Choose a car
My girlfriend is expected to get her driver’s license by the end of the year (this is just a beautiful dream. I just passed the exam three times. Young people today! Alas! ), need to buy her a car. It’s up to me to decide what car to buy.
The goal is clear
1. A medium-sized RV.
two。 The discharge volume is above 3000CC+Turbo or naturally aspirated 4000CC. Personally, I am very resistant to the 2000CC.
3. There is a large amount of the market, so try not to look too special on the road.
4. It should be in stock or quasi-spot.
5. Brand: Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi and Lexus.
Mercedes-Benz: you don’t like it naturally (for no reason, just don’t like it), so you don’t have to think about it.
BMW: the car is fine, but the brand image in the mainland is not good. As a matter of fact, BMW is innocent, but too many unfortunate things have happened to her.
Lexus: has always been the most loyal. However, the discharge does not meet the requirements.
Audi: a favorite brand. Selected is the A6L 55 flagship Zhiya. Since mid-June, I have gone to three 4S stores and none of them are in stock. If you want to place an order, it will take a long time and the exact delivery date cannot be determined. In addition, it is really old-fashioned to let a girl in her 20s drive an A6. Gu has no choice but to give up based on the above two points.

Test drive
I never test-drive when I buy a car. Because test driving is a very boring thing, apart from wasting your own time and ruining other people’s cars, it is meaningless. Drive! It’s a habit. As the saying goes, “just get used to it.” With a short test driving time of tens of minutes, there may be interference from others nearby, how can you test out the characteristics of the vehicle? And the choice of favorite car is actually very few, the brand occupies the first place, followed by performance requirements. Apart from these two points, how much is left for you to choose?

Buy money
If you can’t buy an A6, you have no choice but to choose BMW. The 5-series 540Li and 540i feel that they meet the requirements in all aspects. Although the brand image is not very good, it is after all suitable for young people. Then consult the sales inventory, informed that 540Li is in stock, and is the desired white, 540i on the way, to wait. The 540Li has rear-wheel air suspensions (the importance of which will be discussed in a later chapter) and rear-seat electric curtains (which I like) and is in stock. Don’t ask, definitely choose 540Li. After sales informed that there are foggy lights shipped in March and non-foggy lamps in June are available. In fact, fog lamps are useful when close lighting is needed in foggy weather, and they are not entirely optional. It would be a huge project to install it and light it up. The display of tire pressure is very simple. Take care of the foggy lamp style. No rubbish gifts such as driving recorders, carpets, stickers, etc. Payment will be made on July 13th and pick up on the 21st.

Equipment
Rear wheel air suspension: 540Li air suspension cannot adjust soft, hard or height alone. It is automatically adjusted according to the driving mode, SPORT is the hardest and COMFORT PLUS is the softest. The height is automatically maintained, and no matter how many people sit in the back seat, it is the same height as before.

Tire bell: the 18-inch bell for a medium-sized RV is just right. I don’t quite understand why some people have to be 19 inches or even 20 inches. Have you ever thought that this size will be greatly reduced in terms of comfort and durability? Everyone knows the quality of roads in the mainland. In Guangzhou, for example, there are three months of rainy season in a year, and there are often some small but deep “killer pits” on the road. These pits cannot be avoided at night or when it rains and stagnates water.

Seats: the front row is a comfortable seat with all kinds of angle adjustment. I’m sure I can adjust it to a comfortable angle, but somehow I can’t get a comfortable position no matter how I adjust it. Headrest can not be adjusted before and after alone, with the upper part of the backrest, that is, the whole shoulder position is adjusted together, which is particularly bad. The adjustment range of waist support is very small, it is useless, if the kidney is really bad, you should buy a pillow. The back seat is very comfortable. There is plenty of legroom, and the effect is very obvious when it is more than 10 centimeters longer than the standard axis. The ventilation function is easy to use, but if you are reluctant to turn on the air conditioner, it is recommended not to use it. Because the temperature in the car “rolling pond fish” will not have any effect, and it will be counterproductive.

