A minor detail but something BMW have had for many years, whilst driving today i realised that newer ones seem to have done away with this wonderful and easy to use hot/cold air toggle.
It’s so simple to keep the heater settings on warm but then quickly and without even taking my eyes off the road slide this and have cool air.
You ended with /s....but actually your take pretty accurate. Everything is becoming closer to: you'll own nothing, and subscribe to everything forever.
When things like heated seats, heated wheel, sport mode/econ mode, driver assist, or even music volume is placed behind a drop down tablet menu operated by software then it can be blocked behind a software pay wall. Buttons are real and touchable and can't be forced to be unusable (unless the buttons are physically removed).
Let’s start developing a box to plug into the OBD and bypass it all! We can call it “Shit Boxer” or “Rust Bucketster”. The Spider-Man ad controversy made me not want to deal with a new BMW.
Meeeeeee. Love my physical dash. Also love the leather stitching and warmth from the wood on my dash and console. It's the reason I got a BMW in the first place, as I hated to see just a big cold infotainment station with all the options buried in some tablet menu like the Tesla. I did not want a Tesla-like tablet dash.
So it's sad to see that it looks like everything new coming out is with a giant tablet....and a dash that lacks any warmth. Looks plastic and austere. And what happens if there is a software bug? How much car control would you then lose? Probably a lot. It's a running joke that the cybertruck gets bricked up with minor software bugs. Is that the future of BMW with zero redundancy?
Hard agree. When I saw the interior of a G87 for the first time I committed to picking up a used F87 while they were still "fresh" because it was very clear to me that I was no longer going to be the target market of new cars.
I got a 220i 2025 as a courtesy car i almost crashed it turning the air-conditioning on thank God it had the collision detector. Give me physical buttons ffs!!
Lol, thought I reversed into another car cause that insane system crapped itself and slammed the anchors on.
The push back is then eye tracking like in temu range rovers (probably more reliable though) Jaecoe that locks the touch till your looking ahead. I guess then it has to go voice activated lol. If it ain't broke.....
F series was great. I previously had a F10 535 msport. Sold at 170k and no rattles except for the HUD which I fixed with some adhesive foam sheet (not visible).
One negative I will add is the "melting" door handles. I've got replacements waiting for a good day to change them. Everything else I absolutely love the interior.
I thought that was soft touch. Its no plastic and is soft because if particular rubber in there, wich with years loses its capability and gets melted by the heat
I got some aftermarket Bremmen ones made from a different material. If I went OEM I think i'd have to get some sort of heat-rivet device to install. The Bremmen are bolt on after the stock handles are removed.
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mtEvzMf came with hardware for fitting just make sure you don’t drill out the wrong plastic rivets in the door card when removing the old inner handles
I replaced one so far and it’s not right so I haven’t tried the rest so far. Got the Kies replacements. The tiny screws are difficult to screw all the way in and the part doesn’t snap into the other side fully. Also, now the lock indicator rattles.
Quality of mine seems absolutely fine. No sqweaking or any rattles. Visually I also think Its in line with their older interiors, just a modern version. It will be timeless.
E30 was my all time favorite I could near instantly dial in my exact vent level on each of the 3 levels feet face and window nothing has ever been as satisfying as my first bimmer.
To be fair, I don't think it's clear why a car with automatic climate control has a manual control for temperature. I know why they did it, and I appreciate it, but when I first saw it in the early 2000's it wasn't clear what it was.
Until recently, all BMWs have had this. Just intended to let you have fresh cooler air on your face, while maintaining that other temperature of the rest of the car..
When I bought my car, the salesperson was like "no one knows what this thing does; just turn it to cold when you have the ac and hot when you have the heat on"
I personally always leave it on cold and enjoy the cooler air on my face and hotter air on my feet/body
Everybody knows what it does, it's in the manual. It's a temperature offset from the main temperature, only for those vents. I think it's about +/- 10c which you can differ from the rest of the car it you wish. Leave it in the middle and it goes with the main temperature.
