FIRSTDRIVE M VERSIONS OF BMW X5 AND X6: BEN OLIVERgets the an exclusive first drive in BMW's super-hot new M versions of the X5 and X6 on the frozen Arctic snow. Despite their phenomenal ability, the precarious state of the economy – and the ice shelf – leave him lukewarm about their future
YOU’RE GOING to have strong opinions on these two cars, particularly during Budget week.
Some of you will be delighted BMW has had the nerve to give its full M – for Motorsport – treatment to its X5 and X6 off-roaders and launch these 555bhp monsters into an economic and environmental hurricane. I’d partially agree. Drifting them over a frozen lake, V8s blaring, seemed gloriously, wilfully anti the current mood. I felt like a latter-day Nero, fiddling with the traction control while modern Rome burns.
Some, however, will be outraged that BMW is building such flagrant cars, or at least puzzled as to how it hopes to make money from them, or repair the damage they’ll do to the green image it’s trying to nurture.
And those obsessed with the fabled M badge – until now only applied to ultra-quick, ultra-credible saloons and sports cars – will be aghast at the decision to apply it to two portly SUVs.
The cars will be launched today at the New York International Auto Show and won’t go on sale until autumn, but we’ve already driven them, travelling to BMW’s Arctic test centre in northern Sweden to test two virtually finished prototypes.
The two big controversies around the X5 and X6M – timing and credibility – are closely linked. The implosion of the car market has already made BMW cancel the 7-based Concept CS four-door coupé and the stretched X7 SUV. Both would have been expensive to create and wouldn’t have sold enough to cover their costs.
Like those two cars, work began on these M SUVs in happier times but BMW can afford to continue because they’re not costing as much to create.
The real issue for M-obsessives isn’t just that the division is breaking all its cardinal rules at once by abandoning naturally aspirated engines, rear-wheel drive and manual gearboxes and putting its badge on an SUV, it’s that the X5 and X6M just aren’t that different to the standard cars underneath.
They have the same engine, same gearbox and same driveline as the standard turbocharged V8s, all tweaked by M, but lacking the engineering distinctiveness that has come to define an M car.
M Division engineers are unapologetic about the new cars – few anticipated how quickly turbocharged engines would improve; they’re smaller, greener and quicker, with little cost to response or linearity.
Expect more turbocharged engines from M in future, they hint, perhaps using this V8 in the next M5 and allowing the next M3 to go back to six cylinders, from its current eight. Secondly, they point out that what works in a road car might not be right in an SUV.
Re-engineering the M5’s V10 for four-wheel-drive would be expensive and pointless when its 520Nm of torque at 6,100rpm is already outgunned by the standard X6 V8’s 599 between 1,750 and 4,500rpm. It just wouldn’t have got an M-badged SUV moving fast enough.
But why build one now? BMW needs to make money. The launch of the new M3 boosted M’s sales by a staggering 50 per cent last year, despite the downturn. At best, these SUVs will sell 10per cent of the M3’s 18,000 units, but they’ll be popular in markets like the Middle East and China, where car sales are holding up better.
“This is a real M car, with real M feel,” an M staffer told us – they’re not being shy with the M looks. There are a couple of outsized air intakes at the front and a pregnant bonnet bulge. The hallmark M side vents have been plasticked over on our test cars, but are present. There are big rims and quad pipes at the rear and the full M interior, with carbon-fibre inlays, active seats and an M button on the wheel, even if ours is just a sticker.
But what’s under the hump? A version of the 4.4-litre V8 from the X6 50i, revised by M to make 555bhp and 678Nm of torque. Same gearbox but revised, to give faster, later shifts. Same X-drive four-wheel drive system, but with more torque dialled to the rear to mimic rear-wheel drive. The X5M will also get the clever Dynamic Performance Control rear diff, which accelerates the wheel with grip rather than braking one that spins and until now was only offered in the X6.
Nailed from rest, the X6M is shockingly fast for such a deliberately solid, heavy car. A fat, instant gob of torque hits all four wheels and boots the car off the mark, the needle surging evenly to the 7,000rpm redline, where a quick, smooth change briefly knocks it back.
The pace is definitely M standard; the standard 408bhp X6 hits 100km/h in 5.4 seconds, and these cars’ main rivals, the Mercedes ML63 AMG and Porsche Cayenne Turbo, manage it in 5 seconds exactly. The X6M is quicker still at just 4.7 seconds, and if you go on a course, BMW will take the 250km/h limiter off and give you the full 275km/h top end.
But the way the pace is generated is unfamiliar in a BMW. The aristocratic, slightly manic engines in M cars usually require you to work them and their gearbox hard, for which you’re rewarded with an edgy, metallic rasp. But here you just floor the gas, get a deep, loud burble, overlaid with a little crackle on the overrun, and instant, any-gear, any-revs thrust – more Detroit than Munich.
Handling is difficult to assess on sheet ice but there’s clearly a lot right with the chassis and driveline of each car. With winter tyres and all aids engaged, they turn and accelerate almost as if they’re on tarmac.
The M button on the wheel allows you to choose your power output (400 or 555bhp), damper setting and stability control level; all-on, an M-Dynamic mode with less engine intervention and more slip allowed, and all-off. In the latter, and in these conditions, you can feel the torque going to rear axle and staying there as the cars pull long, composed drifts.
Any vagueness in the throttle, brakes or steering is magnified on ice, but the X5 and X6M are capable of absorbing and executing the most delicate instruction. Haters of sporty SUVs used to be able to fall back on the argument that a big estate would always drive better, at least until the X6 arrived. The standard version steers and handles with near-unbelievable precision and security. Sending more power to the rear axle seems to make it better yet, and makes overpowered SUVs a little harder to find absurd.
So what do we make of these cars? They’re titanically fast. They’re probably going to redefine, again, how well you thought an SUV could drive. They’re not going to feel as bespoke as M cars have until now. Dynamically – speed excepted – they will have little in common with an M3 or M5, but hint heavily at how future versions of those cars might be powered.
They will also be among the least relevant cars launched this year and, we suspect, an infrequent sight outside of Miami or the Gulf. We still wonder why you’d pick an X6M over the already damn quick X6 V8, or any X6 over an X5, or any X5 over a 5-Series estate. But we can’t help but like these two for standing facing into the overwhelming grey-green tide of public opinion: misguided, brave and probably doomed.
Engine: 555bhp @ 5750rpm; 678 Nm @ 1500-5650rpm
Weight: 2,380kg
Top speed: 171mph
0-100 km/h: 4.7seconds
CO2 emissions: 325g/km
Fuel consumption: 13.9l/100km (20.3mpg)
Price: Between €150,000 and €160,000 depending on the model
On sale: October 24th