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I'm someone who has owned a CTS-V, E60 M5, and both an E92 335i and now an F30 335i (M-sport).
Here are my thoughts. BMW has been impacted by a few things. Changes in consumer tastes/preferences, safety requirements, and regulations.
To cope with this, BMW's strategy has changed, for example efficient dynamics. We would have laughed at this 20 years ago for a BMW. You've got expensive gas, miles per gallon requirements in the US, and growing environmental sentiments where BMW's biggest market is. It unfortunately had to adjust. That included a much more concerted effort to improve gas mileage/energy usage when faced with the need to add weight due to consumers' tastes demanding more electronics/features and safety laws requiring more things to be added to the car. More weight from safety stuff and amenities means beefier drivetrain/braking components and bigger/more powerful engines to compensate which does what? Add more weight. What does more weight do? Reduce gas mileage and the driving experience. Then to compensate for the extra weight which hurts gas mileage what does BMW do? Give sportline 335i cars skinny 225 tires on back and front, things like electronic steering, run flat tires eliminating a spare, etc. What does this do in turn? Further reduce the driving experience to offset the aforementioned gas mileage challenges.
What should have been done in response? For starters, BMW dropped the ball with the N55 engine. The engine is one of the aspects that make driving BMWs so awesome. I thought the N54 was an awesome step for performance, and to follow that up what did BMW give us? An N55 that while torquier off the line, makes less power than the N54 motor. So here we are, in 2013 model years, 6 years after the N54 debuted in the 3 series, with engines making less power than they used to. This in part allowed the competition to catch up. Performance package power should have been standard on the N55 for the new F30s as a way to help BMW keep its performance edge.
Not a fan of the steering which was one of the biggest letdowns of this new car, and maybe BMW should have done a better job testing or at least given us options to have a much better steering feel through a setting adjustment at the cost of MPG. The F30 335i car is longer than the E90 which makes it feel a bit bigger even though it's actually s shade lighter. The lack of a limited slip differential is a joke in a car like the 335i, another big mistake that should have been remedied long ago. That's something that would really help the car get back some of that handling feeling we long for.
You can start to see that BMW seems to be moving towards a business model that focuses more on profitability than anything else. What do most consumers want? Gas mileage, technology/amenities, comfort and reasonable pricing for example.
We can sit here and gripe about what BMW is doing wrong. But we on this board are the minority, the true enthusiast who doesn't just drive to go from point A to point B. What BMW is doing will help it sell more cars in the long run. The current 3 series is a much better all around car than the E90 for daily driving. Literally does everything better except steer and accelerate. My biggest complaint is that there's not enough of what made the 3 series great being transferred to each successive vehicle, and not enough performance improvement of late. Light weight vehicles that were fun to toss around and had soul is what made this car special. I think BMW could have done a better job incorporating the ol' recipe into future models. A few steering tweaks, a bump in power, a limited slip diff, and some lighter weight materials would go a long way to making this car the undisputed leader in its class.
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