BMW's warmed-up four-seat convertible is among the last of a dying breed – but it's still excellent
There's a slightly unexpected air of the commemorative around the latest BMW 4 Series. Back when even Ford, Peugeot and Vauxhall were offering their humdrum hatches with a folding roof, you wouldn’t have thought the market for an everyday convertible could ever dry up. But here we are in 2024, with scant few options outside the supercar and top-drawer sports car segments for adjusting your mullet on the move. The Lexus LC? Dead. Audi A5? Gone. TT? See ya. Hell, even the Volkswagen T-Roc Cabriolet is for the chop in the coming months, and there’s a good while to wait until the Mini Convertible returns. No word yet on a reborn Vauxhall Cascada. Were it not for the new Ford Mustang, Mercedes-Benz CLE and this freshened-up BMW 4 Series, you’d be pretty much stuck for an everyday, drop-top four-seater south of £70,000. And even within this niche, consolidation conspires to quash variety. The 4 Series is no longer available with a diesel engine, and petrol options are now limited to the rear-driven 420i with 184bhp, or the 369bhp four-wheel-drive M440i driven here. You can, though, still have both as a coupé, a cabrio or in four-door Gran Coupé form. The 4 Series is, of course, the lower, wider-striding, meaner-looking alter ego of the 3 Series - with stiffened, extra-tantalising handling poise and an air of exclusivity about its two-door cabin, the combination of which has been the BMW coupé calling card since the early 1970s.And rather than any recent forerunner coupé, it’s a 1970s antecedent of the 4 Series that BMW’s designers were referring to with the new car’s oh-so-contentious, upright and in-your-face radiator grille: the Wilhelm Hofmeister-penned E9-generation 3.0 CSi. Read on to find out if the new range-topping M440i xDrive can do justice, on the road and against the timing gear, to such a celebrated ancestor.
