[monpoke]

Hello everyone, I'm new to this forum wanted to wish everyone happy 2011!

As it appears to be customary here, couple words about my car. Its still very new f10 520d with sport auto and some extra bells and whistles. The car still has ~1k on the clock, so I'm not really pushing it, but can already share some impressions.

Its an october build with combox v2.5.21, no pulling to left/right, no accelerator jerkiness.

The empty steering feel around zero is right there and it is the most annoying part! I thought initially: I'll get used to it, but no such luck. It is a small annoyance at any given moment, but I've just noticed that I get tired way more quickly when driving significant distances (>300km, ~200miles). It is never quite relaxing - constantly trying to 'feel' what is going on through the steering seeps the energy away on long journeys.

The sport chassis mode makes the steering more stiff, but it doesn't seem to help much - steering feels disconnected in the middle... Still keeping hopes up for getting used to it. Planning to experiment with front tyre pressures - maybe will find something that works better. Anyone tried to remove a fuse from EPS and see how it drives yet? E.g. to understand if it is a rack/suspension or the EPS itself?

Some other observations: car is very comfortable, the engine turned out better than I expected. The gearbox is nice, the part I've been missing with Merc's 7g-tronic was ability to keep the revs at 2000+ in sport mode. When accelerating while engine is cold the box is keeping the revs just around 2k rpm - to be in the torque band and not to rev the engine too much - veery swift and neat

The part about this car I'm really looking forward to explore is its unusual weight distribution - it appears to have ~55% at the back, like some ferraris and almost like 911. When I put the car on the scales I got 1760kg total (with 80kg of me and ~60l in the tank). The front was 880kg and the back 940kg. I know these numbers do not add up - the scales are not nanogram precise and probably there is some dependency on where the weight is located, but i think it can be safely assumed that the car has move weight at the back.

Lastly, couple of options that seem like 'must-have': if you order auto box, get a sport one for the DDC - it is unbelievable how much sportier car becomes in sport+ mode - even the 20d. I was wishing to have this sort of configurability for ages, but it was available until recent only on M5 and such. I'm not driving constantly in sport+, but when the mood is set for shenanigans - this is just the ticket :

2nd is the ambient lighting - makes the car look more expensive than it is. If don't care about expensive, it is very very nice - try it

Edit: I'm reading in some posts that folks ordering M-sport suspension are more satisfied about the steering (though reportedly the 'empty zero' effect is still there - just much less of it) -- if you ordering test this option, and let us know if you liked it