2004 BMW 330CI SMG

I am not a BMW snob.

I've never owned one.

I've never popped the collar on my polo shirt.

I don't own Ray Bans, ironically or otherwise.

I hope you could say that I'm just an average car nerd who appreciates fine automobiles. Which brings me to the 2004 BMW 330CI SMG.

The one I drove was blue with tan interior. I've driven a couple European cars, so there were no surprises from the seats to the switchgear to the HVAC and radio. I did notice the absence of a clutch pedal, though, so I begrudgingly shifted the car into 'R' and prepared my left leg for a long, boring, and ultimately unfulfilling drive. Once out of the parking space, I selected what should have been drive and hustled off with an air of immediacy that I hadn't planned.

Then I noticed that the car was revving out to 6,000 rpm.

Some of you are unaware of this, but the average vehicle doesn't like to rev that high when cool. Further, not many automatics willingly hold first gear with such stubborn determination. In a blind panic, I checked the shifter and noticed the absence of a 'D' (common indicator of Drive). Running out of options, and now rapidly decelerating but holding the same gear, I grabbed one of the silver flappy paddles hiding behind the steering wheel. Second gear engaged, the engine stopped its painful yowl, and I caught my breath.

Never, in my 17 years of legal driving (well, most of it was legal), had I met so confounded an automatic. I double checked, but no clutch pedal was apparent, but neither was there an automatic function. Someone had chosen to build a car that was the worst of both worlds, neither automatic nor manual. I felt like I had just started eating a veggie burger with bacon. And what, exactly, is the benefit there?

As I came to a stop at an intersection, I wrapped my head around the idiocy of the car I was driving and succinctly stalled it. You see, my dear friends, this idiot gearbox was still in second gear. This brought up a whole new frustration.

Some of you have driven cars without clutch pedals. Of those cars, some have the misguided belief that using flappy paddles to shift between the gears is 'sporty' in a way that physically grabbing the shifter in the middle of the car and selecting '2' rather than 'D' just isn't, even though it has the exact same affect. In those cars, the flappy paddle on the right shifts 'plus', while the flappy paddle on the left shifts 'minus'. I am sadly familiar with this system. Surprise; the SMG in BMW's 330CI doesn't use anything even remotely similar.

To my horror, I watched the left paddle produce a blip on the dash that went from '2' to '3' as I clicked it back. I tested the right paddle and increased by a magnitude of 1 once more. Perplexed, I tried pushing rather than pulling the paddle and to my immediate relief, watched the numbers drop.

I restarted the car, selected '1' and drove away to my destination. That's when I found the third and final flaw in the SMG system; no matter how I tried, I couldn't get the car to change gear without bobbling my head like a student driver on his first try out. Seriously, I haven't shifted this sloppy even with a tweaked left knee at night in the woods with a V6 Toyota running on 3 cylinders and the synchro between 1^st and 2^nd being totally fragged. And I've been in that position twice.

In the end, I dropped the car off with no desire to ever drive it again. I don't have any impression of any other aspect of the vehicle. The engine may be lovely, the car possibly well balanced, but I'll never know because I'll take a sharp stick to the upper right arm before I enter that car again. And I've already taken a stick to the arm, but like driving the 2004 BMW 330CI SMG, I'll never make that mistake again.