SA Roadtests
South Africa
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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
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*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.
Published in Weekend Witness Motoring on Saturday November 10,2012
Funny, but no-one ever speaks of an “entry-level” BMW. They are all fast, ultra-luxurious, handle like demons and driven by those who like to use their cars to announce, perhaps smugly, that they have “arrived.” If there is a true entry-level Beemer, it would presently be a 116i manual, three-door, like the one we had for review recently. We say presently because a 75-kW 114i is apparently in the pipeline.
While obviously competing with small Audis and Alfa Romeos, how would one categorise a 116i? It goes without saying that, with three doors rather than five, local users would look on it as a sports machine without any familial aspirations. Europeans would disagree, because they prefer fewer doors in order to keep their bambini safe. It’s a cultural thing, so try to understand…
Our biggest objection to the sports angle is that the 116i develops less than half the power of the big kahuna in the range, the M135. While it may be small and nimble and a hoot to drive, its 100 kW of power is no competition for the more powerful car's 235 kW, or its handling kit a match for the secret weaponry hidden in the top dog’s arsenal.
A personal opinion and we will probably be hated by whole generations of Beemo-philliacs for this, is that it makes an excellent little family car. Hear us out. It is safe: Six airbags, all the crumple zones, side bars and force-dissipation paths anyone can think up, more than enough performance to keep its driver out of serious trouble, ISOFix baby seat anchorages for two chairs and an almost full-house of safety electronics should about do it.
Apart from that, it is a little bigger than the old one, being 85 mm longer on a wheelbase stretched 30 mm, has wider tracks front and rear and is 17 mm wider. Those numbers translate into 21 mm more legroom in the back and a boot that’s 30 litres bigger than the one that went before. It now measures 360 litres, stretching to a maximum of 1200 when the seatbacks are laid flat. The longer wheelbase and wider tracks mean greater comfort and improved handling ability.
Decent standard equipment in the way of air conditioning, music kit, cruise control and electrically powered convenience items maintain its social acceptability and it has a very adequate boot for transporting the necessities of daily living. If anything is missing, the options list is endless – simply tick what you want. For example the Urban Line package fitted to the test car adds a bewildering list of trim items, a leather-covered steering wheel and seat covering in a combination of leather and cloth, rather than the all-cloth original upholstery. We're not sure we would consider these items a worthy return on an investment of R14 200, but who can tell where other people’s priorities lie?
Beyond pure numbers, the boot is square and uncluttered, it loads at mid-thigh height and is only about 12 centimetres deep – easy to load and unload. Accessing the rear seat where the baby chair anchorages are, is made simpler by front seats that slide forward obligingly when their backs are tilted. It’s probably not quite as elegant a solution as four doors, but those on three-door cars are decently long and open wide. You also have the assurance that, when they get a little older, the heirs won’t be able to open their own portals and fall out into the traffic. Shouldn’t you or the other parent of your children drive a car like this?
The numbers
Price: R279 700
Engine: 1598 cc, twin scroll turbocharged four-cylinder
Power: 100 kW between 4400 and 6000 rpm
Torque: 220 Nm between 1400 and 4300 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 8,5 seconds
Maximum speed: 210 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 7,3 l/100 km
Tank: 52 litres
Maintenance: 5 years/100 000 km Motorplan
We drove a 118i in 2020
This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.
What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.
My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.
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So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!
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SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8