No, that’s “Atlanta”, the donut around the city where the three things the locals know for sure are that Jesus loves them most of all, that Atlanta proper is a miserable place to live and that Applebee’s is the very definition of fine dining. Those of us who actually live in Atlanta’s better neighborhoods instead of just claiming to live here because no one has ever heard of “Duluth” or “Fayetteville” tend to be fairly content and couldn’t imagine living in that bland, franchised hell OTP. If my neighborhood is a car, it’s a Volvo V70 R – Bedford Falls on the surface with a little Pottersville on tap whenever I feel the need.

Nobody wants to live in the ‘city’. Those who do are often more focused on the ‘hipness’ of city life rather than the actual rewards of living in the city proper.

High taxes, cronyism that rivals D.C. and Detroit, terrible schools, unbelievably bad traffic, and a surprising lack of interesting sites make the city of Atlanta downright sub-standard.

I will say that the choice of restaurants is impressive and there are certain small neighborhoods that are actually pretty decent places to live. However you can get the same thing in the burbs’ with better everything for about half the price.

If you replaced the engine in the 1-series with a 1980’s GM Quad DOHC engine, that would be the City of Atlanta.

Atlanta – small town mindset, no public transportation worth mentioning, big town smog, big town traffic… brilliant.

1 series – small car size, big car weight, big car price.

There is a reason I don’t live in Atlanta anymore.

All of these glowing reviews just prove one thing, BMW is dishing out big bucks to make this thing work.

“Let’s begin with a verity, an undeniable truth that is evident from 3 feet away or from the cold distance of outer space: The new 1-series BMW is ugly. Seriously ugly. Ugly with X-wings locked in attack formation. Spare me your E.H. Gombrich or Helen Gardner. I know an ugly car when one blows past me at 100 mph.”

Though mad props are doled to the propeller boys’ engine:

“Is the 135i fast? Is Eliot Spitzer sleeping on the couch? It’s completely and utterly bonkers with acceleration. Squeeze the throttle in first, second, third gear, and it feels like a great big rubber band being launched off the world’s thumb. Huge, billowy bursts of get-gone narrow the view to a blurry vortex. The numerologists at Car and Driver recorded a 0-60 time of 4.7 seconds and a quarter-mile estimated time of 13.3 seconds. That means the 135i is quicker than the last-generation M3, which was clinically psychotic.”

Justin and Dan are pretty much in agreement…sublime engine combined with fat-guy-in-a-Speedo styling.

Can we just agree that we’d love to hoon this thing with a bag on our heads and leave it at that?

PS: Dan Neil’s complete LA Times review can be found here: http://www.latimes.com/classified/automotive/highway1/la-hy-neil19mar19b,0,2091740.story

However, the Q&A review writing style is oddly disconcerting.