Here we test it on- and off-road, in its top-selling M Sport trim. The best-selling version of the X3 will be the 2.0-litre diesel – 20d in BMW-speak. The original X5 engineers, or old Land Rover folk, just wouldn’t have believed this level of popularity. If I look out of my London window just now, four out of 10 cars I see parked in my narrow urban street are SUVs. They have morphed from minority to mainstream.
Now almost every maker has road-biased SUVs that drive (almost) as well as proper cars, never mind the extra bulk and invariably extra thirst. Xs now constitute 34 per cent of BMW global sales worldwide, and growing. We even have M versions, just to show how well these surprisingly agile demi-trucks have adapted, Darwin-like, to the tarmac. Other Xs followed: now we have X1, X2, X3, X4, X5, X6 and, soon, an X7. Audi and Mercedes, initially SUV laggards, both jumped on this increasingly profitable gravy train. Even Land Rover, the 4×4 daddy, changed its SUV recipe: subsequent models became much tidier handlers, and far more road biased (and far more successful). Remember, too, that at the time BMW knew a thing or two about 4x4s: it owned Land Rover.Ĭompetitors copied. It sold way beyond BMW’s modest ambitions. Suddenly, you could buy a 4×4 – more versatility, more go-anywhere appeal, an elevated driving position – that didn’t drive like a truck. The X5, of almost 20 years ago, was the first 4×4 that drove like a normal car.