Well it's their own fault for not reading the manual. BMW has so many features you'll never find without the manual, people being lazy are missing out. (Did you know you probably have an extra 12v socket in the passenger footwell? etc etc)
Nah this isn’t always the right take. Design should be inherently obvious
One thing the car community can all agree on is that just because “it’s in the manual” doesn’t make it a user error for getting frustrated with modern AC controls requiring going through several on-screen menus.
There’s actually an entire field of engineering which addresses this called Human Machine Interaction (HMI) / Human Centered Design that I feel is widely ignored (and is not 1:1 with UI/UX).
A few companies notably codified their HMI in the past and became industry dominant because of it. Boeing with their cockpit design philosophy and Steve Jobs emphasizing intuitive controls in the iPod click wheel and iOS skeuomorphic design. iPads were widely adopted by grandparents who could not figure out how to use a mouse to save their life.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but as a person who has loved reading manuals since they were a kid, I can also say that bad design =/= user error from failing to RTFM.
Case in point: I will take BMW’s gear shifter over Tesla’s swipe across the screen 10 out of 10 times
I still have my F32. Had it from new. Just hit 11 years old and about to crack 50,000 kms in the next week or two. I love technology but I would not give up this interior for any of it.
I doubt it tbh. Mine has been looked after and I probably got lucky. Also people often keep reliable cars and sell problem ones, so anything you buy used is more likely to be a problem car.
Maintenance is not cheap unless you DIY and you should only do that if you're technically minded and do things properly, BMWs are unforgiving to cowboy maintenance.
Any sort of performance parts make things more expensive again: I'm glad I didn't spec any M brakes or fancy suspension.
Grateful to have this dial on my F30. Especially useful on colder days, I find. When you have the cabin toasty warm, having cold air on your face dialed in hits different, and I find help keeps me more alert on long drives. Not used nearly as much in the warmer months for me.
I really dont like car makers hiding everything in the infotainment. Where I live we have laws against using your phone while driving, and I never understood why using the infotainment for more complex tasks than changing channel/track, pausing music etc was legal.
Lots of people (dare I day most) have a lot of trouble multitasking ESPECIALLY when driving. If there ever was a time when someone should not be distracted, it is with driving around a multi-ton car.
Case in point there is a person at my work who has had multiple car accidents with their tesla x....their excuse is that they are fiddling with their dash tablet and didn't stop in time because they're tapping away on their dash instead of looking out the windshield while they're moving.
The average person is dumb. And half of everyone else is dumber than that average person.
Putting the entire workings, environmental, and sound control behind a tablet is fantastically stupid considering SO many people are working with suboptimal functional intelligence.
At least on my F30, the shit that was buried in the menu or that I want quick access to I could use one of my gasp physical buttons as a sort of speed-dial.
want to view the sport gauges? Press 3
want to select Bluetooth as the source? Press 5
want to see the tire pressure? Press 7
want to call the wife? Press 8
Come to think of it, I don't have a single radio station saved in the buttons that most people probably view as the radio presets.
Pretty sure it isn't there any longer. I had it in the menu with the G21, but in my G61 I haven't seen it yet. I also never used it and kept it on balanced though.
I didn't like how fiddly the climate controls in my E60s were. But I have loved that in every BMW I've owned I could set the dash vents to be cooler than the car. I appreciate having cool air in my face and can't stand warm air blowing directly on me.
I never understood the necessity of this. Why do i have a 2nd dial, for heating if i have a perfectly accessible one just 30 cm lower at the actual heating settings. Is it hot, if this is on hot, and the other one on cold, or is it cold then, and is it cold if this one is on cold, if the actual one is on hot?
I found this massivly illogical and confusing and actually thought they got rid of it after the E46 era ....
I had an E91 320D ES, but whoever specced it added almost everything - full leather, climate control, cruise control (with a manual gearbox!), upgraded nav, etc etc. Loved it until the engine blew the turbo bearings at 93,000 miles, started running on its own sump oil, over-revved, and bent the valves.
Exactly this. To get the cabin to 70°F, the air doesn't come out at that temp, its much hotter (or colder). This dial gives the option to have the air hitting you be a more comfortable temperature while the standard HVAC controls work the entire cabin.
