JPC have you actually spent a lot of time in the 335D, and I don't mean a couple of days, those that have will understand where I am coming from.
I owned mine for 8 months or so, did 10,000 miles in it, and when I first got it, it was the best thing since sliced bread. Mine was running an Emaps map to 350BHP, eibach suspecion and standard non-RFT tyres, so was fully set up for involvement.
BUT, and it a big
BUT, because it was so easy to get 100% of the performance out of it, that and the so called flappy paddle gearbox, which was nothing more than a standard slushbox with paddles, was just so uninvolving, after a while it just got boring. It was as fast as my 'old' B7 RS4, however you had to work at getting the performance out of the RS, whereas in the 335D, it was simply just point and squirt. A lot of the 'old' 335D drivers on e90post, have all moved on for this reason, just too easy to get all of the performance out of it. I drive a car to be rewarded back by getting the best out of it, and the 335D was just so easy to get to that point, so I felt I had conquered it very early on in my ownership.
So yes I feel very justified in calling it boring and uninvolving.