X6 First Drive

[LeMansX5]

From Winding Road's test drive:

BMW’s new X6, according to company spokesflacks, is a Sports Activity Coupe. Never mind that counting the doors produces the number four. Five if you count the easy-opening hatchback.

Details are sketchy where the engines are concerned, but there will be two, the larger of which will be a V-8 with more horsepower than the unit in the X5, which is not a coupe.

The body, however, is there to see now. It has a more steeply raked windshield, and the door tops are closer together, giving it a lean aspect when viewed from the front.

Driving the X6 is an enlightening experience. BMW’s ultimate driving engineers have taken X-drive to new levels of handling stability. The system is unique in that the wheels’ individual responses to road surface and to dynamic forces are independent from torque input. Which is to say that the magic box controlling yaw, braking, traction, and fore-to-aft torque split, makes decisions that have nothing to do with input from your right foot.

The X6 seats four, which tells you that the third-row seat is now a trunk. And a big one. Getting in and out of the rear seat is not easy for a large person due to the lower roof line and lower seating position.

There are two tire setups. One, presumably for the V-8, has 275/40R20s up front and giant 315/30R20s in back. The other set-up had 255/50R19 Michelins all around.

As noted, the X6 will help you avoid mistakes. We drove it at speed, through slalom and handling courses, and on greasy wet blacktop without losing control once. Yet the stability system is unintrusive, and the overall driving experience is just what we’ve long since come to expect from BMW.

The X6 will be introduced at the NAIAS in January and will go on sale about mid-2008. The sporty, non-Soccer Mom X6 will be priced above the X5, so we’ll predict a price range from $52,000 to $62,000. That gets you what can rightly be called leading edge tech in a distinctive BMW package.