2009 BMW X5 XDrive35d SUV Review

2009 BMW X5 xDrive35d Review Brian Cooley: I really wanted to like the X5 xDrive 35DE diesel. After all I love the same power train in the 335, but for a lot of reasons both in cabin and under hood this vehicle just strikes me as the SUV for people who have a little more money than tech sense, let's check it out. Now in an xDrive 35D you've got the same three liter inline six twin turbo diesel that I liked a whole lot in the 335D Sedan except for one problem. It's a lot noisier in this car, same 265 horsepower and really amazing 425 foot pounds of torque as in the 335D but those numbers are muted because you've got 5225 pounds in this little piggy to lug around so the response of that horsepower and that delicious torque is definitely more muted as you'd imagine. MPG is 19 city 26 highway, four and five miles per gallon better respectively than the gas engine three liter inline six of the same car, but remember on the Sedan once again, you get a ten mile per gallon improvement on the highway number and seven in the city. Plus this vehicle isn't really all that clean. It scores just dead average on CO2 and below average on nitrous oxide emission so don't buy one of these and go calling yourself green. The whole xDrive rubric denotes a vehicle that has full time all- wheel drive in BMW speak. Harder to translate is the 35 on a car that's a 3.0 liter, but decoupling model numbers from displacement is BMW's thing lately. Now in here things are a little disappointing as well. It's the old iDrive in one of its last appearances. The new iDrive interface is already out. Again, we saw it in the 335D but this thing can't go away soon enough and why you'd buy this car now before it gets the new iDrive system is beyond me. The bass audio system is no thing of beauty either, AM/FM, Sat radio is Sirius, you have a single-slot CD right here that will also play MP3 CD's. You can optionally get a 6 disk but that takes up precious room in the relatively small glove box but it can also play DVD's one of your parts. My biggest gripe though is the standard system doesn't do any favors for compressed sources. You really want to use the upgrade in this case which gives you something like 16 speakers, 600 watts and 9-channel amplification. By the way, Bluetooth hands-free which they call SmartPhone integration, iPod connectivity via AUX and USB and HD radio which would live up there are all individual ala carte options. Option LE you can get BMW's generally excellent head-up displayer but you'll be so busy fighting with iDrive you won't get a chance to look up at it. Vehicles of this size and shape really reward you for having a backup camera but as you can see, it's not standard. You have to option that up with park distance sensors. The rear seat entertainment option in this guy is not my favorite either. I'm not big on the ones that drop down from the middle but you can't do that with this giant panoramic roof. I love the ones that are on both headrests. They don't have that instead theirs tilts up on this kind of chunky arm at that back of the console armrest, I'm not a fan. Your transmission will be this, a six-speed Steptronic with this unusual paddle pull back like this and notice the indicator changes on the face, go to the left from drive and you have a manual shifting sort of a mode, you've got a sport button right next to it that as you might imagine, changes up the behavior of the shifts and the RPM levels. It does add some sharpness to the car. On the road, you get a big, present, heavy feeling in the X5, definitely well-planted the handling's very competent. You've probably seen the TV ads where they go tearing around the Nürburgring in one of these. I don't get out there all that often I bet you don't either. So what I can relate to in this vehicle is the rather bloaty feeling it has in everyday cut and thrust driving, and the surprisingly present diesel clatter. Okay let's price our X5 xDrive 35i, for this diesel baby you're going to start at $52,000.00 base, premium sound is $1850.00, tech package is $2600.00 for which you get GPS Nav, live traffic, park distance control and the redundant rearview camera, head-up displays $1200.00 more blessedly this really nice panoramic roof is a freebie.