Once you get in the back, you really start paying the price for the swoopy-coupey styling. There’s minimal head room (I, at 5’10” had barely enough) and limited leg room. There’s also a massive central tunnel in the floor effectively making this a four-passenger vehicle – even my little four-year-old son hated sitting in the middle. There are LATCH anchors for two child seats if you need them. With all that said, if they’re not too tall, two adults would be reasonably comfortable, cocooned in their heated rear seats.

There’s minimal space for storing your stuff – you’ll find a couple of small spots in the console – but the real party trick here (and one of this car’s redeeming features) is the trunk. Contrary to what the Gran Coupe’s shape might have you thinking, there isn’t a conventional trunk. It’s a deep 480L tailgate, and the entire rear window and deck lid are part of a powered hatch that gets out of your way. Very accessible cargo space, and plenty of it. We took our family of five to the mountains for a three day weekend and had some room to spare. There’s a small angled panel between the open panels that, when closed, effectively secures and hides all the trunk’s contents. It’s very well designed and very useful space. If you need to, the rear seats fold down in a 40/20/40 split and you end up with 1,300 L when they’re all folded down. That’s a lot.

The “35” in this car’s name lets you know that it is powered by the mighty 3.0L turbocharged inline-six (perhaps one of the last ones from BMW) putting out (what is a very likely underrated) 300 horsepower at 5,800 rom and 300 lb-ft of torque at 1,200.

The Gran Coupe feeds this power through an eight-speed automatic which distributes the goods to all four corners via the xDrive all-wheel drive system.

Fuel economy is rated at 11.8 L/100 km in the city and 7.8 L/100 km on the highway. After a week of city driving and an 800 km road trip, we averaged 9 L/100 km. Sounds about right.

The 435 is a well-insulated and quiet car – even at highway speeds. But when you step on it, you’ll hear that beautiful, mechanical rasp of BMW’s smooth straight-six. And when you step on it, you’ll realize this car is fast. 0-100 km/h happens in 5.2 seconds with no lag and no drama. There’s ample power, even for this shockingly chunky 1,869 kg Gran Coupe.

When you’re on the go and have the need to dip into the power, the car doesn’t hesitate to serve it up, especially when you’re in Sport mode. Passing on the highway is sick fun and I couldn’t help but giggle a few times when I easily lost someone who was tailing us – they became but a distant memory (and speck in the rearview) in mere seconds.

Thankfully my review car was kitted out with the very well-priced M Performance Package, which adds handsome 19-inch M rims shod with staggered rubber sizes – 225/40s in the front and big-boy 255/35s in the rear. The M package augments the visual boost from the wheels with great stuff under the skin too. Upgraded M Sport brakes, adaptive M suspension and variable sport steering.

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