It’s the timeless roadster that never seems to age. Even the original variant from 20 years ago still wouldn’t look out of place today new car showroom.
Oh good morning car lovers welcome back i’m bobby freeman today my friends we’re going to be looking at probably possibly one of my all-time favorite cars which is the bmw z4 now i actually had one of the original z4s it was a 2003 one i had it about 10 years ago and i just absolutely loved it it’s i think it’s possibly one of the best looking roadsters ever made
I originally saw it when it was out in uh it was featured in the james bond movie i kind of which one it was might have been gold night i’m not sure but ever since then it’s just at a really kind of special place in my heart it looks even the old one the original one just looks even by today’s standards almost like a brand new car the design looks still kind of
Cutting edge i’ll show you a picture of mine now and you can see you can imagine that kind of rolling out a showroom looking brand now and looking kind of still not out of place against you know brand new cars now maybe you know give or take a little bit but i think it stood the tesla time really really well so i’m very excited to have it look at this one for you
Today which is the latest incarnation and one of the things i’m really kind of looking for is has it kind of still got that essence of that original z4 has it still got that same feel when i drive it will it take me back to my uh sort of nostalgic days when i was a single man driving around in a um a relatively cheap secondhand sports car obviously not gonna be
Second hand but judging by the styling i think it may we may be looking at a slightly different animal here today i don’t know i might not i might i might be completely mistaken but what i would like is for it if to have retained some kind of that essence so um let’s find out well if it has so let’s have a look around it shall we as you can see it’s kind of a
Quite a step away from what it used to be the stylings kind of evolved through the original soft top one through to the hard top which came afterwards and then through to this one now it’s quite a different beast it’s not like a porsche 911 where it’s going to sort of basically stay the same but i think it looks pretty badass especially in black like this it’s
Cool so you’ve got these nice kind of sort of angular lights which are very very different to the original ones as i say it’s kind of evolved rather rather than uh revolved to quote alan partridge as you can see this one’s got the black front grilles it’s kind of a sort of a stealthy spec this car gorgeous diamond cut alloys here bmw alloys really really well if
You can see that they kind of go out and then in at the middle here badass you do not want to be scuffing those got the nice m sport badge down here which is always nice to see on a bmw and then we look at the side profile which is really what you want to see on a road star i’ll show you again from the other side because we’re kind of facing into the sun here
Um and as we get round the back yeah this is kind of it’s not really recognizable as a z4 to be honest it’s obviously apart from the badge and everything but in terms of look they’ve kind of they kind of have departed from from the original kind of look because i think the second version of it with the hard top kind of retained that z4 look but this one hmm not
Sure i think i like it in fact i do like it definitely but it’s definitely a step away from what we had before so let’s have a look at the boot space now look you’re not going to be getting much of a boot or a trunk if you’re in america in a z4 so if you had a look there yeah there’s not a great deal of space particularly with well actually you don’t actually lose
Any space with this one when the roof is folded in because obviously this one is gone but they’ve gone back to a soft top so you’d get a couple of small suitcases maybe a small bag squash as well but it’s not being great there won’t be a great deal of room in here but again no one’s kidding theirself they’re not going to be buying this car if they want you know
A decent amount of room in the boot they’re buying it because it looks cool so as you can see i put the roof up now literally because it’s just a scorching hot day and i’m going to get sunburned if i stay out in it any longer than i already have so let’s have a look around in here in terms of cockpit again this is worlds apart from the original z4 and in fact the
Other z4 i think they’re kind of sort of decided that they’re going to move on a little bit from what was the z4 and bring it really into the into the 21st century which is fair enough because we can’t sort of you know we can’t sort of stick and wallow in the same sort of stuff uh for years and years i would have liked perhaps a little bit of a nod to some sort of
The the original styling but like to be honest i can’t really see any other than perhaps a little bit of similarity down here with the presets for the radio but let’s let’s put that aside shall we let’s have a look at the seats to start with so these seats i think look absolutely bad ass these the sport seats as you can see here they look they look kind of there’s
A quality that bmw um so it gives you with the leather that’s kind of not really met until you get up to sort of the likes of i don’t know maybe bentleys and porsches really because it just looks such it screams quality it feels such such sort of um high-tech sort of materials and it just feels super super high-end you got the speakers behind there you’ve got a
Little tiny bit of storage here for some very flat things but you’re not going to get very much in there we’re not kidding but again we’re not really expecting it we’ve got this central console opens up here we’ve got two nice decent sized cup holders usb here a little bit of storage space down there nice slot for the phone but again not a massive amount come up
To the center console here you’ve got your controls here for the roof you’ve got here the uh um controls for all the uh audio and nav and everything obviously the uh you’ve got start stop button down here i believe in the original z4 i thought it was kind of over here somewhere that moved it slightly but then really it’s not the end of the world sport comfort eco
