2026 marks the final year of the long-running BMW Z4, a charming, pretty, misunderstood car that never quite got the love it deserved, always living the shadows of its more hardcore ///M brethren, even if “hardcore” often means “more practical for the money.” How fitting it is that all 2026 BMW Z4 Final Editions are finished in shadowy Frozen Black paint for their funeral. It is not just the end of a single, lovable car, but the end of an era for BMW, and another nail in the coffin of the things we hold most dear as car people.

Queen of the "chick cars"

The Z4 name has been around for more than twenty years now, but the little BMW roadster goes all the way back thirty years to the Z3, debuted in the 1996 James Bond film Goldeneye. The Z3 was an homage to the 507 Roadster, with it's modern resurrection being a response to the unbridled optimism of the mid-90s that saw the car business aflutter with fun, frisky little roadsters - derisively called chick cars by what we now know as sad Boomers - and everyone wanted in on the action. Mazda kicked it off with the Miata, Mercedes had the SLK, Audi had the TT, Porsche had the Boxster, and BMW had the Z3, which became the Z4 in 2002. The Miata remains the last man standing among these playful chick cars, as Z4 production ended in March of this year.

Things are a little different now than in the 90s. While a convertible has never not been a flex, as the kids say, they are no longer in vogue. They’re too impractical. The manly man might say that for the same(ish) money, he could have an M2, or an M3. A real car with a roof, back seats, cargo space, and uh, much more performance of course, yes, because real cars cars with real roofs don’t flex like convertibles do. Surely, surely the vulnerability that comes with being seen enjoying yourself, and embracing the outside world has nothing to do with it. In the past, you might have just looked a little silly in your convertible, too pleased with yourself, perhaps. Now you might become someone else’s content; a cursed meme. 

optimized out of existence

The reality is the Z4 is a victim of optimization. An M2, 3, or 4, does make more sense, they do offer quite a bit more performance potential per dollar (fewer dollars, in the case of the M2), and they are significantly more practical as daily drivers. They’re better vehicles, straight up, but they are not necessarily more ultimate as driving machines.

I can’t be upset, everyone is pinched for cash, and even those who aren’t, are pinched for space. A second car that’s just for joy, that exists only to serve the pleasure of driving to an individual, doesn’t make sense. It’s the same reason why no one can get over Honda’s Prelude - it doesn’t make sense either, but making sense isn’t the point. Since when were cars supposed to be all about making sense? I know you didn’t have posters of Chrysler minivans and Toyota crossovers on your bedroom walls growing up. Come on.

There is a joy that comes with a car like this that nothing - and I do mean quite literally nothing - on the market can match. The Porsche Boxster (or 718, or whatever they called it towards the end of its life) was pretty damn close before Porsche canned it. Mazda’s Miata is the sweetest little treat of a car, but it’s too little for many.

BMW's best toy is not just a toy

What the Z4 offers is a brilliant blend of all the things that matter; it is an extraordinary homage to the Ultimate Driving Machines that so many BMW fans bemoan the death of, and a fantastic car that you can actually use every day. I said it in my first review of the Z4 years ago, I’ve had one every year since, and I stand by it still. This car has storage space. It has a big trunk. There’s lots of room, even if you’re a giant. It’s comfortable. It rides well. It doesn’t have convertible cowl shake. It has a really nice cabin with a great user interface and an excellent sound system. And, on top of it all, the convertible top is so well insulated to a point that it might as well be a coupe.

The icing on the cake: the climate control is so overpowered that you can feel it enough to enjoy the top down on a searing hot summer day or a chilly winter evening. No joke. I’ve done both, happily. You can really use this thing every day without struggling. This convertible can go to Costco. It can swing a spontaneous getaway without having a skip an extra overnight bag. This is by no means the impractical, only-on-special-occasions car you might think it is. 

That they managed to blend all of that usability with the ephemeral joy that comes with a roadster and bake a proper BMW driving experience into it all at once is a staggering achievement. You may be able to use it as an everyday car, but that does not mean it can’t create special-occasion experiences on a routine basis, like any of BMW’s best. 

