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Originally Posted by N54Yankee
Interesting that you hamper the N20 car with an auto but give your choice a stick. I'll take a row your own box with the N20 to make it a more fair comparison.
With the conundrum you pose I would choose the turbo 4 car. Lighter power plant for less weight on the nose, more hp and that lovely TQ at lower rpm and over a wider part of graph therefore more usable. It also comes on quicker to get one out of those tight switchback turns you put us on. It doesn't have to spin as fast to make even more useable power.
For a more nostalgic leisurely drive I would take the E30.
That said, neither of those cars would be high on my list of BMW's to run on a curvy back country road. I prefer V8's or FI I6's. The only 4 cyl engines I've owned ride on two wheels.
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I gave it an auto because that is pretty much the way BMW packages it. Turbo engines don't breath like N/A engines do. The FI's are light switches. The M20 with a manual in an E30 chassis is pretty much magic to drive. When you hear of the legacy BMW driving experience, that is what you are hearing about; it's not leisure...
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A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission. "Yeah, but NO ONE puts an automatic trans shift knob on a manual transmission."