The Magic Of 3

Bmw's 2019 3 Series Is Shaping Up to Be a Cracking Sports Saloon. We Drive One of the Chassis Sign-off Prototypes at the Nürburgring.

- Neil Briscoe

Into a world of SUVs and crossovers, the 2019 BMW 3 Series is coming, looking to regain its crown as the best compact, sporting saloon around. Whereas that crown was an assumption for previous generations, for the new ‘G20’ model it’s less certain. While the current 3 Series has been on sale, the likes of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Audi A4, Jaguar XE, Lexus IS and even the Alfa Romeo Giulia have seriously upped their games, so the one-time unquestioned class champ is these days… well, questioned.

BMW knows this. It also knows just how important it is for the 3 Series to successfully set out its stall, in a world deserting saloons in favour of faux-by-fours. Why recently, in the US market, BMW has even had to resort to heavy discounts to keep 3 Series sales chugging along. Just the usual marketing measures necessary for a car approaching the end of its life? Or a bigger meta-trend warning that saloons are a dying species?

If they are, you wouldn’t know it when hanging around the BMW engineers tasked with creating the new 3 Series. OK, so clearly they’re going to have their best game-face on when a snoopy journalist is nearby, but even allowing for that there’s a palpable sense of excitement at this first opportunity for someone outside the BMW factory circle of trust to actually drive the new model. Alongside the predictable accoutrements of disguise tape and embargo forms, there are also grins — big, broad grins — every time we sit down to discuss the 3. This is a car that is loved by the people who make it, to the point where one engineer actually told us what a relief it is to work on a car that’s not an SUV; “all of the masses are in the right place…”