Wanna go off roading for cheaper and a lot more fun? Buy a subaru and rip it...! And for serious speed on and off the pavement, during wet or dry season, I recommend the STi.. ;) Who knows, you might even catch some air like those peeps in WRC.. :D

Subaru off road? You have to be kidding. Great on a dirt/gravel/mud road but I'd prefer to take the X off road than any Subie I've driven.

Hey Fraser,
Do you have any more off road pics like your avatar you would like to share ??

I've an even better pic of a 4.4 on the same hill (that's a 3.0d in the avatar) and a few others, but I've been unable to re-size them so that I can post. But I'm working on it.

Use MS Paint, go to Image then Stretch/Skew option. Then save it as a JPG. Hopefully that helps a little.

these cars are sports car trucks, not pick em up trucks... c'mon...

Here's a vid of an E53 3.0d support vehicle (with serious mods of course) up against a BMW X650 Dakar motor bike on a 4 mile section of the Paris to Dakar race. Worthwhile 7 minutes showing the X53 doing what we would all love to do. Surprised they didn't use a 4.6 or 4.8. Spot the X6 having a go as well. Stay watching till the very end, not sure what happened to the X, overall great footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptxmebNTCDk&feature=PlayList&p=4779CCC0645 5D4C5&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=14

And for those who'd like to see an E70 in thick sand, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqvWHu6eAEw

Apologies to those that may have seen these already.

Just watched them vids awseome footage and what an eye opener.

Do you turn off the DSC function when you are off-road or in mud?

Turn off when going up hill in snow (for example) otherwise keep on, per BMW's recommendations.