BMW 420i review: Should you buy the base model?

This report is for you, considering buying a BMW 420i, or any other luxury five-seat sedan in Australia. Here’s what you should know..

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Anybody shopping for an Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus or even a Genesis should understand why the BMW 420i is a very good place to start when buying a luxury five-seat sedan.

I spent a week in the 420i (courtesy of BMW Australia), and, as with most base models I’ve ever tested, I really wanted to detest it for being under-powered and generally nasty on the standard equipment front. 

I wanted to tell you it was just a cynical badge delivery system, and not much else. I wondered why BMW even suggested that I should drive one. ‘Don’t they know who I am?’ I wondered.

Instead, it’s actually a very nice car - especially if you’re the right potential owner. (We’ll get to that.) The BMW 420i is not especially ideal if you’re a driving dynamics nutcase and all-round performance vehicle fanatic, but not everyone is.

So, in this report, I’m going to focus on who this car is right for, not telling you about the distinctive grille (because you’ve got eyes), and beauty is such a subjective determination in any case.

I’ve done a detailed report on the 430i here >>. Bear in mind that the 420 and the 430 have essentially the same engine - BMW has simply put an electronic restriction on the 420 because the 430 is $15,000 more, and people spending that much extra on a car generally expect it to perform better.

If you’re considering a plug-in hybrid BMW, try the 330e PHEV: full report here >>

POWERTRAINS

The 420 and 430 are both 2.0-litre turbo petrol engines drinking 95 RON petrol, and powering the rear wheels via an eight-speed auto. If you drop about $45k more, over and above the $75 you’ll probably pay to drive away in the 420i, you’ll get into the 440i xDrive. And that is a properly special driver’s car.

The term ‘xDrive’ is BMW code for all-wheel drive. And the 440 comes with a turbo inline six displacing three litres. And you need to feed it 98 RON, which you can afford, because you just dropped $120k on a car - so stop complaining about the price of petrol.

So, in real-world terms, If you spend $15k more, you get about 33 per cent more performance out of the 430, at normal driving revs. And if you spend $45k more, you get more than double the performance and twice as many tyres pumping tractive effort to the next speeding fine.

Now, a lot of reviewers will tell you that the 420i is lacking in performance. Problem with that is most reviewers are proper performance enthusiasts. They’re not doing this job for the pay, they wanna drive cars - the faster the better. I am one of those enthusiasts, but I do try to see cars from the perspective of the well-adjusted non-enthusiast, in cases such as this. Performance is not what the majority of car buyers desire - they want practicality and reliability, with a sprinkle of ‘light joy’ in the performance department.

Certainly, if you hop out of a 440i after driving it hard and fast, and jump immediately into a 420i, it is going to feel substantially slower. But I have to say, a fully loaded Mazda3 Astina with the 2.5 atmo engine, which is widely regarded as a great, engaging mainstream car to drive, is slightly slower than a 420i in a straight line, at normal driving revs. And yeah, if you rev its hard, the Mazda is slightly faster.

Context is important here. They’re close. Line ball, overall.

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LIVING WITH A BASE BEEMER

So, in the real world, the 420i is actually fine - better than fine, if your main focus is luxury and refinement. Because it’s both of those things: luxurious and refined. And it’s got the look. The world will see you’ve stepped up from a Toyota. If that matters to you. 

The 420i is quiet, it’s got a decent boot, it’s fuel efficient, it offers crisp handling, and has great ergonomics. 

Although, the steering wheel is a bit of a grip challenge - many people will find it a bit chunky. But if that’s your main ergonomic criticism of a car, face facts, they’ve done a very good job in every other respect.

The 420 has an M Sport body kit, which looks good and makes you feel like you’re part of the club, even though a proper M car is a serious piece of performance machinery. Light, low, fast - always ready to show you how tired and slow you’ve become. Behind the wheel of an M car, you’re always not worthy of it.

I did spend three glorious weeks in an M in 2021. Here’s my 2021 BMW M3 Competition Review: Ultimate Sedan Supercar >>

Some reviewers say the 420 is an example of form over function - but I’d say that depends how narrow your definition of function is. If function includes refinement, luxury features and good handling with high levels of safety, then there’s plenty of ‘function’ in this car. Those kinds of comments, which you will hear if you’re seriously in the market and inflicting endless reviews upon yourself, are pretty narrow.

The infotainment system - awesome. And, frankly I think most carmaker infotainment is hideous. Even if everyone at Google went on a four month LSD bender, the next generation of Android Auto would still be substantially better than most carmaker infotainment user interfaces. But BMW’s system is pretty slick.

And the instrument cluster is different in a good way, not a try-hard way. It’s so helpful projecting the GPS between the speedo and the tacho. It’s also very useful having the music playlist projected on the head-up display, which makes it dead easy to skip Celine Dion without taking your eyes off the road.

