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      11-08-2019, 09:12 AM   #35
apascutia
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Drives: E90 330xi MT
Join Date: Aug 2016
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wknddrivr View Post
That is exactly what I am doing. G30 will be gone and forgotten in a week or two.

Honestly driving the two back to back, the E39 is a better driving car and feels better built. It's also quieter. No rose colored glasses...I've got both cars in my driveway and switch off between the two regularly

While the G30 is an extremely quiet car, the E39 has better sound insulation on the side and less wind noise over the driver side rear view mirror. On the G30, there's a disconnect because the windshield has acoustic treatment so the front is quiet, but the side windows do not so you hear noise coming from the side but not the front...it has always driven me a bit nuts noticing the imbalance in noise between the front and sides.

Aside from the noise, the E39 feels like a much more premium car than the G30 and my G30 is loaded with every option except the self driving crap (Napa leather, multi contour seats,premium package, m-sport, m-sport brakes etc.)

The E39 rides better (no crashing over bumps due to run flat tires) handles better, and feels overall like a better balanced car.

Although the G30 is 10 inches longer, the interior of the G30 does not feel larger than the E39...slightly wider, but definitely does not feel anymore spacious foot room feels very similar. The trunk in the G30 is a lot larger though.

If you drive a well maintained E39 back to back with a G30, it will feel like the E39 is 4-5 years older mostly due to the interior design with hard buttons everywhere...for someone who doesn't know cars, there is no way they'd guess there's a 20 year gap between these two generations...the G30 is simply not all that much better than the E39 if at all....basically the E39 is missing Spotify, a decent navigation, and heads up display....it's got everything else the G30 does and does everything just as good if not better. (seat heaters on the G30 take forever...E39 are almost instantaneous small thing but lot of small things like this add up)

I realize this post focuses a lot on features. But there's no point in comparing the driving experience...as you would imagine the E39 is much more involving and surprisingly more luxurious and refined at the same time. The G30 feels like amateur hour in comparison, mostly due to the crappy EPS steering and run flat tires. Truly believe non-RFT would vastly improve the ride quality because as I mentioned, the suspension itself seems to be properly setup.
Beautifully said! I wanted to write something similar to this too, but I stopped. You summed up what makes the E39 so great! The car as a whole feels much more special than the G30. Like I said before, the ride is so good in the E39. The quietness is one of the first things that struck me about it the first time I drove one. I got it out on the highway, and it was SO quiet! Extremely little road and wind noise. One of the quietest cars I've been in. The doors are so heavy and the thunk they make when you close them is pretty much unrivaled. Plus, it's available in a stick shift! If I could do a cooling system refresh on one and make sure the vitals of the car are operating properly, I'd gladly take one as a daily over pretty much any other new BMW. If anyone's interested, I wrote about my experience test driving one on here. Check my profile. Again, great post!
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