And adaptively different driving modes there over here you got this closable section here you got your presets for the radio there a good old-fashioned um tourney turning thing which is a technical term uh for the radio i’d really like that i don’t like where everything’s going to touch me i like to have a few real switches which you’ve got along here as well for
The heated seats and then there’s obviously all the ventilation and your air conditioning huge lovely big wide screen there which is in the original z4 used to fold away i used to really like that i folded away to the dash but obviously that’s kind of a thing of the past now it doesn’t tend to happen so um if we pan over here we’re going to get a lovely view of a
Skip lorry oh look at that you don’t get that on other youtube channels do you extraordinary right if you want uh a nice skip then call that company which i didn’t see didn’t say the name of but i should charge them for advertising shouldn’t i anyway steering wheel as always with the bmws very very cool nice and chunky beautiful bit of brushed aluminium on there
Leather stitched in the middle i always like the steering wheels in bmw’s right to right back for like all the way back to 20 years ago i suppose they always kind of look cool and it’s some people think i fixate on it a little bit but i think it’s it’s the one bit of the car you’re going to touch mostly the car you’re in contact with the most i think it’s really
Important that it kind of looks sturdy and feels nice in the hand you’ve got the nice screen in there as well you’ve got various different different options you can have in that screen which is a fast becoming a um sort of a more more so you see more and more in almost pretty much every car these days particularly the high-end models over here obviously got your
Lights and everything beautiful kind of stylish door handle i mean you know if you’re excited by door handles there you go and obviously the window switches over there so inside it’s not as i say it’s not the it’s not a huge cabin but i’d say it has a sense of a little bit more sense of space than perhaps the previous models you kind of the other ones i remember
The original felt quite closed in so i think they’ve worked out quite nicely in terms of using the space now then something i wanted to mention when i was doing the outside bit of the car is you might be wondering why the original z4 went from a soft top to a folding hardtop and then back to a soft top again and it’s a little bit geeky but i don’t mind being geeky
Because i am well i suppose i’m a geek thing is for the convertible roof and sports cars they’re not really that compatible because for sports cars it’s all about weight distribution you want to have an equal distribution of weight throughout the car you don’t have too much weight at the back because it will throw the full background you have lots of oversteer
Same problem you have lots of weight at the front you’ll get understeer now no car not many cars are 50 50. but the thing is a soft top if you’re gonna have a soft top and a sports car it’s a it’s it’s better to have a soft sorry if you’re to have a convertible in sports guys better to have a soft top because you’re not shifting the weight around so when you’ve
Got a folding hard top you’re you’ve got a certain amount of weight distribution but then you when you take the roof down you are transferring shifting all that weight from here in the middle to the back so you’ve lost weight in the middle and you’ve gained weight at the back whereas if you um because you’ll go to companies go to a lot of um money and a lot of
Trouble to make sure the weight distribution is good so when you start messing around with it it can play around with how the car handles so when you take the soft top roof down it falls into the back it weighs virtually nothing so it’s not actually going to make a difference the handling and the weight distribution just in case you’re wondering so then what i
Really want to know is what is this thing like on the road because you’re only going to be driving a roadster if you want something that’s going to be a nice engaging drive as well as looking cool as well well personally speaking maybe not maybe not everyone does but i want a roadster to be a kind of a driver’s car as well and the z4 was that it wasn’t a porsche
Boxster but it was certainly a nice driver’s car and this we’re only doing kind of low speeds around sort of suburbia at the moment but it’s got straight away that beautiful sort of bmw drive there’s nothing there’s nothing quite like a bmw drive as soon as you hit the road in it it’s just got kind of it’s very kind of firm but extremely smooth and it kind of it
Kind of just glide along the tarmac and it was like it was just itching to get on the road the whole time it’s part up it kind of something feels wrong in a bmw if you’re kind of parked up it’s like it wants to be on the road and i think that’s and that’s very true very much true of the case with this uh with this z4 it feels incredibly planted and it’s like you
Can feel the chassis it’s like you got it’s giving you feedback it’s not you can feel the kind of the surface of the road as you’re driving along kind of through the hands but also just sort of as it’s like you’re an extension of the chassis itself and it’s kind of it’s reassuring you’re kind of fun at the same time and it kind of grows as well when you drive it
You feel kind of it felt like a reasonably small car when it’s parked up but when you get it out on the road it feels a lot bigger it’s almost definitely definitely feels bigger than its predecessors you kind of get the feeling it’s not quite in the realms of a mercedes sl but not far off and the one thing it does have the original z4 is that big sweeping bonnet
Out the front it’s huge it feels like you’re sat kind of at the back of the car and the cars all bonnet an engine and you’re just you’re just sat at the back controlling the whole thing and by the way this is the two liter version so it’s not the biggest engine of the part but i tell you what when you put your foot down it shifts it’s quick okay it’s not going
To be in the realms of the three liters but the beauty of um these modern cars they’re all going smaller because i remember mine was the 2.5 liter and um but they they seem to be uh taking uh engines smaller and putting turbochargers on it that’s like the sort of the thing that everyone’s doing at the moment and when it first happened i remember thinking like
