GT7 W116: BMW Z4 3.0i '03

I've said a few times by now that my favourite sports cars are those that have around 200–250HP and weigh about 1,100–1,300kg. In plain English, I like sports cars in which their power doesn't completely dominate the experience, and are light enough to really chuck around and be a hooligan with. And by virtue of its specs alone, the BMW Z4 3.0i '03, with its 227HP and 1,290kg (2,844lbs), is already a good sports car in my book.

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Indeed, the Beamer's has a very keen front end on turn–in, and its brakes are nothing short of phenomenal. It even has a 50:50 weight distribution! However, that's sadly where the good news end, as the rest of the car simply isn't as focused on sportiness as comparable rivals, and in the context of a sandbox video game, that makes the Z4 extremely hard to justify over its stiff and well–established competition.

The gearing is the most immediate thing that jumps out; despite only having to spread its modest 170kW across an ample six gears, the gear ratios are all so incredibly wide apart for some unfathomable reason. In our weekly races, there have been times my Z4 lined up alongside another car on corner exit, keeping more or less level with them until I make an upshift in the Z4, causing it to tumble away like sawn logs. These wide ratios also make many corner exits awkward, as it often feels like there's just no correct gear to be in; 2nd gear just causes wheelspin, and third is just gutless at low speeds. Despite having six forward gears, the only time I've ever grabbed fifth in the Z4 was down Bathurst's Conrod Straight, and it just feels like such a waste of a six speed box.

The suspension is also very soft for a sports car, and a great deal of care has to be taken to get it to bite into corners and to keep the rear end from fishtailing out of turns. And when the car does let go, it does so very suddenly, almost as if it were hitting the ends of its suspension travel even with just Comfort Soft tyres. Without the right pedal, it's also always the front tyres that let go first, instead of a more balanced approach to its limits. It's paradoxically not as lively nor easy to control as the much more focused sports cars that I much prefer over the Z4.

On its own, the Z4 is a pretty good sports car. It's just that, when it's competing against a field of my personal favourite cars like the 901 Carrera RS 2.7, Clio V6, S15 Silvia, and GR86, I hold it to much higher standards than most other reviews, and therefore being "pretty good" just isn't nearly good enough to sway me. The AP1 S2000 deserves special mention here as the most apples to apples comparison, being a late 90s/early 2000s open top FR sports car on Comfort Soft tyres by default. The S2K, despite being the wildest handling 1999 model, was just so much easier to control and play around with in the corners, and because of its close ratios, it devours the Z4 on the straights too. The kicker is that the S2K actually undercuts the Z4's PP rating by a microscopic amount stock for stock. In a racing game where everyday comfort and the refinement of a premium brand is completely lost and doesn't matter, there's simply no reason whatsoever to pick the Z4 unless one is already partial to it prior.

I suppose the argument can be made that, of the open–top cars in this performance range readily available in Brand Central, the Z4 is a unique proposition. Sampling the Z4 3.0i as–is just makes me wish we got the Z4M instead; I recall really liking that car in GT6. The base Z4 as we get it isn't as much BMW bringing a knife to a gunfight, but it is a bit like bringing a pistol to a machine gun massacre.

I call this livery, "The Duality of (the) Man (Called SPD):