BMW has well and truly jumped on
the bandwagon with the latest Z4. The SLK might have had a folding hard-top
since its launch in 1996, but BMW was late joining the party. The 3-Series
Convertible only got one in the latest generation and now the Z has finally
gained it as well.

The bare figures are this: the
roof lowers and raises in 20 seconds, prices start at £28,645 for the 23i and
get to £37,060 for the 35i that we've just driven. Oh, and it'll do 0-62mph in
5.1 seconds with the dual clutch gearbox fitted.

So it's not what you'd call slow.
The twin-turbo straight six is the highlight of the whole car - it sounds
absolutely brilliant. Low and deep to start off with before getting to a wail
over 6,000rpm. It's far more enthusiastic than an SLK.

For those worried that this
hard-top has made it handle worse than the old Z4, panic not - even though this
latest Z4 weighs 100kg more than the last one, there's a sharpness to the
steering and chassis that was lacking before. But it's still not the last word
in dynamics that you know BMW would dearly love it to be.

That's BMW's whole raison d'etre, and
so far no recent BMW Roadster has managed to hit it spot-on. Each generation
improves things from the woeful Z3, but this one is still a bit disappointing
when you think of something like the Porsche Boxster. There's now
electronically controlled damping on the Z4 as an option, but even this can't
quite tighten everything up enough. Roof up, you can certainly feel the extra
weight up there as it pitches and rolls a bit more through corners. Roof down
works better.

As such, the Z4 moves closer to
the driving nirvana of the Boxster and pulls further away from the SLK. But
it's still not the roadster version of an M3 that BMW so desperately wants.

Piers Ward