The instrument cluster and the infotainment will require a period of accommodation - as will the transmission shifter - but they’re all excellent, once you get used to them. ‘Different’ can be better - but you have to make friends with it - proving, perhaps, that first impressions are not always right.

And thankfully, BMWs interior designers have seen fit to implement textured aluminium on some high-wear surfaces, for example, in the centre console area, and elsewhere, and thus have avoided cursing the car with endless piano black - which looks great on the showroom floor but gets scratched when you look at it the wrong way. Despite being the entry-level model, they haven’t cheaped out entirely, which you would expect of a mainstream brand. In the current climate, it would’ve been easy for the accountants to say BMW base models get the scratch-prone plastic grand piano veneer.

So, props to them, for that.

Take note of the buttons marked ‘1’ to ‘8’ under the heating: they’re A/C and ventilation controls. They’re not just radio presets, which you might expect. They’re actually fully customisable buttons - you can program them to be just about any configurable setting. Navigation setting, infotainment setting - whatever. Like take me to the John Wick’s gunsmith (button 1) via my favourite massage therapist (button 2) and let’s pump out Marylin Manson’s fattest fat beats (button 3). And let’s avoid any vegan restaurants (button 4). Perfect day out, right there. If it’s configurable by way of menu deep-dive, one of those buttons can be set to whatever your heart desires.

And if that kind of thing is all a bit hard for you, perhaps because you’re a politician or a car company CEO, ask the dealership and get them to sort it out.

ARE YOU THE RIGHT BUYER?

So, who is the 420i actually right for? If you want the cachet of the brand, and the dare-to-be different snout, plus more than adequate luxury and refinement, then in my book, $75k is a pretty fair exchange for what you get. And it’ll be good enough in a straight line, and even better in ride and handling.

Here’s the bit where I save you $10-$15k, as promised. The performance of the 420i is adequate - it’s actually up the good end of ‘adequate’ - the spritely end. Nobody will ever say it’s gutless. Although, someone might say it’s not nearly as fast as my M4, to which you might retort: ‘Yes, but my tyres aren’t $2000 a corner, and you did pay $120,000 more for it up front.’

The 420i is good, but it’s not going to satisfy a performance enthusiast. So, if you just like a really nice car that drives well, with a premium badge, and distinctive looks, one way or the other, this is right for you, and the 430 will be $15k extra in overkill. Money you really don’t need to spend. Personally, I would spend it, but I’m a performance enthusiast. 

Frankly, you’d be better off dropping the $15k on any of the numerous options you can have on the 420i, like every other premium car. It’s part of the purchase experience. It’s an endless list of toys - right down to the laser headlamps that use actual lasers. So, you kind of have to brace for impact against that, particularly if this is your first premium car purchase.

And bear in mind that, face-to-face at the dealership, the conversation often goes against how much you’d like to spend. They’ll tell you a cleanskin base 420i is in stock, or there’s one fully optioned with sunroof, different bespoke leather, bigger wheels, red brake calipers and carbon fibre inserts - which they try to convince you to buy and leave a deposit for. Then they try to ‘offer’ you a discount on that one - which costs an extra $14,000 or something.

Typically, it’s just a ‘nice to have’ persuasive conversation they’ll try to have with you. But, deep down, you know you don’t need the kicking boom-box stereo with amplifier and DJ sound mixer panel.

The back seat is a bit of a cramped ‘no go’ zone, but is good for a mother-in-law or kids.

Unfortunately, there's no adaptive cruise control on this car standard - nor, I think, on the 430i - and I just cross-checked that on Redbook.com.au. You have to option it; which will cost you a small chunk of extra cash.

It’s not until you buy the 440i xDrive that you get adaptive cruise, standard - and to me that is a glaring omission, considering the overall utility of that feature, and its proliferation in mainstream cars costing well under half of the cost of a 420i. To me, that’s a real shame.

There’s so much a 420i gets right, especially in the white-with-black-wheels look.

So, look, if you can live with this car’s love/hate front grille, and maybe you’re working to a budget for your salary packaging, maybe you need a nice car to stick a client in the front of from time to time - then the BMW 420i will not disappoint. You certainly won’t give off that ‘more money than brains’ kinda look.

But if a car, to you, is about the cachet, the look, the luxury - the 420i is definitely a starter, and of course, one of the other things about BMW ownership I should mention is: Here in ‘Straya, at least, my experience of it is, BMW does a much better job looking after owners who have legitimate problems with their cars.

I don’t get many BMW complaints, frankly, and with the few I do get, whenever I’ve contacted BMW on behalf of an owner, they respond and act in a way that, sadly, cannot be said of Audi/Volkswagen, or Mercedes-Benz. This would be easy for those other brands to fix. It’s a cultural thing inside those organisations, as I understand it, as opposed to Lexus and BMW which just solve problems for their customers.

So that’s it for the 420i - it’s objectively good, but you have to be the right kind of user to be right for it.

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