320d SE 5dr Estate

Efficient but highly overrated

I've had this car from new, put around 11k miles on it, and am really starting to fall out of love with it.

Firstly, the upsides. It's a nice looking car, it handles very well in bends, and the seats are comfortable. It's reasonably fuel efficient, although nothing like as good as the "official" figures suggest.

The downsides. The transmission is probably the worst of any car I have ever driven, with the exception of an old Skoda 120. Gear selection is really hit and miss, the stick is really stiff through the gate and frequently sticks before engaging. I think that for the first 8k I didn't complete a single journey without crashing the box at least once, and I dread to think what effect this has had on the 'box overall. Changing up from 2nd to 3rd was worse. It's ruined the driving experience for me, I don't trust it to successfully change down, so every gearchange now is a time consuming and painful experience. Now starting to experience a degree of clutch judder when pulling away in first.

The handling. The car really doesn't like to go in a straight line and is dramatically affected by the camber of the road and changes to the road surface. Crossing a white line cause the car to lurch, and the steering wheel to jerk. It needs to be constantly nursed, which doesn't make for relaxed driving. The runflat tyres are very noisy.

The build quality. It's not good. Materials are cheap, and trim parts are flimsy. The load cover is particularly poor, and has had to be padded out with pieces of neoprene to mitigate the constant rattles.

Dash illumination: It's difficult to read the radio under partially overcast weather conditions. The brightness adjusts depending on backlight, so it's clear either at night or bright sunlight. In between, the display fades and can't be seen. No adjustment is possible.

All in all, I can't recommend it. I know the press love it, I don't know why. It can be driven hard, and it's fun for a while. But I'm not looking forward to owning it for the next three years.

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