MOTORING Rising to the challenge
The BMW X5 has evolved into a 4x4 that really gives the competition a run for its money WORDS NEIL LYNDON
‘Y
ou know what’s wrong with the Range Rover Sport?’ demanded the horsey lady at the dinner party. It would have
been impolite to guess so I mutely gave way to the answer she was obviously determined to deliver. ‘No split tailgate,’ she declared. ‘For everybody like me who hunts or goes
to polo matches, the fi rst thing we do when we arrive is put down the lower section of the tail- gate and sit on it. It’s a terribly serious mistake of Range Rover to make the tailgate one-piece.’ BMW have obviously done their research
and have carefully avoided giving offence to this important sector of the market for the new X5 4x4. The tailgate of the X5 does split – with a chunky lower section that can be lowered inde- pendently to form a seat for two or three horsey bottoms. Phew! In every other respect, also, the new X5 is a
serious rival for the Range Rover and its nimbler, fl ashier sister the Range Rover Sport. A telling indication of BMW’s intentions can be taken from the price. The three-litre M50d version I drove at the recent launch had a basic price of £63,715; but BMW had loaded it with extras and accessories that drove up the true price of that particular car to more than £76,000. That’s Range Rover territory and no mistake. Anybody who doubts that a BMW 4x4 could rival Range Rover’s astounding abilities off-road can preserve their scepticism undimin- ished. The off-road section of the recent launch on the Goodwood estate near Chichester was so unrugged that I could probably have nego- tiated it safely in my Nissan Leaf electric car. There was a vertiginous descent on a muddy
‘On the road the X5 gives the Range Rover Sport a real run for its fancypants money’
track that brought into action the Hill Descent Control that BMW actually lifted from Range Rover during their brief, ill-fated marriage in the 1990s. And there were a couple of moments in the woods when the wheels on one side of the car were up the side of a bank while the ones on the opposite side were using BMW’s own four-wheel drive system named xDrive, which varies the power to the wheels according to the surface and were, therefore, doing most of the business of driving the car. Otherwise, our impressions of the new X5 were largely gathered from driving it on the road. There – on the road – the X5 gives the Range
Rover Sport a real run for its fancypants money. With 381 bhp available instantly on demand and three turbochargers all spinning up together, the X5 puts out a lusty bellow when you fl oor the throttle pedal and will hurtle this very large lump of seven-seater car from 0-60 mph in just a fraction over fi ve seconds. If it weren’t elec- tronically restrained to a top speed of 155 mph, it might touch 170. It zips through corners, fl at and true, and the only complaint about its ride is that the ‘comfort’ settings on the suspension selector actually make it uncomfortably fl accid. The harder the setting, the better this car rides. In the late 1990s, the original X5 was conceived out of a cold-blooded union of commercial
calculations Below: The new BMW X5.
and self-interested
expediency. BMW was successfully making the 5 Series saloon and, at the same time, the world was mopping up all the SUVs that companies like Nissan and Toyota could turn out. Some genius at BMW’s HQ in Munich discerned a potential connection between these phenom- ena and suggested that
the company should
make an up-market SUV on the foundations of the 5 Series platform.
That fi rst X5 was as robust an offspring as you might expect from such passionless reck- onings. In the 13 years since it fi rst appeared, BMW have turned the X5 into a properly desirable car in its own right. Though I didn’t fully share her criteria of judg- ment,
the horsey lady wasn’t
the only one who would have the new X5 in a heartbeat.
WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK 129
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