So I grew my fleet this week! My E90 328, which I've owned for the last 8 years, is getting up in miles and let me down a week ago. I'd been holding off on searching for it's replacement, but I realized it was time. She's not going anywhere BTW, it'll be my daughters car soon enough.
I tossed around plenty of options. Should I scratch my itch for a M3? Sadly, I need something more practical that I can easily fit a hockey bag into. How about a SUV? As much as I wanted to like something like a X5M or Audi SQ5, I'm so used to a RWD 6MT E90. Either would have given me the utility value, but I wanted a car. Golf R? I really wanted one of those to work, but too small.
I thought and researched about what to do until I remembered a BMW test drive event where I had driven a 428i Gran Coupe and remembered loving the car. Anyway, a quick search later and a Estoril Blue 435i popped up in my area that was perfect! 3 years off lease with just over 11k on the clock and pretty much loaded: M Sport, Dynamic Handling Pack, M Sport Brakes, Technology Pack, Driver Assistance Pack, Cold Weather Pack, LED Lighting Pack, etc..
I found it right before I was supposed to get on a plane for a business trip so I had to wait a week to go see it, but I was pretty much sold once I had the chance to drive it.
Now she's home, and I'm starting to think about one thing: Winter. The car was ordered with 19" 442M wheels, and being up in NJ I'm going to need snows. I was shopping winter wheel and tire packages, but then I came up with an idea..
My E90 is currently wearing a staggered set of 18" 193M wheels. Since I'm giving the car to my daughter, I had planned to pull them and put the original 17's on it. I got to thinking, why not refinish the 193M wheels and use them for winters on the new car? 18's will clear the brakes, but there's the question of offset.
The 442M (oops, not 440M) wheels on the car currently are 8x19 ET36 front and 8.5x19 ET47 rear. The 193M wheels are 8x18 ET34 and 8.5x18 ET37. I'm not really worried about the fronts, but the rear offset obviously pushes the wheel out a little further. I'm going to try and mount one tomorrow to look at clearance, but any thoughts from the group if that's going to be problematic? I plan to run a narrower tire on the rear (225 v. 255) which *should* help?
I also noticed Tire Rack lists a possible wheel size of 18x9 ET39 for the rear of the car. Closer in offset to the stock wheel, but also wider. Is my logic correct to assume the wider wheel would affect offset too?
Anyway, pics of the new ride never hurt!
