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My perfect tool for road trips in India: 22k km update of my BMW 530d

12th June 2024, 14:28 by Kanad Kalasur

Hours and hours of traveling later I can emerge as fresh and energized as when I started off, even with loads of spirited and grin-inducing driving along the way.

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Trie is approaching 22K KMs now. Here are some long overdue updates along with random pics.

Servicing / Insurance - Had got the regular yearly service done at Kun, Electronic city back in December. Cost around 25K. It continues to be a good experience for me - I have been taking my BMW there for the last 5 years now. Brake pads have plenty of life left. Also got the insurance renewed with Zero Dep from Tata AIG at about 65K (with 65% NCB). The last insurer, ICICI Lombard, is a joke of a company - my ordeals with them are too long and painful to document but I will steer clear of them for the rest of my life. All this was without me even having to make a claim with them.

Tyres - still have tread for 5-10K KMs, though they are pushing 6 years of age now. No punctures so far and there's no air loss even over long periods of time. Will be replaced with tubeless ones when the time comes.

Adaptive dampers - still the star of the show. Compliant in the city and rock-hard on the highway (if you want). In all of my driving, the car hasn't bounced unexpectedly even once, no matter the speed or the undulation on the road. It sticks flat to the road like a leech at high speeds.

Adaptive mode - Quite good. Keeps switching between comfort / Sport automatically based on the driving pattern. There's no change on the instrument console, but you can feel the dampers get stiffer and the throttle get more aggressive when you drive more aggressively. Most of the times this is all the mode that I need. One sure shot way of getting sport mode automatically is to flick the gear lever to S mode, and downshift manually. It's only during sustained high speed runs that I feel the need to switch to Sport mode to get the car absolutely flat with the dampers in Sport mode.

Touch controls - still have to look down to adjust the fan speed via the climate control screen. Thankfully the temperature knob is physical. I've gotten used to the Driving Experience Control switches though - I can adjust the driving modes, traction control and operate the camera buttons by feel. The Traction button has a textured finish, separate from the nearby switches to ensure you don't press it by mistake.

Power / Torque - Still very happy with the stock tune. No plans to remap and even on long journeys, I rarely need to go above 3-3.5K RPM. There's just so much grunt from 1500-2500RPM and it's somehow a lot more satisfying to let the car pull hard in this range, rather than downshift to 3K+. It pulls ferociously even in 3rd / 4th gears and sometimes leaves me surprised at how urgent it feels. The gearbox is also insanely quick to respond to paddle inputs in Sport Plus / S mode. The feeling of going through the gears while accelerating hard is pure joy.

I have noticed that the torque is slightly limited at higher altitudes (like in Bangalore) - I only get 600nm on the sport displays, but when I head out and reach closer to sea level, I get a bit more than 620nm. Bangalore is usually around 1.5PSI lower atmospheric pressure than at sea level, that translates to ~4% lower MAP at full boost (about 24 PSI boost / 39-40PSI MAP) and the math check out - 4% of 620 is ~20nm that I lose here.

That said, there is turbo lag which comes out if I drive it in manual mode. The crispness of the throttle pedal (vs a NA petrol) is missing as the engine does take about a second to start delivering the peak torque, even if I'm in the boost band. However, if you leave it in auto mode, a quick blip of the throttle results in a downshift and the turbo is quick enough to have spooled up quite a bit in the half a second that it takes for it to kick down, so turbo lag is actually harder to notice in auto mode. Also, the torque converter can unlock and provide torque multiplication, which further hides turbo lag, at the cost of directness. In manual mode, the Torque converter tries to stay locked up as much as possible, to provide a super direct feel.

FE - Couple of attempts at driving carefully on the Mysore expressway have delivered ~4L/100KM @100KMPH average speed over a ~90KMs distance. Regular efficiency on the highways is around 6L (relaxed cruising) - 8L (driving hard) / 100KM, and on the few occasions that I drive it in the city, I get about 8.5L - 10L/ 100KM, which is still pretty good. Recently, I went to Ooty and filled up the tank while leaving near my home. Came back from the ~600KM round trip with more than a third of the tank still remaining. The real world range on this car is bonkers with the 65L fuel tank.

Ground clearance - Yes, I do get the occasional scrapes here and there, but I've never had to turn back anywhere - it goes absolutely everywhere a regular car will and actually with a lot more comfort & aplomb than you'd think. Standing water is Trie's kryptonite and that's the one thing that Trie can't cross.

Overall summary - Trie has got the luxury and comfort aspect absolutely licked. It's the perfect tool for road trips in India. Hours and hours of traveling later I can emerge as fresh and energized as when I started off, even with loads of spirited and grin-inducing driving along the way. However, a recent chance to drive a friend's subaru BRZ along some winding roads in the US reminded me in no uncertain terms that as fun as Trie is to drive, it's not a sports car by any stretch of imagination. Wow, a diesel 5-seater sedan is not as fun as a purpose built 2-seater sports car? I guess it is obvious, but maybe not stated frequently enough. The biggest differences that I felt were in the compact size, engagement due to the manual gearbox, and the NA petrol engine. But I also noticed how cruising in that BRZ at 100KMPH was quite painful even on great roads with the huge amount of road noise and generally uncomfortable suspension. You win some and you lose some - again, thanks to the adaptive dampers I do get the best of both worlds in comfort and sportiness at the flick of a switch, but I cannot get similar levels of engagement as a true sports car. For that, I'll need to wait until I can get my hands on a small RWD Manual Petrol - since so few cars fit the bill and most of them are super old, the chances of that happening are quite slim. Until then, Trie's doing a darn good job at pulling double duty as the friends & family hauler, and also as my weekend toy

Catching the sunrise on an early morning joyride...