Remember my new-found love of
one-way tickets
? Just as I was about to give up hope of ever being offered another, BMW called me to ask if I’d like a single to Scotland – and then drive the new X6 back.
I took my time to think about it. Last time I suggested that I would only accept return transport of 7.0 litres. The X6 is nowhere near that. What’s more, a quick search of the PistonHeads forums reveals that the X6 is quite possibly the least welcomed new car we have seen in a long time. So I had to ask: is this a car that PHers would be interested in? I think we are.
PH gets invited to many car launches, most of which we decline because the cars aren’t relevant for PHers, but let’s turn this on its head for one minute. Firstly, BMW knows how to make a decent car so the least we can expect is something that drives very well. Secondly, in an age of anti-4x4 sentiment and downsizing, a new car that appears to be larger than my flat has a certain appeal. Thirdly, this car will be available with the 408bhp, twin-turbo 4.4 V8 petrol engine, and that is something worth looking forward to, especially if it makes its way into smaller, more focussed cars.
Scottish roads are fantastic
It has been a few weeks since the first X6 road tests appeared online and on the shelves of your local WH Smiths, so you probably already know the verdicts offered: it’s a coupe version on the X5 with a bit less space overall and it fills a gap in the market that we never knew existed.
I’m contemplating all of this as I arrive in Wick in the Scottish Highlands. It appears to have sheep, hills, grass and the odd house. One thing it lacks is a phone signal. More important, it also lacks traffic, speed cameras and straight roads. I have to say well done to the Scottish government for financing miles and miles of perfectly smooth tarmac without the need for Gatsos, speed calming measures or tolls. If you haven’t done so already, add the Scottish Highlands to your future road trip agenda.
Rain stopped just the other side
It’s about lunchtime and I have a few hours to reach Inverness where I’ll meet my girlfriend, Sarah, who is flying up to join me for the drive home. However, BMW navigation tells me that won’t be long enough so I set off and see what I can do. The X6 feels large from the off. The width of the cabin and the fact that my suitcase is lost in the huge boot initially makes me think this won’t be a fun drive back.
I‘m soon proved wrong, though. After a few miles, I realise that this car can handle quite well for what it is, and I’m passing everything I come across and taking corners at a fair pace. The music is on loud, the sun is shining and the roads are clear. The paddle-shift gearchanges are smooth and a glance at the head-up display shows a speed that I won’t admit to. Seems good so far.
At this point, though, I reach a series of hairpins and suffer some quite serious understeer – and that’s the catch, now I have to slow my pace as the laws of physics have stepped in to calm things down. Good as the X6 is at playing the sports car, it has to admit defeat eventually and say enough is enough. However, that point is well above what you would expect, and it would show a Cayenne a clean pair of heels every time along challenging back roads.
I meet Sarah at the airport and we head to the car park. Up until this point I’ve only seen the X6 parked next to other X6s outside a large country house in Wick. Now we are both looking at it in Inverness airport car park, and despite me telling her about the size of the car, her first reaction is: bloody hell, it is big. We have a look at the car together and I have to say I’m starting to be bugged by an obvious question: why would anyone want a car this big but with a low rear roofline and only four seats?
Oh, did you not know that? The X6 is available as a four-seater only. That’s right – all this space and only four seats, less boot space than the X5’s and a boot lid that some struggle to close again when open. Amazing isn’t it?
We reach our overnight hotel in Edinburgh. The car causes a stir parked outside the city centre hotel before I go to move it into an underground car park for the night. It seems the BMW marketing team have done a good job on the pre-publicity because everyone appears to know what it is and wants to know more. It’s all going well for the X6 until the hotel concierge comes out and says: ‘That won’t fit in the car park’. I tell him I’ll have a go anyway, and it does fit – although I straddle two spaces. Sorry to anyone who might have needed to park in the second space that night
North Yorkshire. Best views ever
The next day, the journey involves a cross-country run from Edinburgh to my parents in the Yorkshire Dales, before the final leg back home to London. Dad is a life-long car fan and it’s down to him that I got into cars in the first place. He has seen a lot of the cars I have borrowed over the years and we always take them for a spin around the block when I visit. Strangely, though, I actually can’t remember him commenting on the X6. I vaguely recall him saying that the diesel engine was noisier than he thought it would be, and my Mum said it was spacious in the back, but that’s about it. Unusually quiet for a car fan and I wish I had probed deeper, maybe the silence said it all?
Later in the day, I go out and attack the Dales roads, and you do have to give credit to the X6 for being able to punch well below its weight in terms of agility, whether you see the point of this car or not. You do have to applaud the guys from the chassis department because they have worked miracles given what they are working with.
Outside home, Golf worried
Back home, what do I think? Well, I have covered almost 1000 miles in two and a half days, I have consumed diesel at a rate of 25mpg and I have had a pleasant view over hedges sitting as high as a lorry driver. But when all is said and done, if you needed a 4x4 made by BMW then you’d get an X5. If you just wanted family transport that was fun to hoon, you could do a lot worse than a 335i or 335d Touring. But this X6 has only four seats so you probably fancy a coupe and, in that case, you could look to the M3. Even BMW suggests that X6 customers won’t be too concerned with logic, and maybe they are right because a healthy chunk of the UK allocation has been sold already.