why is Adaptive Drive so rare?

[jeep]

Originally Posted by brian5

An earlier post had said that it was part of sports package. That might be applicable now but was not in 2008.

For my 2008 X5 4.8i, Adaptive Drive was separate to the Sports Package. I've never regretted the purchase of either. I would definitely recommend Adaptive Drive...

AznX... was correct that the dealers are not informed. They tried to talk me out of Adaptive Drive as they did not think it was necessary (but it was obvious that they did not even know what it is!).

Pre-2010 production X5 with Sports Package included Adaptive Drive. This is fairly easy to identify if you have the Adaptive Drive, if you do then there should be a button for enabling Sport Mode right next to the gear shift. For 2010 and newer model years Sports Pkg and Adaptive Drive were separated with Adaptive Drive a $3500 option. As folks have said, for an uninformed prospective customer it is an intangible option and a tough sell especially in this economy, hence the dealers don't usually order it. I could see the change myself between 2008 and 2009. I bought mine in 2008 when there were a lot of incentives to move the existing inventory and I saw a lot of fully loaded X5s. My colleague bought his in 2009 and there were far fewer fully loaded X5s. BMW has also progressively increased the price of the X5 and I think to increase margins they have separated out the AD from Sports Pkg, which gives them more options to sell while creating an illusion of lower price for a similarly optioned earlier model year X5.