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Autocar Roadtest - BMW X6 xDrive50i
11.04.2008 |
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THE ADVANCED THEORY
It’s a grey and rainy day in Greenville, South Carolina. We are just a few miles up the road from Spartanburg, BMW’s sole US factory. Spartanburg is on the verge of a massive $750m (£400m) investment as it becomes BMW’s global centre of SUV production.
Not only is it currently making the X5 and the new X6, but the next-generation X3 will also be transferred here from Austria. It’s easy to see why. The US market is rapidly turning its back on the traditional SUV and turning to the more car-like ‘crossover’.
BMW is primed to cream off the premium end of this booming sector and expects to be making a quarter of a million upmarket crossovers in the US by 2011.
Even better, the weak dollar will make exporting the X5, X6 and X3 far more profitable, a move described by BMW as “part of its natural hedging policy”.
The night before the test drive, we assemble for a brief press conference where BMW bosses tells us that after inventing the Sports Activity Vehicle (the X5), the company has now invented the Sports Activity Coupé (the X6).
It’s easy to be cynical when an automotive engineering powerhouse like BMW is reduced to claiming that it has established a niche market within a niche market, with what seemingly amounts to a chop-top X5.
Yes, says BMW, this is undeniably a niche car, but research shows that “three key buyer profiles exist”. First there are buyers “who want the command driving position that a BMW X product provides, but who also aspire to the sporting style of a coupé”.
The second targets are early adopters like those who bought the first of the ‘mould-breaking’ X5 models. And thirdly there are owners who have had an X5-type car for some years, but whose families have left home. They apparently want a similar vehicle, but one that doesn’t “scream family”.
The marketing-led theory is one thing, though; for the vehicle itself, we’re forced to wait a few more hours. Can the X6 possibly fulfill its brief without appearing too much of a niche model?
THE REALITY CHECK
I was last in the southern states of America for the launch of the original X5. There was a degree of cynicism about that car, too. After all, upmarket SUVs may have been luxurious and imperious to drive, but how could such a car ever convincingly wear the BMW roundel? How could a tall, heavy vehicle ever sit comfortably with being branded an ultimate driving machine?
Well, we were certainly caught out by the X5. My colleague arrived with the mildly refreshed Mercedes M-class, expecting an interesting comparison. Well, interesting, yes. But not much of a comparison. The X5 literally ran rings around the Mercedes.
I can still clearly remember my first few hundred yards in the X5, driving in the rain-soaked hills above Atlanta. As soon as I turned hard into a corner I knew that the X5 was a rule-changer. No one expected an SUV to handle this well, giving little away to an equivalent road car.
The morning of our X6 test drive offers similar conditions, for it is grey, drizzly and dismal. But the sight of 20 or so X6s lined up in the car park is very striking indeed. It’s hard to describe just how different this car is from anything you have seen before.
Only when I see it alongside an X5 do the pieces start to fall into place. Although it is only 55mm lower than the X5 at its highest point, the combination of the heavily sloping roofline and much shallower side glazing makes the X6 look incredibly imposing, even intimidating. Viewed from the front, the X6 oozes malevolent intent, but it is the rear aspect that is most shocking. The hatchback lip is so high that it’s level with my chest. With such a small rear window area, this gives the rear end of the car over to the blunt bootlid and what has to be the world’s deepest and most extravagantly styled rear bumper.
The steeply raked window line further accentuates the car’s deep body sides and dramatically swollen wheel arches. If you regard the Porsche Cayenne as the most indiscreet SUV on the road, it has most certainly been toppled by the X6. The hackneyed ‘Chelsea tractor’ tag will have to be upgraded, too, for something rather more militaristic.
The building blocks of the interior are basically the same as the X5, including the entire dashboard, front centre console and door trims. The main changes are the addition of knee pads on the centre console and a new rear compartment set-up with a pair of individual seats separated by a wide and spacious centre storage console.
Boot space doesn’t suffer, despite the fastback layout; there’s a healthy 570-litre capacity on offer under the tailgate and split/fold seats are present and correct, even with the unusual rear seat arrangement.
Despite all that, this massive vehicle requires you to duck when clambering in. Rear seat space was just right for my 6ft frame, with my head not quite brushing the headlining. Legroom was fine too, with a normal-sized driver up front.
Be in no doubt, the X6 interior is a fine place to be; it is high in quality and well thought out. The switchgear is of a uniformly high standard, and fit/finish is highly impressive. The excellent, wide, high-back seats (with the essential extending squabs) play a huge part in making this cabin so very agreeable.
Our X6 ‘xDrive50i’ (equipped with the range-topping 4.4-litre, twin-turbo V8) was hardly short of grunt; 407bhp and 442lb ft from 1750rpm is diesel-like in its low-end shove. It drives all four wheels through BMW’s excellent six-speed automatic gearbox, which has the ability to ‘lock up’ and behave more like a manual transmission, eliminating the characteristic slushy feel of a conventional auto ’box.
Rolling out into rural South Carolina, the X6 is ultra-civilised. The steering has a surprising amount of weight at parking speeds, but once rolling the rim weighting is extremely well judged. Despite the 19in wheels and 255/50 tyres, the 50i rides remarkably well – almost uncannily so for a car like this. However, as well as four-wheel drive and the new ‘torque-vectoring’ rear differential, our car was equipped with Adaptive Drive, which alters the anti-roll bar and damper settings continuously. In its standard (non-Sport) setting this X6 was – when cruising – more GT than hardcore coupé.
This X6 is equipped with not only permanent four-wheel drive and Dynamic Stability Control, but also Dynamic Performance Control. DPC is effectively a rear differential that can redistribute torque between the rear wheels to suit the conditions, while the rest of the drivetrain is switching it between the front and rear axles.
Like the very similar Saab XWD set-up, in less extreme conditions DPC simply gives the X6 immensely impressive neutrality. When you can thread a car this large and heavy up a challenging mountain road without a whiff of understeer, it’s hard not to be impressed.
So it can go hard (and you’ll be encouraged by the WW2 fighter-style thrumming beat from the V8). But over the course of a long drive, the X6 reveals itself to be more a super-GT than sports coupé. With its excellent interior (comfort, boot space and impressively well planned storage) and effortless performance, an uncanny sense of wellbeing creeps up on the driver as the miles pile on. Even the slightly snugger cabin (mainly thanks to the lower roof and smaller windows) adds to a sense of unusual luxury.
Although BMW has done little to the car’s basic architecture, somehow this X6 has – from the driver’s and passenger’s point of view – a real flavour of its own.
The Range Rover established the rule that premium SUVs had to be tall and glassy. But the X6 concept recognises that the high seating position is the key to the SUV feel-good factor, and BMW has respun it as a more intimate, cosseting experience. You might argue that the sense of luxury, in all ways, is right up there with some of the most expensive executive cars on the market.
For long, fast journeys (Aberdeen for supper or Lake Geneva for tea) the X6 would be a superb place to spend time, with the added bonus of its ability to be taken by the scruff of its neck and driven hard!