2010 BMW X6M Car Review

2010 BMW X6M Review It’s one of the odder vehicles on the market, the BMW X6, a sort of coupe UV, perhaps more of fashion than automotive purchase. Ours makes up in brawn what it might lack in common sense. That’s because it’s an M. Let’s see where all these fits and check the tech. Our X6M is finished in Melbourne red with black marino leather which does nothing to lessen the amount that it says “Look at me”. And all X6s present tall and massive in person, even though they’re just two row vehicles. Now while the X6 is an odd bird, the cabin is pretty familiar stuff. This is that electro mechanical shifter that you get on the current BMWs where everything is basically drive by wire and of course we got the M logo here because we do have a more sport mode that we’ll get to in a minute, a very more sport mode. And your iDrive controller is pretty garden variety stuff. At this point we've seen this in a number of BMWs and luckily it sprouts a whole lot of dedicated shortcut buttons that original iDrive didn’t have. So digging through menus, you do less of it now to get where you got to go. The audio system on our car is the basic audio system which is pretty elaborate, for a car this price it ought to be. There’s also a premium sound. We’ve also got music collection, that’s a hard drive based system. Auxiliary appear in the front, standard AUX jack but there’s no USB on this car because of that premium sound, you don’t get that. And then of course we’ve also got you're telling controls right here, pretty basic stuff. You’ve got full surround beyond that and you know, more or less basic tone controls. Although BMW does it, you dig down to a nice EQ panel. I like that. Now you’ve got to get optional technology to get that. The rearview camera, that’s not standard on an X6. That’s just stingy especially in car like this that has limited-- that’s not quite fair. No rear visibility. You do have a pretty elaborate system back here. You see I’ve got trajectory aiming and notice those yellow and red squares there, those are modeling not just the proximity but also the curvature of that car behind me for example. So it really gives you some interesting indication of what the shape of the obstruction is. And our vehicle also has a perimeter view because of additional cameras, because of the driver assistance package. So you can kind of see all the way around bird’s eye style. What’s around your vehicle where you can't look down with your own eyes. Bluetooth hands free is stuck on an X6 as you might expect but in no point is Bluetooth A2DP stereo streaming even available. Now off course we’re driving an X6M so let’s get right down to it. The M button here on the wheel takes us to the M dynamic mode which changes everything on the vehicle or very little depending on what you do. Let’s go to the screen. If I go down to the settings here, I get my M drive, I open that up and now I can decide what M dynamic mode really makes happen. I'm going to normal, sport or just not make a change in terms of the EDC, the dynamics control. My stability control I can turn off for some wheel spinning fun -- this guy’s all wheel drive by the way so you can spin all four wheel, and of course the all important power ramping. When you’ve got 550 horsepower under foot, you tend to want to have less of it in daily driving. It just gets a little intractable but you can get in to efficient or sport mode right here and make that part of the M profile. I don’t know when you’d ever want M mode to be efficient power delivery but if you want, you can do that. And you can also change what the head up display shows either the basic stuff or the M view which is more of this sort of power band display. It shows you more of how you’re using the engine’s power and your current speed but that does tend to get over written by navigation prompts. Now a big part of your $89,000.00 base price lives under here. 4.4 liter V8, twin turbos -- one for each bank, direct injection -- that’s that clattering noise you hear but only when the hood’s up, 555 horsepower head up 500 foot pounds of torque, 0 to 60s like a four and a half second to affair and the mileage is a disaster; 1217 -- oh no, that’s not a disaster. The pollution numbers are, it gets a measurable four and two on the smog and CO2 scales. The X6M has all kinds of power but I found it a little hard to get to without really hammering this thing. Standard drive mode on the gear box is just tubby as it desperately seeks whatever mpg it can ick out. Sport mode was too high strong for routine driving with a little nerve and M mode, well, that’s a commitment. The X6M is planted like a tree but it still feels tall when pushed on serpentine roads. But for all, I found it odd that a $90,000.00 BMW made me recall fondly a $50,000.00 Lincoln MKT under pretty much all except sporting conditions. Let’s price this bag and somewhat questionable vehicle, about $90,000.00 of destination. On top of that, about $3,000.00 a year in gas says the EPA and that’s another story. Now you don’t want to add in the premium sound package if you want the six disc changer and the USB iPod connection, $1400.00 for that with the enhanced sound also thrown in. Then you’ve got a look at what’s called the driver assistance package that’s going to bring you the head up display and the rear view camera would be around view cameras as well. Pretty good deal at $1800.00 considering the hud is $1300.00 alone if you get it ala carte so go for that package.