2003 BMW Z4 2.5 SMG Long-term Test Wrap Up

Two-seaters are in trouble. Or so claimed a piece in trade journal Automotive News. I came across the grim report just as I sat down to write the final chapter of our year with the Z4, and it was shocking to see that year-to-year sales of such cars as the Mercedes-Benz SLK, Porsche Boxster and Z4 had fallen by about 20 percent. The whys and wherefores of this drop, as explained by analysts quoted in the article, include: price, styling and aging model lines, but there's more at work here--functionality. Two-seaters are simply too limited in their practicality to be acceptable for the modern American lifestyle.

We are a nation of consumers. We own a lot of stuff, and most of us are intent on owning more. And we like to take a lot of that stuff along when we travel, because to us travel means recreation. Hence the popularity of the SUV and pickup truck. Americans don't care much about looking macho with these big machines, despite the TV commercials. We're not trying to be the bad boy on the block. We actually use them to drag along all that stuff.

To be fair, blaming the Z4's size is too simplistic an answer for a deeper question: What is it about the Z4 in particular that has knocked down sales from more than 20,000 in 2003 to just over 7,300 in the first six months of 2004?

If there were more Editor Collins types out there, it might be a different story. She, in fact, loved it and avers that her single lifestyle was rarely strained by the Z4's limited passenger and luggage room (though there were those times when a girlfriend's trusty canine companion, too large for a lap, had to be left behind, and the poor pooch would stare mutely at the receding Z4's tail, its drooping ears saying all that needed to be said).

A major plus with the car, said Collins, was its rock-solid build quality--nary a squeak nor rattle disturbed her al fresco motoring--and its reliability. Nothing, nada, zilch went wrong with the Z4 in our year with it. The only required repair was replacement of a front foglight lens after a rock thrown up by a semi bull's-eyed it.

Of course, there were those among us who asked for the keys once and then rarely asked again. It wasn't that the Z4 was judged to be crap; it simply didn't fit the needs of those who found little use for it--family men, recreationists with lots of stuff, we who visit home improvement stores more often than the grocery store. To this group, size definitely mattered.

A more specific complaint, especially from passengers, concerned the car's very stiff suspension and the wind noise. Hey, it's a convertible sports car, people. Buy a Buick if you want somnolence instead of sportiness.

To be fair, again, perhaps this kind of reaction also points to another reason why these two-seaters are not flying out showroom doors: Americans are becoming almost obsessively concerned with personal comfort. We invented the term "comfort zones," and apply the concept to everything from gated communities to charter schools to our vehicles. This is the reason why people who don't have a lot of stuff drive big SUVs.

We need to be comfortable to feel that our lives are running smoothly. Luxury is comfort, comfort is a luxury, and most of us want the hard edges of our lives to be smoothed by the stuff we surround ourselves with. Exposing yourself to the elements in a convertible is often not comfortable.

Okay, end of rant; back to the Z4. It is a substantially improved car from the Z3, but this progress came at a cost--the car's cost. In times of economic uncertainty, a car's price, combined with the "don't really need it" element of buying a sports car, is probably enough to turn away a good percentage of potential buyers.

And then there's the competition. Shoppers for European sports cars are pretty astute, and most know that a new Mercedes-Benz SLK is upon us and the current Boxster is also due for replacement. This means that some will wait for the new cars while others will press dealers for good deals on the outgoing models.

This leaves the Z4 in a kind of nether region of acceptance. Its styling invited considerable debate when it first appeared, but those 20,000 first-year sales seems to indicate the flame-cut contours were as appealing as they were offputting. However, a fickle market can quickly turn on the unconventional, and the emotional appeal of a sports car's design can turn cold in quick order.

Has that happened to the Z4? We hope not. Any dent in sports car sales, no matter the manufacturer, is a depressing socioeconomic indicator...of tough times, of a nation's flagging sex drive, of a turn away from the few reasons we care about passenger vehicles.

Apparently it's not enough just to build a great car, capable of providing more thrills than most drivers' skills can appreciate.