Air conditioning: I really have to talk about this brain stunted thing. I never open windows at home or in the office. I live on air conditioning 365 days a year. Not to mention the car, even if there are 1 billion tons of negative ions outside, it won’t open the window for a second. I have never used AUTO since I picked up the car, because with this gear, I don’t feel cold even if I set it to 16 degrees, and there is no wind in all the tuyere. Always use manual 17 degrees, blow the front, but even so, the air volume of the central console tuyere is also very small. The reason is that behind the display screen of the central console, there are two tuyere in the position of the horn, which may be the reason why the air duct is shared with the central typhoon mouth, resulting in a small air flow from the central typhoon outlet. When the tuyere comes out, the wind blows to the back of the display screen and then crashes into the windshield. The glass fogs quickly when the air is wet and raining, and in this case the water wiper will not start, and if you use the first gear, it will be brushed too fast and can only be done manually. Even after brushing, due to the low temperature of the glass, there will still be a layer of mist on it, and the glass will never be transparent enough. There is no wind in the tuyere only when it is adjusted to blow feet or glass. One day, my uncle in his 70s took this car. At that time, I was afraid that the elderly would catch cold, so I turned the air conditioner on to AUTO (usually it was turned off). Then ask him if the wind volume is too small? He said: no, just right, very comfortable, the elderly are most afraid of the cold wind blowing directly on the skin. At this point, it dawned on me. Ohh! It turns out that the 540 air conditioner is designed for the elderly.

Driving experience
I got my driver’s license in the second year of junior high school. At that time, it took the whole summer vacation + a few days off + my father used some technical means to do it. He has been driving for 29 years now. Driving habits belong to ultra-intense driving, usually only use SPORT mode. The driving experience is judged in this mode, and it will be explained in other modes.

Power: generally, weaker than expected, but it is acceptable, after all, it is such a heavy car.

Direction: the slow train is light, the express train is heavy, and the adjustment is just right. As for those “pointing where to hit” and “turning to accuracy” are false propositions. Will the car turn left if I take the right direction? Whether it is accurate or not is a matter of habit and has nothing to do with the car.

Turning: Thanks to the strong support of the air suspension, the body tilts well when cornering at high speed. In COMFORT and ADAPTIVE modes, the body will tilt significantly, requiring the other hand to hold the armrest box or door handle to maintain balance. However, considering the size and weight of 540Li, it is understandable.

Road feeling: Appropriate *** on both sides of the waist of the seat and sufficient hardness of the air suspension (yes, it’s again), the performance in this regard is not bad. The body size and weight of the 540Li are close to that of a large RV, and driving comfort must be taken into account. The road feedback is vague in COMFORT and ADAPTIVE modes.

20 km/h towing problem: Yes. It should be caused by the auxiliary braking of the gearbox. It’s not like energy recovery. But for people like me who are accustomed to “dragging and slowing down”, it has no effect.

Gear shifting: Since there is no need to shift gears frequently, the gearbox is very agile in all speed ranges. Changed it to COMFORT mode and tested it. In this mode, the gearbox will shift gears frequently. When you step on the accelerator deeply at low speeds, you can feel the obvious downshifting action of the gearbox, and there is no obvious delay when you restart. The adjustment and coordination of the 540Li engine and the gearbox performed quite well.

Flexibility: Although Guangzhou is a big city, a considerable number of people driving on the road have rogue driving habits (of course, this includes me), driving left and right, and blocking positions. 540’s performance on city streets is very flexible and completely incompatible with her size. It’s just that the car body is too long, and my butt is often exposed when jumping in line.

This article took a week to write intermittently, and it will inevitably be inconsistent. Please read it.
I found that many people on the forum had misunderstandings about BMW itself and its gearbox. I wanted to talk about it in detail, but due to space limitations, I decided to wait until later.