BMW xDrive experience

Wednesday, 26 August 2015

No doubt about it, this year is a golden one for luxury SUVs with newbies here or arriving soon from Merc, Land Rover, Audi, Volvo and Lexus.

And then there's BMW, which fired off most of its SUV shots last year with the X3, X4, X5 and X6, each being new or revitalised.

A new X1 will be here later in the year but as if to remind everyone of BMW's impressive SUV line-up, we were invited to drive the range in far-off Thailand. Why not, we said, and duly packed liberal amounts of antiperspirant and a rain coat as the forecast was for thunderstorms and 30 degrees. Luckily we only needed the deodorant.

BMW was the first to introduce the premium SUV designed primarily for road use with its X5 in 1999. Since then, it has sold 3.3 million X models, and the high riders account for more than 30 per cent of all BMW sales.

The fleet

We drove the range of X machines, bar the new X1 which has only just been released. The X3 and X4 were of the 20d variety with the 2.0-litre turbodiesel outputting 140kW and 400Nm. The X5 on fleet was an sDrive model, the 25d powering the rear wheels alone. Its 2.0-litre is bumped up to 160kW and 450Nm thanks to an extra turbo, and it's a beaut engine. The grunter of the pack was the X6 in the 30d guise with 560Nm of torque from its inline six.

For the Thai market, however, the engine is detuned from 190 to 160kW in order to comply with a local road tax which is based on engine output. The Asian countries heap a huge tax burden on imported luxury cars, the X5 30d for example is $130,500 in New Zealand while the same model is the equivalent of $250,000 in Thailand. In Singapore, BMW's i8 is over $NZ600,000 (it's $278k here) yet they've sold 40 of them.

The route

A late change in plans saw our original four-day route through Vietnam substituted for a shorter drive through northern Thailand. It sounded like the Vietnamese officials were asking for a bit too much in the way of unofficial paper work, so best to show caution and I didn't fancy spending time in the Hanoi Hilton. But anyway, surely there would be plenty of monkeys and jungle mud to make for an adventure. Sadly, there were to be no rabid primates, and little in the way of mud, but plenty of surprisingly good, traffic-free roads.

We were in Chiang Rai, northern Thailand and we made our way further north up into the misty mountains bordering Myanmar, or Burma depending on whose side you're on.

The roads are a medley of smooth hot mix and broken and pock-marked trails. BMW's can be bagged for their firm ride, but these xDrive vehicles drove particularly well, especially the X3 on 18s. Run-flats are standard in this part of the world too and this new generation of rubber is much more pliant than the old hardware.

Thailand is definitely a place where suspension travel is handy, and that's probably why utes are so popular. If you think lane discipline and indicating practises are average here in New Zealand, we've got nothing on Thai locals. And yet the traffic seems to gel; crazy speed differentials and rampant undertaking are all quite normal here.

The most courageous manoeuvre we observed was a right hand turn from the left turning lane across three streams of traffic, timed to perfection as the light turned red. And not one horn was honked in protest. Red light running seems the norm and so no-one is keen to gun it away from the lights when they turn green.

The experience

As our BMW host said, xDrive machines are designed primarily for on-road performance, and that's where we stayed, mainly on sealed pathways with just a couple of side trips down dirt tracks. That was probably a good thing too for despite the xDrive system's ability to actively transfer up to 100 per cent of the torque to either axle, the sticky Thai mud would have quickly turned our road rubber to slicks. We know from our own adventures in an X5 that you're only as good as your tyres in such conditions.

Even the tractors have extra chunky tyres to plug through the mud, while those who venture through the rice paddies have what look like paddle steamer-type attachments on the wheels. Strange looking farm implements are some of the many weird and wonderful machines you encounter on-road in Thailand. Scooters and utes dominate the traffic, both generally overloaded.

On one two-wheeler we saw with four people aboard, but the multitasking award goes to the guy on a scooter with a beer and a smoke on the go, along with a pillion. Most utes either have a load piled three metres high, usually with someone on the back trying to hold it all in place, or a load of humans, ten in the tray and four squeezed into the cab.  

BMW's Driver Experience Mode allows you to toggle between economy oriented and various other driving modes. We never touched the former as it affects the operation of the air conditioning and when it's 30 degrees and 90 per cent humidity, a constant supply of chilly air is not something you want to mess with.

Normal was best suited for touring as the eight-speed auto used across the range will usually serve up the correct gear for the situation. Sport Mode is handy for hill roads where it will keep the 'box in gear, and it's quicker to kick down. 

The BMW diesels have always been well regarded; the throttle response is sharp, they rev quickly and aren't too noisy. They do have a touch of lag off the line, especially the single turbo 2.0-litre, but once they crack past 1500rpm, it's all on and the torque flows nicely, kicking on meaningfully past 4500rpm too.

The added muscle, and sound track of the six cylinders have always appealed, and they are less laggy with twin blowers but is the extra spend justified? The way the X4 20d moved along you'd have to exercise the 230kW of the six-cylinder 35d variant often to justify the extra $30k commanded for the model.

The 25d version of the 2.0-litre used in the X5 is a pearler too, the twin-turbo set-up making this more than adequate for the bigger truck. And yet the most popular X5 here is the 30d. Guess if you have over $100k to spend on a rig, an extra $17k for the 30d isn't much in the scheme of things. And we had always thought the X3 to be an underrated machine; do you really need the X5?

Hopping from one to the other, there's no doubt that the X5 is a better vehicle; its presence is more commanding, and its interior conveys a genuine luxury feel whereas some aspects of the X3 feel underdone. The X4 feels the sportiest of them all, but the pick is still the X5, as it's more luxurious, more spacious, and handsome without being (too) pretentious. It's a good choice in entry-level 25d spec too.  

For more motoring content like this, subscribe to NZ Autocar magazine here