It's difficult to find anything that isn't perfect or at least approaching perfection in the way the new 3 Series Convertible relates to its driver and occupants. Instruments are the picture of unfettered communication. They're old-school analogs, with white-on-black alpha-numerics and bathed at night in BMW's traditional, orange-red lighting. Perhaps the speedometer is a bit crowded, with an outer ring for miles per hour and a busy inner ring for kilometers per hour, but in this case the familiar, easily scanned white needles breed comfort.
Our main complaint with the interior centers around the push-button start and stop. We think it's a gimmick that adds complexity without adding value to the driving experience.
The audio and climate controls on the center stack could be positioned higher for easier access, and the rocker buttons for station presets and assorted functions demand more concentration than they should, but beyond these minor wishes, that area is faultless. Even the iDrive knob, which in the 2007 3 Series also controls a GPS-based navigation system, is comfortably positioned for driver or passenger to operate.
The front seats look right and at first feel comfortable but firm, with medium-deep side bolsters and, thanks to the manually extendable bottom cushions, provide ideal thigh support for occupants of any stature. Beware, though, of spending long hours belted into them. For many, their tightly drawn dimensions aren't perfect fits. This is especially true of the sport seats, which left us squirming in quest of a relaxing position less than two hours into a daylong drive. It's as if, in an otherwise commendable effort to offer an infinite spectrum of adjustments, both manual and power, the seats have been packed with so much hardware, in terms of wiring, pumps and bladders, that they've been left with inadequate flexibility for any body other than the master mold after which they're patterned. Head room, both front and rear, is respectable, with more than enough clearance in front even for people several inches taller than six feet.
The rear seats are adequate only for short stature adults or children into maybe their early teens, especially with anybody taller than 5-foot-6 in the front seats.
Against the Volkswagen Eos and the Volvo C70, the BMW 3 Series Convertible compares favorably, measuring within an inch in headroom and legroom in both front and rear seats in all but the C70's rear-seat legroom, which bests the 3 Series by a full two inches.
Cubbies and convenience features abound. Front-seat occupants get as many as three cup holders, one (which the iDrive displaces) in the console between the seats and two wimpy contraptions that pop out of the dash on the passenger side above the glove box. Two cup holders hidden under a flip-cover in the rear portion of the full-length center console serve rear seat occupants. Both front and rear seats have a covered storage bin in their respective center consoles. The front doors host hard plastic, flip-out map pockets. A lockable glove box accommodates owner's manuals and feature guides, a re-chargeable flashlight and a spare key bracket. Front seatbacks have mesh pouches for magazines.
The trunk offers more flexibility and more room than appearances first suggest, albeit in a quirky sort of way. For lowering or raising the top, a process managed by a single button and consuming less than half a minute each way, it opens like a clamshell, hinged at the rear. For use as a trunk it opens normally, hinged at the front and with an impressively low lift-over height, making it easy to load and unload groceries and heavier cargo. With the top up, it will hold a golf bag, though longitudinally, stuffed into the cargo bag that comes with the optional rear seat pass-through and that extends into the passenger compartment. This means, of course, the clubs' owner will have to share, but only with one other, as using the pass-through requires folding the rear seatback. With the top down, count on maybe a medium-sized duffel bag, and make sure the top is put down before stowing anything. The 3 Series splits the difference in usable trunk space, coming out ahead of the Eos (with 6.6 cubic feet) but short of the C70 (12.8 cubic feet).
