Let me start by saying I LOVE my car. I had a blast driving it through Germany, Austria, and Italy, and had a hard time parting with it. Six long weeks of waiting ahead until redelivery, but that's another story, and another forum...

There are easily 100 little things I like about this car, which collectively, contribute to that awesome, intangible driving quality that BMW is renowned for. Here are just a few comments I came up with:

1. If you're on the fence about Terra, just go for it. It's beautiful. B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L. I knew the second I saw it I'd made the right choice. The two tone effect with the black is absolutely killer.

2. I'm not an aggressive driver, and I was always conscious of keeping the car within the 'break-in' parameters. Having said that, acceleration was quick and responsive, and was always there when I demanded it. I noticed no hesitation others have spoken of.

3. Brakes are fantastic, IMO. Maybe it's just because they're new, but they're a lot grippier than my Passat's, so it took some getting used to at first.

4. I noticed the soft stop feature one time during my 5 days with the car, and it was, gratefully, very subdued. No jolting forward from a stop like some have experienced.

5. 6 speed Steptronic transmission proved to be smooth as silk. I didn't notice any deterioration in performance during its adaptive or learning period.

6. Logic 7 system - Sounds like I have a philharmonic in my back seat. Absolutely superb.

7. Hellooo, iDrive! What's not to love? Guess I don't have experience with any other systems against which to judge, but I found it intuitive and very user friendly. And I like the many features you can customize with it. And a minimum of tiny buttons on the dash is an added bonus!!

8. The sports seats were very supportive. After 6 hours on the road, muscle and back fatigue was at a minimum.

9. I KNOW it's gimmicky, but I like the start/stop button. It's just fun for a change.

10. I love the grippy'ness' of the sports steering wheel, the texturized leather wrapping, and the thickness of the wheel.

11. Overall, I was pleased with the gas mileage observed by the trip computer - after all it was the first 850 miles - 26.7 mpg, and this was probably 95% highway driving.


Okay, there are a few things that I'm not thrilled about. Most will just take some getting used to, but here they are:

1. Door requires more force to fully shut than what I'm used to on my VW. I found myself having to try twice on several occasions to get the door to latch properly.

2. As others have posted, I found myself confusing the turn signal and cruise control stalks.

3. Regarding the unconventional turn signal stalk: I immediately liked (and still do) the idea of it in theory. When it came to execution, however, I'm not so convinced. Several times (after confusing it with cruise, for example) I had trouble 'cancelling' the signal without it signaling the opposite direction.

4. And yes, even though I mocked those who were complaining about the position of the power window switches, I did find myself hitting the back window switches by mistake on at least two different occasions. So I must now eat crow and retract the aforementioned mocking....