BMW 4 Series Coupe 435i Sport Review: Three to four...

What we like:

Beautifully balanced handling even on the edge. Lovely steering feel that allows extremely accurate input.

What we dislike:

Overly muffled exhaust note.

Despite the rather ordinary interior, the 435i hides a pretty decent lump under the bonnet. Under the 3-series bonnet, you find the same N55 3.0-litre twin scroll straight six we wrestled with a few weeks ago in the new 535i and the 335i GT. While there’re no surprises here with the horsepower and torque figures, the engine does come into its own when given a capable platform like on the 435i.

Here, the N55 is much livelier with just 1.5 tons to contend with and gets off the line quickly with the 400Nm of torque surging in from 1,250rpm and propelling the car to 100kmh in 5.1 seconds. But the real meat in this pudding is how planted this platform is.

With a perfect 50:50 weight distribution, the perfectly balanced chassis leaves you no doubt when attempting a fast entry into a corner. Steering is much sharper than one would expect of an ordinary coupe like this and it’s much faster than its usual demographics would need.

To truly test the balance of the chassis, we turned the Dynamic Stability Control off and found a huge piece of tarmac sodden to our comfort level and swung the tail out. In such extreme circumstances, the balance and precision of the steering becomes even more profound and it held the drift easily even at such low speeds. BMW engineers have made this a rather playful car indeed. Even with DSC on, you can feel the rear eager to step out should you allow it.

That’s not to say this coupe is bonkers all the time, when the mood strikes, you can switch the standard adaptive suspension to comfort mode and enjoy a smooth supple ride. Coupled with the brilliant 8-speed ZF gearbox, it’s easy to forget that you’re in a performance car that’s just one tier away from the flagship M4 when you’re cruising smoothly on the highway.

While the badge has changed, the coupe hasn’t. It still retains all of the qualities we loved in the old 335i coupe. And will still let its fangs out when you want it to but for the most part, the 435i will be happy toodling around town in comfort mode.

To be honest, we’re not surprised. Considering the F30 3-series wasn’t a bad platform to begin with.

Credits: Story and Photos by Benjamin G. Kline