6 Series Ride Quality Question

[cologne2792]

I drove a 2006 630i on 19" wheels at the weekend on some of the more dreadfully surfaced lanes and roads in East Devon.
What struck me most about it was the exceptionally good ride ?!
Is this a 6 series thing because they're fairly heavy or would an 06 have some type of adaptive damping ?

[Hyy]

Good ride is a relative thing.

I have people tell me that their E90 on 19" and H&R springs is very comfy.
and people who finds F10 with OEM suspension crashy.

[cologne2792]

Hyy said:

Good ride is a relative thing.

I have people tell me that their E90 on 19" and H&R springs is very comfy.
and people who finds F10 with OEM suspension crashy.

Yes you're right it is objective.
To me though, good ride is a very specific thing.
I've driven far too many hydro pneumatically suspended big Citroens over the years and have zero tolerance for anything German with the word Sport or S-Line after it. I even thought that my friends air suspended 14 plate A8 was pretty dreadful in reality.

This 630i though was superb. On very pot holed, broken and uneven surfaces it didn't crash or bang and felt more XK Jag than BMW.
It's left me at a loss to explain unless it employed some suspension trickery ?

[parabolica]

The way my old 645 rode was one of the reasons I bought the car. Sure it spent 90% of its time on London streets which are mostly pin-head smooth, but even when up in the Scottish highland b-roads it was exceptional. It was also one of the main reasons I replaced it with a 640i a few years ago; the ride on that is just as smooth and supple, even on run-flats (on the 19s at least).

[Prinny]

It’s likely the car you drove had the ‘dynamic drive’ option. This uses all sorts of hydraulic & electrical trickery to keep the car flat when cornering, but it also allows de-coupling of the roll-bars (iirc) to allow single wheel pothole impacts to be isolated.

This video explains it well from a 7-series perspective (but watch it on mute - it’s the most annoying ‘muzak’ ever. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OH8LTlJ4JeE

It’s why the hot hatch boys look amazed on the b-roads, should you decide to ‘play’. No-one expects a lwb BUFF to keep up, but it can!

By contrast, the M6 I have has adaptive dampers, with comfort/normal/sport settings, and in all honesty, it lives in comfort. Normal & Sport are for the continent & the racetrack, respectively. An ‘ordinary’ 6-series rides better than the M6 for day-to-day use. (It’s in no way bad, but it’s not a soft ride either).

[Herbs]

Yep, mine had dynamic drive and was superb - still miss it actually.

Really comfy in standard but once you put it in sport, you could really hustle it on B roads for such a big car and stayed very flat through the corners.