You know sort of weren’t very keen on it because you know they’re taking in no one likes to have a smaller engine but my good god they are way more efficient and they go like off a shovel to use a slightly uh unpleasant phrase also i’ve noticed that we’re driving along it’s getting a lot of looks a lot of people are stopping and look at it a couple of kids took
A photograph of it which is amazing because we’re in london you know it’s not uncommon to see you know porsches or ferraris or lamborghinis so that’s a testament to the beauty of it you know and some people don’t like that me i’m a dreadful show-off so i love it so we’re out on the open road now and this kind of it’s not really uh sort of the home of a roadster
But obviously a lot of people are going to spend a lot of time on the motorway and it feels nice it just feels like you kind of could be driving a three series or something it’s just kind of smooth and gives you sort of that still that sense of being sort of in touch with the robe but just rolls along beautifully and you wouldn’t really know you were in a sports
Car because obviously there’s a lot of impracticality that comes with sports guy i’ve just got to change lanes here in a minute um but you don’t really sort of like something like a lotus elise or an xe’s or something that great fun absolutely one of the fake my favorite cars i’ve ever driven but you get it on the motorway and it’s hard work it’s bumpy it’s noisy
It’s not very comfortable and you get the end of a journey you feel like you’ve done two rounds of mike tyson but this you just feel like you could just drive it forever and this is the thing that bmw brings to the table and as i said earlier the steering is very very smooth and refined but if you throw it into a corner which i’m not going to now but if you do
Throw it into a corner it kind of livens up and reacts and it’s kind of like oh yes here we go and it kind of just grips and hold on in in a way you kind of thought it probably wouldn’t because the other day it’s a bmw it’s not you know it’s like a sports car well it’s not officially a sports guy it looks like a sports guy it’s not what you call something like a
Lotus or a porsche where you’d expect that but it kind of really just sort of grabs on and it sort of hauls you around in a it’s awesome this is one of the downsides of reviewing cars in london there’s a lot of sitting in traffic but since i’ve been sat there what about sort of 30 seconds like two people have come past and gone like done that sort of you know it’s
Sort of a blokey thing it’s it’s to say you’ve got a nice car but they don’t want to be too sort of um unblocky by saying you’ve got a nice cast they just kind of go the upwards head knob the head the knob that goes kind of upwards and doesn’t go back down again it’s kind of like i’m like yeah a mutual sort of uh blokey gesture which is nice so here we go again
I’m going to floor it coming out onto this off this slip road here hopefully not crash into it if i give it some it’s just damn you mg there’s a bloody big fat mg in front of me driving like an absolute well probably a sensible person but um it’s annoying all the same here we go i’ve got past it now so i’m going to give it a oh man it’s quite throaty as well
For a two liter you wouldn’t expect it to be to be honest you’d probably want it if you’re getting the three liter but it’s it’s not hugely like it’s not like a barking you know like the barking hounds of hell but it’s kind of like it’s enough you know and i’m a guy who usually likes to go for the bigger engines but to be honest when i drive something like this
It kind of makes me think what’s the point you know this is a lot less money and you know still a really fast car there’s some bloke right up my ass here i don’t know what his problem is will you piss off so here we go we’re going to show a corner here it’s a bit of a long sweeping corner but it just sits in grabs on and says hold tight here we go this ain’t
No problem it’s just oh man alive i wish that corner got for longer it was just oh that’s the good stuff man alive i love bmws i love them bloody love them so then guys so all in all i think they’ve done a great job with bmw bmw never going to make a bad car i don’t think they’ve ever made a bad car to be honest but as i said i was quite keen for it to keep a
Bit of that breeding of the original z4 and to be honest i don’t think it’s done it i don’t i can’t really see any nod to it in terms of how it drives and sort of especially with the styling as well that would be the easiest way to kind of give a little bit of a nod to it but you know what i’m kind of over that because i’m won over just by the sheer quality and
The way it feels and the way it drives and the kind of the it’s it’s sometimes you have to you can’t hold on to things all your life because you’ll never move on you have to cut off a little part of yourself in order to uh in order to grow and i think that’s what bmw done they cut not cut off the whole thing to be honest and no it’s not com it’s not really like
The old z4 in any way shape or form but what it is is a truly beautiful roadster absolutely there’s not a single angle it looks bad from inside or out i don’t think you’re going to be disappointed i just can’t i just keep looking at this it sounds a bit sad but i love the way this dash the sort of the contours that dash there it just looks absolutely awesome and
To me i don’t think you could ever be disappointed when you buy this car so i would say if you are a fan of the z4 if you’ve never driven a z4 before and you’re looking for a two-seater roadster i would say when you compare it to the competition you know the tts uh the mercedes um what else that’s kind of what you’re going to be looking at then there’s kind of no
Comparison to be honest it looks the chunkiest it feels the most like a roadster and i think it’s the one you’re going to enjoy most to drive so i would recommend if you’re looking at a roadster you’ve got to get yourself a z4 so guys thanks very much for watching today i hope you’ve enjoyed this video i hope you found it useful and informative if you did then
Please don’t forget to subscribe to my channel press the like button on this video and i will see you all next time
Transcribed from video
2022 BMW Z4 2.0 Review! By Bobby Freeman Drives