Took mine out for a blast yesterday across from newcastle to Alston (fantastic roads) and found out a lot more about the car.
Chassis is brilliant, even in light rain the grip is huge, struggled to find the cars limit of grip. Sport mode is great, steering feels very natural, not old fashioned BMW feel but very intuitive and fast. 8 speeds are too many as you find yourself getting a little lost but a louder exhaust note will help with that. You can make rapid acceleration from pretty much any part of the RPM's so if you do get caught out by the stupid amount of gears it doesn't matter.
Brakes are a sore point, I dislike them. They seem to do what they want, not what you ask for on the pedal. I haven't driven another one yet to compare. Hard to explain what they do but when you apply pedal force they have an initial effect, then seem to back off by themselves and then bite again. My old 135i with pagid rs29 were so much better.
