- This is the interior of the 2020 BMW 3 Series, specifically, the M340i. This has the leather interior-- does have sport seats so you can see the adjustable five support there. And since this is an M model, an M steering wheel. It has paddle shifters and then the regular shifter right there.
BMW has now retired the old weird paddle thing and now has more of a shifter-like design to it of a round bulb-- still operates the same way, though-- reverse in the front, drive in the back, and then plus in the back and minus forward when shifting for yourself. There are your drive modes. And there is the latest iDrive knob that is touch-sensitive.
So you can select things on the knob itself, as well as surrounding menu buttons. Those are additional vehicle settings up there. The Start/Stop button used to be up there in BMWs. Now, it's in a more Audi-like position down there. Now, here are the gauges. This is an all digital display.
BMW doesn't offer a different design. This is what you get. I'm not really a fan of it honestly. I kind of wish they offered more of a traditional dual gauges, round gauges look. I have shut off the element in the center can show a full-on map display. I know people do like that. Right now it's showing the instant MPG gauge. Now, these do change a bit based on drive modes. But it's nothing that consumable.
- (COMPUTER VOICE) Hello, what can I help you with?
- And when you say the word, BMW, as I just did, the system wants to help you because this does have natural speech recognition. And she's going to try and figure out what I've just been saying right now to see if what she wants me to do. I don't want you to do anything-- cancel. Maybe that'll work.
- (COMPUTER VOICE) Sorry. I didn't hear that properly.
- OK. Here's a closer look at this particular car's trim choice. It's kind of a tech pattern. You kind of see that, you know, there is some texture to it. But it's not as rich as, like a wood trim or a metal weave or something. And, frankly, this car costs $70,000. And I think that it deserves a nicer degree of trim, especially when it's going to be this prominent.
And here are the M340i seats. These are adjustable side bolsters. And there are three different adjustments for the lumbar which are down here. Now, here is the back seat. This is the largest 3-series ever. And, indeed, there's quite a lot of back seat leg room here. Good amount of headroom as well. One thing I like is, yes, there is a armrest here. But it's very easy to get the pass-through down.
It's just this latch right there. And you pull it and bam, there's your pass-through to the trunk. That's a pretty flat surface here. You also have two USBC ports, as well as auto climate control in this model. And besides the cup holders in the center armrest there, you also have a pretty significant cup bottleholder right here. This closer image of the trim on the doors with gray stitching looks pretty good.
Now, this is a touch screen. But you can also control it using the knob, as well as voice controls, as you saw earlier. But we offer a more complete rundown of the latest BMW iDrive in a separate video. So I urge you to take a look at that. In general, though, I will say that the latest iDrive works fairly well.
But there is a pretty steep learning curve to it. And some things are kind of buried in menus that you would hope would have more of a direct line of access to. It's definitely something to try out when on a test drive. So this is interior of the far more distinctive, I would say, and more luxurious 2020 BMW 3 Series.
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