Flexible engine?
 

Excuse my mechanical ignorance, but the X5 engine seems to be alive :s i mean it's not like a fixed machine that always changes gears and behaves on fixed RPMs... maybe i'm hallucinating, but i noticed the following:

Sometimes, flooring it makes the gears shift at different speeds! i remember having 3rd-4th shift on 140km/h once, and 125km/h another one... the first time i was going a long steep uphill, the other was on a straigh pull...

what about the RPM? sometimes it shifts gears after touching the red, and sometimes not... even in sport mode the shifting point varies from time to time! (slightly, of course...)

does it have to do with being a double VANOS? is it the computer controlling engine and tranny?

My old dump pathy used to have a fixed behavior

Donnu, but this car seems to have a mood on its own and pretty much dynamic, interactive... am i right?

adaptive, yup