Category: Convertibles 
Price Range: £31,260 to £41,050
Exceptional refinement roof up or down, ride quality, build integrity.
Huge weight blunts performance and driving enjoyment, disappointing looks.
A fine car and better than its immediate rivals, but still asks the owner to pay a considerable dynamic penalty for the pleasure of top-down motoring.
Truth is, while the 335i Convertible is pleasing to drive, we were hoping and even expecting a slightly hungrier attitude to the open road. It's not that it lacks grip or behaves in a wayward fashion if you push it: as you would expect, the convertible's manners are impeccable. No, the problem is that it carries a certain sense of inertia with it, coupled with accurate but slightly numbed responses to your inputs. The explanation is that in the process of turning a 3-Series Coupe into a 3-Series Convertible, the car has put on 200kg, a vast amount of weight that not even BMW's engineers can disguise.
So while you can hurl it around, it responds to such treatment with muted enthusiasm rather than the unbridled eagerness you might expect from such an apparently sporting car from such an undoubtedly sporting marque. Yes it's probably good enough for most people interested in this kind of car, for even BMW admits its convertible customers tend not to be the serious drivers attracted to many of its other products, but we still think the car would benefit from a slightly sharpened focus on the road ahead.
Looked at on paper, the 335i Convertible appears to have enough to make proper petrolheads start dribbling. Under the bonnet is a 3.0-litre, twin-turbo, straight-six motor pushing out 306bhp, enough to catapult even the portly convertible to 62mph in 5.8sec and into its limiter at 155mph.
But on the road, while the engine is responsive, entirely lacking in turbo lag, and the owner of a very impressive exhaust note, ultimately the car feels less quick than these figures suggest. Yes it's rapid, but anything capable of pulling a sub-6.0sec sprint to 62mph should feel dramatic, and it doesn't. Perhaps BMW is to be complimented for producing a car that's so effortless even its driver is unaware of its performance, but we'd rather have the sense of occasion. Still there's no quibbling about the breadth of the engine's powerband, which offers meaningful shove from 2,000rpm all the way to its 7,000rpm redline.
Indeed so flexible is this engine, you find yourself using the standard six-speed manual gearbox more out of the pleasure of sampling its short, slick shift than any specific need. Braking performance is predictably exemplary.