Under the hood

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the 3.0-litre, turbocharged B58 straight-six engine that powers the Z4 M40i is among the best engines ever built, and has now been around long enough that it’s spawned copycats that are also brilliant. In this guise, it produces 382 horsepower and 369 foot-pounds of torque (...allegedly; BMW is notoriously conservative with their numbers), and that is more than enough to make this 3,500-ish pound sled fly. If you can’t have fun with this much power in this car, it’s not the car’s fault. This thing is fast.

Whatever, fast has been done to death. More than just being fast, it sounds great, as if BMW’s took the sound sample from Paul Walker’s Supra in the Fast and the Furious, and curated the whole car around that distinct noise, and then added in some deep throated burbles for fun. It’s effortless all the time, pulls hard all the way through to the tach, and never runs out of breath. Plus it's all the more delicious with the top down.

Handschalter

This car is fitted with a 6-speed manual, and if you’re fussy about the shifter-throttle-clutch interface like I am, you will love this - very few cars do this as well. The clutch is moderately weighted and traveled, with a gradual, medium-low bite point. The shifter is typical BMW; notchy, with clearly defined gates. Throttle response is linear with - get this - zero rev hang. To my knowledge, they’re the only company that has been able to eliminate off-throttle latency in a modern turbocharged engine. If you really care about the fine points of doing the three-pedal-shuffle well, this will please you like few other modern cars can. 

As good as the manual is, I wanna take a moment to sing the praise of the automatic. I had my first Z4 press car before BMW made the Handschalter available, and I distinctly recall it was that car that made me start thinking maybe a manual gearbox isn’t always the better way. The transmission responds to the paddles about as well as the R2 and L2 buttons did on your and my PS2's Dualshock 2 controller playing Gran Turismo 4. Seriously. It doesn’t get old.

Having said that, while the automatic isn’t the wrong answer, I think the manual is the right-er answer for what the Z4 is about. It isn’t about all-out performance, but rather delivering a well rounded, traditional experience. To that end, even with all its myriad of settings set to maximum attack, it isn’t nearly as frenetic as something like an M2, and I find it’s a lot better for it. 

Handling dynamics

///M cars have always been vaunted for their split personality, their ability to be a raucous race car and a stately sedan at the drop of a hat, but I find - and maybe you’ve felt this too - that right around the E60 M5, those split personalities started getting a little too far apart. A modern M car almost feels psychotic; it doesn’t understand seven-tenths playful driving, it only knows the full send, and gets confused when you don’t give it the full send, resulting in some very awkward responses until you understand what it needs, and come to trust it’ll see you through it. 

This Z4 does not have those disjointed reflexes. It feels cohesive, it feels like it’s giving you the same experience more or less all the time, and not waiting for you to commit to going all the way before it wakes up. Steering response is a relatively talkative for a modern car, and the way the chassis responds to turn-in is beautiful, mid-corner balance is fantastic with oodles of mechanical grip, and your exit can easily be dialled with the skinny pedal.

It feels very lively, with noticeable dive and squat between fast shifts, and it does exhibit some body roll, but it's all very well controlled and deliberate; the whole chassis viscerally communicates what it's doing, and makes it very easy to work with. It doesn't snap out of traction suddenly, and because you can feel it rolling over and taking a set in a corner, which in turns allows you to feel it gradually let go, it's very confidence-inspiring and incredibly fun with play with. A mechanical limited slip differential only adds to the cohesive sense of self this car has. Other BMWs are faster on a track, but I’m not sure any are more satisfying in real conditions, fast or slow.

Wrap it up

With the departure of the Z4 comes an end to this kind of joy. It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t share a lot of parts with its siblings (at least at BMW), and with it being rear-drive only, optionally manual and always soft-topped, it is handily the closest living Bavarian relative to all the driving joys that the internet says are dead or dying.

The Neue Klasse is the dawn of a new era, and it looks to be a very fruitful one with lots of potential for a new kind of driving joy. Indeed it may be better in a lot of ways, but for better or worse, it won’t be like this 2026 BMW Z4 Final Edition. There is nothing that is this good at being a nice daily, a performance weapon, and an enthralling experience all at once. This is it, and there are only 58 coming to Canada.