[GoranBonn]

Hi all,

long time lurker here, finally registered and wanted to introduce myself & more importantly my car. Here she is doing what she's built for:



The car is a CPO bought 2013 330d in sapphire black. It is a no line, debadged car which on the outside looks very unassuming, which is precisely what my wife wanted - nothing flashy. Inside however, she's loaded with all of the gadgets I wanted to have. Adaptive cruise control, surround view, head up display, speed limit info, blind spot monitoring, comfort access - the whole list. I also wanted light leather, and finding a car with all of those boxes ticked was not entirely easy. The one I found had 27k km on the clock when I got it beginning 2015, and by now I've gone up to 56k km of very enjoyable driving.

The one thing I don't have is adaptive suspension. I tried it albeit very briefly on a round-the-block drive of another 330d I test drove, but that one didn't have surround view. I didn't find much difference in the adaptive suspension feel between the modes, so I went with the surround view.

However, since buying the car I've been bitten by the Nürburgring bug - a consequence of living approximately 60 km from it - and while 2 years ago I wasn't interested at all in sporty suspensions, now I'm starting to consider my options.

Btw, the photo above is from one of the 'ring photographers that lurk there every weekend and take photos of everyone passing by. The next day you can buy your photo from them. This one turned out excellent, the lighting and reflections on the sapphire black really make the car pop. That was the first weekend after I put on turbine 18" wheels and Michelin PSS tires.

No major mods on the car. The first thing I did was to replace the aluminum trim with which the car came with, and put in wood trim. (In my opinion, wood contrasts great with light leather, while silver contrasts well with black leather.)

I wanted to get the fineline horizontally striped wood trim, but couldn't find it on local ebay in Germany, so the burl walnut had to do. I ended up selling the aluminum trim for more than I paid the wood trim for

One additional mod not seen here is that I added the chrome lining around the radio/aircon controls, to match the chrome stripe of the wood trim. I didn't change the front, just got one of those cheap chinese ebay stick-on chrome trims, and you'd never be able to tell it's not original.

[CazuaLLUK]

Very nice!!

[.BMW.]

Very nice F30!

[vladberca]

Are you satisfied with the stock power? Did you took into consideration the MPPK?
Also the M Sport steering wheel looks very nice!
Other than that, have fun on track 👍

[GoranBonn]

Originally Posted by vladberca

Are you satisfied with the stock power? Did you took into consideration the MPPK?
Also the M Sport steering wheel looks very nice!
Other than that, have fun on track 👍

I'm coming from a 2008 Honda Civic sedan with 140 hp, so I find the power and particularly torque from the diesel plenty enough. Everything the car does is completely effortless.

If I had more horsepower on the 'ring, I wouldn't know what do do with it. The few laps I did, traction control stayed on. Racing your daily driver can easily become an expensive exercise, one I'm not keen to do. Rather I foresee getting a (cheaper) 2nd sporty car for the weekends.

When choosing the car I didn't want any of the M badges, cosmetic or otherwise - I was at the time aiming at a comfortable daily driver. The M steering wheel doesn't do it for me, I'm afraid, I'm quite fine with the normal one.

I do admit the suspension is bouncy and floaty though, and going from runflats to normal tires only helped so much. That would be my main reason to look into any suspension changes. Well, on the ring, there was significant body roll as well, but it's more about the general bounciness rather than trying to turn it into a track car.