Quote:
Originally Posted by Pushrod
"Whoa, how does this tank of a car do that??" Perhaps having the 20" wheels and adaptive drive helps, I don't know. It's amazing how BMW managed to get such a big vehicle to drive like a sports car.
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It truly is an amazing vehicle; yet as we all know, flawed. Kind of a love/hate thing. When I was driving my X5 today on a twisty back country road, at WAY beyond the legal limit, I thought, do I really NEED an M car? This thing is darned fast and handles great already. Seven years with two different X5's and never been pulled over; apparently PO's just see it as a soccer Mom machine and let it go...little do they know how fast it is. Yeah I still need a 500hp car, but I'd probably just loose my license.
As for the 20" wheels, they make a noticeable difference; I use 19's for 4 months a year, (Blizzaks), and the 20"'s make a noticeable difference. Not so much for traction, as it's pretty hard to get the car to break loose on anything but snow or gravel. But high speed stability is greatly improved. Normally, unsprung weight is a bad thing, and the 20" wheels/tires weigh a ton, (especially the rears,) but it seems to be uniformly beneficial to the X5. Perhaps it's just the lower tire profile, but I think it's more than that.