BMW Z4 M40i Review: Sublime Even Without Sunshine

Flat out, the BMW Z4 M40i might be my favorite car I've ever driven for an extended period of time, even when every environmental factor was seemingly conspiring against me and the Beamer to sully my enjoyment. That's a bold statement, but I have the evidence trail to justify it. Despite being cold the majority of the week, culminating in some snowfall, my time with the BMW didn't consist of anything that exciting. I just treated the Z4 as my daily-driver, and yet — whether a long trip or a short one — it made me laugh each and every time I got into the driver's seat.

The modern Z4 is powered by a 382-horsepower twin-turbo 3-liter inline-six, the same engine seen in the excellent Toyota Supra we reviewed a few months back. Here, it's connected to an 8-speed automatic transmission and an M-sport differential. According to BMW, the Z4 can accelerate to 60 miles per hour in 3.9 seconds. Even without access to advanced speed recording equipment other than the Z4's speedometer, I can attest that it has absolutely no trouble at all reaching highway speeds and kicking up road salt when I mashed the accelerator. 

Much to my chagrin and my ability to perceive when a car is losing traction, the Z4 was equipped with Continental SportContact 4 tires which only carry the slightest impression of a tread to meet legal roadworthiness standards. Would the Continentals grip the pavement on a nice Spring day without a hitch? The answer is probably yes. Do the tires accomplish the same feat when it's 13 degrees out in February? I can say, from sufficient experience, the answer is no. 

The aforementioned mashing of the accelerator was sometimes accompanied by the car going absolutely nowhere in the forward direction and everywhere at once sideways. In short, the tires probably weren't the best choice for Southern Pennsylvania in Winter. At the risk of upsetting my mom who will likely be reading this and my car insurance agent, it was really fun when the back end of the BMW kicked out from loss of traction and the engine howled in protest.

With a car that has as much power on tap and as little tire tread as the BMW, it garners a healthy amount of respect when you are taking it through its paces. I am, frankly, not used to driving a car as capable as the Z4, especially when it's acting as my daily driver. It requires wisdom to operate in a way that doesn't end with you and a nearly $80,000 BMW leaving the road in a manner that the manufacturer did not intend. English poet William Cowper said "Knowledge—a rude, unprofitable mass, the mere materials with which Wisdom builds." Wisdom definitely built in me over the course of the week. My daily driver is a 2017 Chevy Cruze, a car that is perhaps diametrically opposed to what a car like the BMW Z4 represents, at least when it comes to performance and practicality.

On that subject, the BMW is not at all practical. It is effectively a GT car, a grand tourer, in that it's best suited for long journeys so the cargo space can hold at least a bag or two in the trunk. The interior, swathed in Magma Red Vernasca leather as it was, could barely accommodate anything more than an iPad or a Taco Bell bag when there was another person in the passenger seat. The fact that it's a drop top only further exacerbated its practicality issues. To be fair to BMW, the Z4 was perfectly comfortable to drive in cold weather and the wind noise was thankfully pretty minimal. I think it would be difficult to have a BMW Z4 as your only form of transportation, although I would very much like to meet the person for whom that is the case.

Alex Hevesy/SlashGear

It may not be fair, however, to fault a two-seater German sports car for not having ample interior space. There was one efficiency metric that did surprise me, and that was fuel economy. Despite the engine's considerable grunt and ability to make a lot of noise, the Z4 was remarkably fuel efficient. When driving in the default "Comfort" mode, I got around 26 miles per gallon. When switched to Eco Pro Mode, I was getting over 30 miles per gallon.

On the subject of drive modes, the Z4 has three and the modes are not slight changes or placebos that impart only the vaguest feeling of augmented performance changes. With "Eco Pro" active, the acceleration was deadened significantly and the car gently wafted forwards instead of howling through the night. "Comfort Mode," as the default, was pleasant and easy to drive during normal jaunts out and about, yet it was certainly capable of getting angry when provoked with the accelerator pedal.

Like flipping on the afterburners of a fighter jet, the "Sport" mode turned the Z4 into an almost different car entirely. Suddenly the exhaust gets significantly louder, and every time you lift your foot off the accelerator to slow down the transmission downshifts, that action punctuated by a cacophony of cracks and pops from the exhaust. It was endlessly entertaining to decelerate under bridges so the sound reverberated even more.

Speaking of transmissions, BMW's only update for the 2024 model year was to add a long-overdue six-speed manual transmission option to the Z4, which we drove back in December. 

Now here's where we must recount the primary downside of the BMW Z4 M40i, and that's the price. The Z4 is built in Graz, Austria and for all of that wonderful European engineering comes a hefty price tag. The Z4, with its optional 3.0-liter BMW M TwinPower inline-6, starts at $65,300. Plus, because it's BMW, options are as abundant as they are pricey. This Z4's "Frozen Grey II Metallic" paint added $3,600 to the total. The Magma Red Vernasca leather tacked on $1,500, while the driver assistance package adds $700. The ShadowLine Package, which consists of black mirror caps, adaptive headlights, and a few extra pieces of black trim goes for $950.

The Premium Package that bundles remote start and parking assists will set you back an additional $1,350. The 19-inch "cerium grey" wheels are a $600 option. The BMW 50 years of M Performance badges are a cool $200. The wireless charging pad is $500. Add an $875 Harmon Kardon sound system and a $995 destination charge, and we arrive at this BMW's $76,570 price tag. Ouch.

The Z4 is not at all a normal car like my aforementioned Chevy Cruze, nor the number of family-oriented crossovers and SUVs that saturate the current market. It's a BMW M Performance roadster with exactly one job, living up to BMW's motto of the "Ultimate Driving Machine," and it does exactly that and no less.

To most car shoppers, nearly $80,000 is an egregious amount of money to drop on a car that can really only act as a seasonal toy outside of the right time of year and climate. I can say with a fair degree of certainty that late-February in Southern Pennsylvania is maybe not the best area for the BMW to show its worth. In fact, it might be the single worst possible winter car I can think of outside of supercars (with the exception of the Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato) and old muscle cars.

If I was driving the Z4 in late May along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, I could pretty safely say that there are few other vehicles better for that task that don't have Ferrari or Lamborghini badges on the hood. The Z4 is an incredible car. As a professional in this industry, I try to keep my composure and try to remain as emotionally unattached from cars as possible, but I can't help but think about the Z4 every day since I last drove it.