Overview
What is it?
What is it?
It’s BMW’s mini-MPV, or ‘sports activity tourer’, as they’d have you believe. These days BMW reckons the 2 Series Active Tourer looks more like a crossover, but it doesn’t. No plastic wheelarches, and very definitely a one-box silhouette. You’ll tell it’s the new one because the front appears to have careened onto a Victorian school gate. And once you’ve seen the uncanny resemblance to a giant metal gerbil, you’ll struggle to unsee it. Sorry.
Who cares about MPVs any more?
Well, 400,000 people decided to spend actual money they had earned on the old 2 Series Active Tourer, and given this all-new model again recycles a pre-existing platform in the range (already seeing duty under the front-wheel drive 1 Series and 2 Series Gran Coupe) it’s worth BMW’s while to keep doing a 1990s-tastic MPV.
Ironically, when the first 2AT hit the market it had the likes of the Ford C-Max and Renault Scenic to contend with. But these days the mainstreamers have given up on high-roofed hatches and are only interested in selling you faux 4×4 crossovers. So while this might be a dwindling market, BMW has a larger slice of it to itself.
What’s new for the second 2 Series Active Tourer?
With almost half of sales expected to be grabbed by plug-in hybrids, there’s more e-range. Where the old car was good for a claimed 32 miles of battery power, the new 225e and 230e can do up to 56 miles. And the battery is now buried in the floor, not under the rear seats, so there’s more cabin space. The PHEVs will also charge faster, at up to 7.4kW – twice as quick as before.
Inside there’s a totally rethought dashboard with lots of input from the flagship BMW EV and chief evil hamster: the iX SUV. All 2ATs get a 10.25-inch curved touchscreen display. BMW has deleted the iDrive controller in an effort to ‘declutter’ the interior, but the tidy-up has introduced far more serious problems than a few fussy buttons.
Is there going to be a hot M version?
Don’t be silly. You can have an M Sport trim with a body kit and 18-inch rims, sitting ahead of standard Sport and middling Luxury trim in the range. The quickest 2AT is the 230e xDrive which boasts a combined petrol-electric output of 313bhp, which is more than the first two generations of M3. It’ll do 0-62mph in 5.5 seconds, which is rapid enough to make a Civic Type R driver concentrate.
What about a fully electric one?
Nope, the mega-range PHEVs will have to do. You can still have a diesel, believe it or not. Prices for the non-hybrid 220i start at just over £30,000. An M Sport’d 223i will send that past £36,000. Final prices for the PHEVs aren’t here just yet.
What's the verdict?
“While this is a better kitted out car than the one it replaces, it still can’t outrun the suspicion this is a car conceived primarily to win buyers with its badge, rather than any of its actual abilities”
The 2 Series Active Tourer remains a curious outlier in BMW’s range. They’ve solved the overly firm ride and some of the visibility and seat comfort quibbles of the last car. The hybrids have promising range. Interior quality has leapt forward. It’s comfortable and reasonably refined.
But the illogical integration of the infotainment tech, and the underdeveloped gearbox and inconsistent controls add up to a grating driving experience. And in the same footprint, a Honda Jazz offers a more versatile cabin.
While this is a better kitted out car than the one it replaces, it still can’t outrun the suspicion this is a car conceived primarily to win buyers with its badge, rather than any of its actual abilities. There was an opportunity here to create a car with some of the i3’s flair, to make us forgive BMW for the lacklustre ‘also-ran’ factor of the X1, X2, or 2 Gran Coupe. But the 2AT ultimately isn’t remarkable enough.
Driving
What is it like to drive?
We’ve been driving the most powerful non-hybrid 2AT, the 223i. It’s blessed with a 215bhp four-cylinder turbo petrol engine, good for 0-62mph in 7.0 seconds. All 2ATs use a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission.
Is it a good one?
It is not. Ask for brisk acceleration and the DCT box takes far too long to get its act together and respond. Pulling out of oblique junctions is laggy and fraught. Only M Sport cars have paddleshifters to override this. The engine is a little buzzy when the gearbox does get caught napping. We’d be more tempted by the cheaper 220i, as the three-cylinder motor is a really sweet powertrain, and the 168bhp effort only takes an extra second to go from 0-62mph.
What about hybridisation?
Both the 223i and 220i have 48-volt mild hybrid tech, so the car is keen to cut the engine when coasting to a stop and restarts instantaneously to save fuel. Claimed economy is in the mid-40s – our test car managed an indicated 34mpg during a couple of hours on British A-roads.
Is it fun to drive?
