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The two-seat sports car era at BMW has officially drawn to a close. Production of the BMW Z4 has now wrapped up at the Magna Steyr facility in Graz, Austria. According to a recent report from BMWBlog, every Z4 still sitting on dealer forecourts is now part of the very last batch the German automaker will ever assemble. There has been no whisper from Munich about a successor either. That leaves the 4 Series as the only convertible model left in the brand’s current showroom line-up.
The Z4 first hit the market back in 2003 as the natural replacement for the much-loved Z3 roadster. Production has stopped before, most recently when the second-generation E89 wrapped up in 2016. The current G29 model only arrived three years later in 2019. Rumours have been swirling for some time about a fresh sports car built on the marque’s all-new Neue Klasse platform. So far, however, nothing has been officially confirmed by the automaker. Unless something very tightly under wraps is brewing in Munich, another two-seater is unlikely to land before the end of the decade.
The Z badge actually stands for “Zukunft”, the German word for future. The name was chosen because the original Z1 dabbled in some genuinely forward-thinking ideas. It featured easily replaceable composite bodywork and quirky vertical-sliding doors that dropped neatly into the rocker panels. Successive generations of the roadster leaned more on classic styling cues than futuristic flourishes. The latest G29 model finally swung back towards modern engineering. It was co-developed with Toyota to share the financial load. Underneath the bodywork, it shared all of its key mechanical bits with the GR Supra. That meant a turbocharged 3.0-litre straight-six churning out 382 horsepower. Buyers could pair the engine with either a slick eight-speed automatic or a six-speed manual gearbox in the final two model years.
The Bavarian marque has already confirmed that the 4 Series cabriolet will continue into the 2027 model year. Buyers will get a choice between the 430i with its turbocharged four-cylinder engine and the muscular M440i with a turbocharged straight-six. Both versions can be specified with rear-wheel drive or the brand’s xDrive all-wheel-drive system. Since the bigger 8 Series convertible was discontinued, the flagship soft-top now sits with the M4. That high-performance machine comes with all-wheel drive as standard. It is powered by the brilliant S58 turbocharged straight-six producing 523 horsepower. The result is a 0 to 60 mph dash in well under four seconds. The 4 Series convertible will also celebrate its 40th anniversary in the United States in 2027, since the very first 3 Series cabriolet rolled out back in 1987.
A new 3 Series saloon is already deep in development at the marque’s headquarters. A 4 Series coupé spin-off is expected to follow within a year or two. There is a strong hope that another convertible will join the line-up too. If not, it would mark the first time in four decades that BMW does not offer a droptop in its showroom range. The drop-top market is already shrinking elsewhere, with Audi having axed both the A5 and the TT cabriolets, and the future of the Porsche 718 Boxster looking far from certain. The Z4’s Toyota-badged sibling, the Supra, also wrapped up production a couple of months ago. Toyota has at least confirmed that a sixth-generation Supra is on the way. The Japanese marque will develop and build the next car entirely in-house this time. It may take another year or two to land, but at least half of the duo lives on for now.
