I will plead guilty: I wasted the last 2 months spending way more time playing with my week end Cayman S than posting about bimmers. Shame on me
Meanwhile, I have been in petrolhead heaven: depending on my mood, weather, distance to cover or whatever other reason, I could either go on a very effective & comfortable trip with the F36 or a more involving -sometimes exhausting- one with the Porsche.
The best place to experience the difference between both cars was definitely the track and I took the Cayman to Spa-Francorchamps during the first week of August. As expected, it behaved very differently from the F36: as sharp as a scalpel in the turns, but lacking the massive torque to re-launch the car if you had to use the brakes for whatever reason. In the end, there is no doubt that the Porsche is better and more fun on the track (...while the bimmer is faster and better suited for the autobahn) and it was running more than 10 seconds faster than the F36 without pushing too much.
This being all said, I was happy to see that there was another F36 owner (chipped F36 435i I think) at the track the same day, and, while I eventually passed him -keeping in mind DEs are not races-, the BMW did more than hold its rank: the owner had good fun and no problem to keep up with the pack.
Here is a short video where I follow the F36 for one lap around Spa:
In conclusion, no need to invest in a sports coupe -unless you caught the virus- you can definitely have fun with your daily BMW. It may not be designed for the track, but, like I experienced myself before, it does pretty well
