For the past week I have been mostly driving around in the new BMW X5. The old one was an ugly, American-made piece of nonsense that never really floated my boat at all. Sure, it was built to offer sports driving dynamics, but what’s the point of that in a tall off-road car? It’s like making vegetarian food that tastes of sausages.
You sense with the new one that some of that sportiness has been lost. For a kick-off, it’s much, much bigger, and as a result, much, much heavier. And when you turn the key, the new 4.8 litre V8 engine doesn’t so much zing as snuffle and grunt. I don’t know what torque is but I bet it sounds like this: like a Mexican body-builder arm-wrestling a grandfather clock.
I have heard it said that the new version is nowhere near as nice to drive as the old one, but that rather depends. If you want to take it on a hillclimb or to Silverstone, then yes, I would agree. But for normal, everyday work, then no. The new one is better. It floats and cruises where its predecessor would truffle and snout.
Annoyingly, however, the extra bulk makes it even more useless in town. I sometimes look at people in London squeezing up narrow streets in these massive cars and I think: “Are you completely bonkers?” Yes, you might need something big and tall for your monthly trip to the cottage in Suffolk, but for crying out loud, why put up with the misery for the other 320 days of the year? That’s like permanently wearing a condom for the one day a month you might get lucky.
City dwellers should have a Mini and rent something big when they need to go away. I’m really talking here to people in the countryside who’ll be delighted to hear the new X5 – for the first time – is available as a seven-seater. Although I should point out the seats in the boot are small, cost an extra £1,300 and ruin the boot space. So I wouldn’t bother. If you need seven seats, you’re still much better off with a cheaper Volvo XC90.
The X5, then, should still be viewed as a five-seater, and a pretty good one at that. But one day while I had it, I found myself sitting in a jam – the A3 was closed again – next to a Mercedes ML 63, and I thought: “Hmmm. Yet another American-made German five-seat off-road car. And given the choice, I’d take the Merc. It’s better looking, smaller and that engine is just so joyously mad.
But of course, I wouldn’t. What I’d actually do, without a moment’s hesitation, is buy a Range Rover. You sit higher up in the big Brit, and because Land Rover does not make ordinary cars, there’s no sense when you’re on board that you’re simply driving a taller version of a humdrum saloon. But you definitely get this impression in an X5, which feels like a 5-series, and that means it doesn’t feel particularly robust.
Worse. At one point I was forced onto a kerb by a bus driver who set off without looking – surprise, surprise – and instead of just popping onto the pavement, the Beemer simply gouged huge chunks out of its front offside alloy wheel. I would like to make the bus driver pay for this. Actually, I’d like to see one done for attempted murder. But either way, BMW’s big rugged off-roader was damaged by a kerbstone, and that really shouldn’t happen.
It makes you wonder. Next time the road ahead is closed, could you escape up the embankment and across the fields in an X5? I think not. But in a Range Rover you could. I know, because I’ve done it.
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