No, which you’d expect of an MPV, but perhaps not of a BMW. But along with the narcoleptic gearbox, you put up with dead, disconnected steering (thankfully imbued with more weight in the Sport mode you’ll never use) and a deeply over-servo’ed brake pedal which makes town driving discombobulatingly erratic.
The chassis is well damped, the car’s less harsh over poor surfaces than its predecessor and it’s reasonably agile, but if you want something this sort of size and shape that handles with true finesse, try a Ford Puma.
Interior
What is it like on the inside?
Buying a one-box MPV? This is what matters. You’ll forgive the handling or the car’s rodent-ish facial expression if the all-important passenger accommodation is life-changing.
We’ll come to that, promise. But first let’s assess the quality, which is remarkable. The old 2AT was full of black plastic, but this new one feels much more richly trimmed. There’s liberal flashes of proper metal and tighter shutlines. The vents and handles move with an oily smoothness. The seats, which were criticised for being too firm in the old car, are now bizarrely cradling items which wouldn’t look out of place in a Porsche 911. Even the steering wheel spokes look technical and interesting. From up here, in your semi-command driving position, you feel good. The view of the road is good. Life is good.
What about the tech?
Yes, that’s what I’m coming to. All Active Tourers get the new ‘BMW Curved Display’, a 10.25 inch touchscreen atop the dash running an interface all but identical to the new all-electric iX’s. And that’s a flagship BMW, retailing at over £100,000 in some guises. This is an entry-level car.
Thing is, BMW’s stripped out the veteran iDrive clickwheel for the Active Tourer, reasoning you don’t need it any more because the touchscreen is so good. They’re wrong. And it’s a bad decision. For a start, removing the clickwheel hasn’t resulted in anything useful. There’s no new stowage or clever features on the floating centre console where it used to live. It’s still home to buttons and a drive selector. And it’s still the natural place for your non-steering hand to rest.
Secondly, the screen itself is just way, way too fiddly. While it responds better than the monitor in a current Volkswagen, and the graphics are sharper, fundamentally useful things like heated seats and trip data are buried multiple jabs deep in the screen. And it’s a bit of a stretch to reach if you’re over six-foot tall.
Sure, the temperature sliders are always present at the bottom of the screen. But since they’re always there, why not just use buttons, instead of pixels coated in fingerprints? And why is the main menu now a mish-mash of some 30 unintelligible icons?
Zooming in on a map? Scrolling through a list? All dramatically harder than they used to be in a BMW with a clickwheel, requiring more time with your hand off the steering wheel and your eyes off the road. The voice control simply isn’t good enough to paper over the operational cracks, and in any case, it interrupts the nav or whatever you’re listening to on the stereo.
It’s a real shame, this. BMW was holding out as VW and Mercedes lost their heads and went touchscreen-silly. Now, it seems, the end of days is upon us. Even a BMW has an irrationally dumb cockpit. Shame.
Let’s be honest, this isn’t a BMW bought chiefly by young and happ’nin urban couples. It’s for your grandparents. They struggle with a TV remote control or a microwave. This is going to baffle them into taking the bus.
Ouch. So… is it practical?
A much better showing here. Adults can sit behind adults, no trouble at all. The doors open wide and access is easier, as you’d expect, than a 1 Series hatch or 2 Gran Coupe. The rear seats slide fore and aft easily via manual locking mechanisms, so you can have a bigger boot, or better legroom. Sitting in the back of one of these things is a heck of a lot more pleasant than life in the back of an X2.
On the other hand, there’s none of the folding-seat magic of the Honda Jazz, which can swallow a house-plant or a bicycle thanks to its foldable squabs. The boot, meanwhile, is a generous 470 litres with 1,455 litres on offer with the rear seat backrests folded down.
We do question the logic of designing the wireless charging pad to stand your smartphone to attention facing out into the cabin. This makes your device as distracting as possible to the driver, which is exactly what tech like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto is designed to prevent. Weird.
Buying
What should I be paying?
Good on BMW for making the process of speccing its cars a heck of a lot easier to decipher. There’s a standard Sport trim grade, replete with 17-inch wheels, LED lights, standard DCT gearbox, the twin digital displays in the dashboard and a reversing camera with parking sensors.
Starting at just over £32,000, Luxury modes add leather seats (heated up front), more aluminium trim and wood inside. M Sport starts at £34,000 and that gets you 18-inch rims, the rather brash body kit, adaptive headlights for auto main-bean functionality, keyless entry, wireless phone charging and adaptive suspension.
Then there’s a smattering of ‘packs’ to add tech, driving assistance functions and extra lux features, and only a handful of individual options. Should help residuals too, as it’ll be easier to find the car you want second-hand, with fewer permutations of spec to sift through.
Keyword: BMW 2 Series Active Tourer