WHEN: June 2014
HOW MUCH: Rs 35 - 40 lakh
ENGINES: 2.0-litre diesel,185 PS, 380 Nm / 2.0-litre petrol, 245PS, 350 Nm
COMPETITION: Volvo XC60
BMW India will add yet another model line to its offerings in India, when it launches the 3 Series Gran Turismo, or 3 Series GT, in the country next year. The new BMW 3 Series GT will be produced at the Chennai facility, alongside the 3 Series sedan with which it shares most of its running gear.
So what is the 3 Series GT? Simply put, it’s a stretched, hatchback version of the current 3 Series. The wheelbase is 110 mm longer, and the car is 89 mm taller than the sedan. It’s also got a swooping coupe-like roofline, and a hatchback rear. It’s an answer to a question nobody asked, but BMW have gone ahead and built it anyway.
An increase in length has meant an increase in weight also. The 3 Series GT is 140 kilos heavier than its sedan brother.
It follows the same thought process that the 5 Series GT did, of offering the space and practicality of an estate car, but in a more stylised package. BMW seems to be making something of a habit of blurring the boundaries between different segments, but to its credit, the 3 Series GT does appear a tad more convincing than what the 5 Series GT did.
The front end is immediately reminiscent of the 3 Series sedan, but the lights and twin kidney grille elements are taller. There’s also an additional crease line along the length of the body, and the coup like roof is of course all-new. In fact, the 3 Series GT does manage to pull off looking like an attractive car in its own right.
**Inside, the 3 Series GT borrows the same dashboard from its sedan brother, but then that’s a good thing. BMW has also raised the seats by 59 mm, which means you get a more commanding driving position, while the company claims that rear legroom is 70 mm longer. The boot has 520 litres of luggage space, which is considerably more than what the sedan offers, while the rear seat back splits and folds in a 40:20:40 ratio to afford even more practicality.
**Power comes from a range of familiar engines, and while the 3.0-litre, 6-cylinder turbocharged petrol in the 335i probably won’t make it to India, expect the 4-cylinder 328i petrol, as seen in the sedan, to very much be a part of the GT’s engine line-up in India. The 2.0-litre 320d diesel will of course form the mainstay of the range, and there’s an even more powerful version of this same engine in the 325d, in a similar state of tune as seen in the recently-updated 5 Series sedan. All engines will come mated to the company’s slick 8-speed automatic gearbox.
The electrically operated hatchback with its twin motors have contributed to the rearward weight bias of the 3 Series GT.
The new 3 Series GT will be produced locally, and BMW India’s Chennai plant, and will be the eighth locally-produced model, after the 1 Series, 3 Series, 5 Series, 7 Series, X1, X3 and Mini Countryman. Local assembly will mean that BMW will be able to price it competitively, but it will come at a premium compared to the 3 Series sedan. There is a substantial price gap in BMW’s line-up, especially between the 3 Series and 5 Series sedans, and the 3 Series GT will slot into this gap perfectly. We expect prices to start at Rs 35 lakh for the 320d, when it goes on sale in June next year.
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