The rear-driven new Z4 also offers the option of a seamless seven-speed double clutch ?sports automatic gearbox? with ?optimised gearshift dynamics? and the latest generation DSC featuring standard Dynamic Driving Control to allow the driver to set up the car in three stages of driving attitude at the touch of a button and which adapts the throttle control map, steering, gearshift, dampers, engine management and DSC aggression to Normal, Sport or Sport Plus settings at the touch of a console-mounted button.

Z4 comes in the choice of three models: the 150kW, 250 Nm, 6.6 sec 0?100km/h, 242km/h, 8.5l/100km, 199g/km sDrive23i; the 190kW, 310Nm, 5.8 sec, 199g/km,.250km/h sDrive30i; or the 225kW, 400Nm, 5.2-second, 250km/h-limited, 9l/100 km, 210g/km Twin Turbo and direct fuel injection sDrive35i we thrashed across that Spanish escarpment on Wednesday?

So I may have called it a hairdresser?s car (no offence to hairdressers or the Z4) and we said it was softer, more cruiser-like and aimed at a clearly more genteel set?

Put a hooligan in there

But put a hooligan in there and man, what a car!

See, Z4 is sublime on the road. Offering typically BMW-excellent steering with short enough ratio not to ever cross the arms over in even the tightest of switchbacks, a sublime chassis that follows through your every wish and command and a superb engine that is scared of nothing, and you have a dream driver's car.

Judging by the tyre marks, some of the roads were clearly rally stages on the weekends ? who knows, they may even be WRC routes ? so believe me, they were sublime too and Z4 took to them like Sebastien Loeb's C4 rally car. There was almost nothing to criticise, except that I found the DCT?s downshifting logic not to be aggressive enough for my liking.

Look, what we were driving, where we were driving it, I?d have preferred to be able to force-shift it down on entry to a corner like I can, say in an M5 ? to get the back to lock up just enough so when I plant it, it drifts enough to carry that little extra speed through and along. The DSC prevents that lock-up and will only shift down at a tamer ceiling for the lower gear.

So I told the Propeller Men and they said take this manual to the mountains?

What problem?

So, in short, the new Z4 is a more genteel, more sophisticated, far more supremely equipped and brilliantly conceived grand tourer. But be sure, it?s still a BMW ? very, very much a BMW?