were both wiped clean, replaced by a strip of trendy ambient lights and more icons on the central touchscreen.

I would always rather have physical controls, but the 1 Series’ highly configurable digital instrument display has given me a decent substitute. It essentially replicates what you used to get in the Audi TT – still the best modern interior layout in my estimation.

The speedometer and tachometer are rendered as C-shaped half dials and between them is my current audio feed, plus sat-nav instructions – or if I’m on unfamiliar roads, I can switch to see the sat-nav map. Best of all, this is integrated with Apple CarPlay, not forcing me to use the native BMW sat-nav.

Then I can have the climate control menu fill the entire touchscreen. I only wish the icons could be made larger and therefore easier to hit while I’m driving.

Despite the touchscreen measuring 10.7in, I have to be precise with my weaker, left hand to increase the fan speed or temperature, and all so I can see giant digital renderings of the two front seats and active vents.

And it’s even trickier to use the shortcuts at the top of the screen, if you should need them. Before finding this ideal configuration, I would often accidentally mute a podcast while trying to open up the sat-nav, which was pretty exasperating.

At least the preservation of physical audio controls on the steering wheel made it easy to restart the digital chatter. The infotainment software, BMW iDrive OS9, has mercifully been entirely glitch-free.

However, Apple CarPlay has randomly developed a curious habit, similar to that which Mark Tisshaw recently experienced in his Renault Scenic: after alerting me to a new text message, Siri turns mute when I ask him to read it aloud.

I’ve belatedly updated my iPhone to the latest iOS but still Siri’s silence persists. Sigh. I must also mention the paddle shifters.

Flicking them to change gear just doesn’t hit the same way as co-ordinating my left limbs for a perfect manual shift, and when I’ve forced myself to use them, I’ve got bored after only a few corners and rediverted my attention to nailing my cornering lines.

I just can’t see the point – and nor have I in previous automatic performance cars. Am I in the minority among enthusiasts here? Let me know.

Final update

I know it’s over, and it never really began – but in my heart, it was so real.

Yep, I’ve been as mopey as Morrissey since having to hand ‘my’ 120 back to BMW. What a fabulously practical and enjoyable little car it proved to be – and many of its attributes that I so valued have now been put into an even sharper perspective by the enormous plug-in hybrid SUV that has replaced it.

The entry-level 1 Series is a BMW that has never fully convinced us in its sub-M forms, and that didn’t change when Munich moved it into its fourth generation (F70).

“The 120 uses its new-found mild-hybrid tech quite well, but its digital cabin technology less so. The car’s pursuit of greater driver appeal is clear, but the delivery of it lacks coherence and true efficacy,” concluded my road tester colleagues.

Suffice to say the car left a more positive impression on me over the past few months. While I share those reservations about the interior (more on which later), I greatly enjoyed the strong performance – this from only three cylinders, remember – and the inherent dynamism of the chassis.

The 1 Series can’t match the handling talents of pricier BMW models, but for a front-driven family hatchback at a fairly affordable price, it’s right up there. If I had to choose between it and a comparable Mercedes-Benz A-Class, Audi A3 Sportback, Volkswagen Golf or Cupra Leon, I would stick rather than twist.

Performance really was remarkable for what might sound like a powerplant unbefitting of an M-badged BMW; I never found it wanting when trying to fly away from the lights or jump into a rare gap in M25 traffic.

Around town, the chassis’ inherent agility combined with the car’s compact dimensions to make it feel right at home. And out on country roads, I trusted it such that I could really relish attacking inviting corners.

And all this while averaging an impressive 45.2mpg, thanks not least to its new mild-hybrid system. Such a high figure really makes an enormous difference when you have a long motorway commute – especially given there are no longer any diesel versions of the 1 Series offered in the UK.

My main criticism of the 120 is not the driver appeal but the ride quality. On its large wheels and low-profile rubber, my sportily specced car was always firm and frequently restless, even at a 70mph cruise.

To my dismay, Felix Page’s Cupra Leon had even thinner 19in tyres and was consequently even more uncomfortable, but two wrongs don’t make a right.

As I’ve previously written, you might be wise to add a load of sporty-looking options to BMW’s cheaper Sport trim and protect your posterior with 10cm more sidewall. On the subject of options, my car was fitted with a staggering £10,000 worth of them.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend anyone following suit, because this takes the 120 M Sport over the ‘luxury car tax’ threshold, but of them I would have missed the enhanced brakes (which possibly saved me from committing felicide), 40/20/40-split folding rear seats, sun protection glass, Harman Kardon stereo (excellent sound quality) and sunroof – and I did miss adjustable lower-back support (£415).

Like my colleagues, I feel obliged to criticise BMW’s decision to bin the rows of physical buttons on the dashboard, as a touchscreen is never a worthy substitute.

But I must temper this by saying that, thanks to the configurability of the digital instrument display (you can have your sat-nav and media displayed between the tacho and speedo), changing the climate is less fraught here than I have found it to be in other modern cars.

Everything else about the interior I liked a lot. Ergonomics aside, the dashboard design was very pleasing on the eye, with its dual-screen frame and ambient lighting strips, while the sports seats (comfortable, albeit lacking lumbar adjustability) looked fabulous wrapped in the cream faux leather – definitely the colour I would choose, as it gave the interior such a sense of lightness.

Even more so when I had the optional sunroof open – bearable up to about 40mph – on a sunny day. Many cars nowadays feel a bit like black and grey prison cells; this could hardly be more different.

Rear passengers agreed too, the switch to FWD having made the 1 Series much more practical in the back. I started this test by wondering whether this baby BMW might be one capable of pleasing everybody.

That suspicion has already been disproved. Perhaps things would be different among the wider public, but among Autocar staff at least, I’m of the minority view.

But that’s okay: it’s better to be loved by some than to spark passionate feelings in nobody at all – and there are many cars in that category these days.

BMW 120 M Sport specification

Prices: List price new £32,775 List price now £34,290 Price as tested £43,190