BMW 128ti review

The BMW 128ti definitely isn’t an M car in the way it goes about its business. It’s subtle where they’re often aggressive. BMW’s only fitted one suspension setup, bespoke to the ti and a passive system which doesn’t allow you to toggle through various levels of stiffness.

It’s just made one setup, and done it right. There’s a firm edge to the ride over bumpier roads, but it soaks everything up with accomplish and were this to be the middle mode of an adaptative system, you’d leave the car in it almost all of the time.

The engine and gearbox are finely judged in their behaviour, too. This eight-speed paddleshifter is a belter and makes its way into the 1 Series having proved itself in quicker, more expensive, more luxurious cars. The ratios are super short – take manual control and you’ll have a whale of a time – but the car’s brain smartly shifts through them all when left in Drive, too. At which point you’ll have a very good chance of achieving BMW’s claimed 40mpg. Or perhaps even surpassing it.

So it’s accomplished and grown up, but is it fun? Well, yes. It’s a different kind of fun for BMW, and a far cry from the slightly aloof but ballsy behaviour of the 6cyl, RWD hot 1 Series of yore. All that tech feeding into the front axle irons out almost all wheelspin and torque steer, while the diff hooks you efficiently out of corners. Whether this is BMW taking knowledge from two decades of new Minis, or simply refusing to accept any of the quirks of front-driven cars, it works. There’s occasional scrabbles for grip in bad weather, but only when you’re a bit oafish.

It’s not a car that dazzles you with a highly excitable chassis like a Megane RS or Hyundai i30N. The benchmark of the 128ti is abundantly clear: we’ve driven no other car from outside the Volkswagen empire that feels so much like a Golf GTI. So this littlest BMW is one with sharp but clean-cut handling, and copious refinement when you settle down to a cruise. It sits below 2,000rpm on the motorway, sipping fuel and just blending into your life. But leave that motorway for a route less trodden and it’ll slap a smile on your face, if not quite make you cackle out loud like some of its firmer, less liveable rivals.

And its engine sounds good for a diddy turbo – there’s a little fake noise piped in but it’s an unashamedly four-cylinder sound. It’s the same engine as our Morgan Plus Four long-termer, and while the 128ti is over 400kg heavier, it tends to feel quicker in the real world. It carries more timber, but that timber is stuff like ‘doors’, ‘airbags’ and ‘clever electronics’, so you trust it more and work it harder. Six seconds to 62mph seems borderline modest when that engine’s really singing.