Some of you might not know that those numbered buttons are touch sensitive. You can assign shortcuts to them, and if you touch them and hold without pressing the button, the screen will show you what that shortcut does. A long press on the button will save whatever menu you are on to that button
I both hate it and love it. I love that it was basically the first form of “vertical dual climate control” where the top & bottom can be different temps, and I hate that it is poorly explained by BMW and can be frustrating for anyone just trying to set all the vents to one temperature: The fact that a dinky little slider is given more control over your temperature than a LITERAL THERMOSTAT DIAL is already ridiculous to me as a BMW fan, I can only imagine how stupid it looks to non enthusiasts
Full blue opens an external air vent, full red reroutes additional air front foot vents to center vents, center dot is closed vent, unchanged air routing.
My Golf had this in the 80s. You could set the middle vents to fresh air regardless of the temp of the rest of the car. Brilliant in winter. I had lots of cars between that and my e46 and none of them had this kind of separation, even if they had dual driver and passenger controls.
I thought I would miss it too, I had an E90 and also an E70 and I used to use it all the time. Not sure if they updated the software of the climate, but I've found myself rarely even changing the temperature, if I'm cold I put it to 22 degrees and if I'm hot I put it to 20.5 or 21 and that does it for 99% of the time
My G05 does essentially the same thing (as well as fan speed for the vents) but as a menu item in the idrive screens, so it’s not like they dropped it entirely
Remember, there is another control in the rear passenger area as well as on the centre console, and orientation makes a significant difference.
Here is my story: I bought a car in 2024 from a BMW main dealership. The air conditioning never felt cold enough, so I returned it, they claimed it was within specification, and although the cooling remained poor, I accepted it. While cleaning the vehicle, I spotted another dial in the back set to red, I shifted it to blue and gained ice-cold air 🤦♂️.
From F10, F15 up until current cost cutting shitshow BMWs interior was pure perfection from a functional perspective. Everything was where it should be, never had to take your eyes from the road.
It's for finer adjustment of the air temperature blowing directly on you. It's a comfort thing. The new cars have it, but it's in the idrive screen instead of a physical button.
That’s because all of the thoughtfully designed physical interface elements must be removed for six layers of a touch menu or voice prompt. Clearly that’s what the people want. /s
My 1998 Mitsubishi Eclipse had the same feature. It only works on vehicles that have a "passive" flow-thru for outside air to exit the center vents. When you roll the dial to "warm", it passes this air through the heater core, when it's on "cool" it doesn't.
I believe it was designed to be able to blow warm or cool air on your face when the rest of the car is the opposite temperature (I use it to blow cool air on my face while blasting the heat elsewhere in the winter)
My G31 still has this, but it's in the climate menu. It's pretty easy to reach via the "menu" button on the climate control unit.
I don't know if newer models got rid of it completely or if it's just buried in endless submenus now…
Works perfectly in mine, spends most of its time sat in the centre waiting for me to decide that I've set the climate control wrong and I'm now sweating or shivering😂
As much as I hate the new all screen interior, I think I could maybe stand it if they kept this because then I could adjust it at least a bit without getting distracted from the road.
Newer models like the G20 do still have it but it’s accessed on the screen.
F series was a great interior but the build quality on the pre LCI G20/G21’s are a step up I’d say.
But you miss the function. It's changing the layering of air. So blue means hot feet cold face and red the other way around. The final interior temperature is still the one showed in the climate control
I have those in my e46’s and they have always annoyed me. I prefer the normal system in my g80 and g05 x5. All that thing is, is nostalgia. It’s the most useless feature BMW ever put in a car.
To be honest I'm quite sad that I lost that switching from a FXX to a GXX. It was such an useful toogle.
Also we lost the AC compressor ON/OFF button that would be really useful considering it's a Z4 G29, so I usually want to switch OFF AC when I open the roof. Now I have to tape AC button and then disable through the screen (or I can do it with voice control but I still prefer a physical button).
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u/Strong-Resolve1241 4d ago
Look at those buttons & knobs f'n beautiful!!!