Off the leash
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday December 12, 2009
Looking like an angry pit bull, the BMW X6 M's bite is even better than its bark, writes BARRY PARK. BMW, the master maker of niche cars, has split the market even further by unleashing a highly potent version of its X6 crossover utility vehicle.Priced from a weighty $179,900 before on-road and dealer costs, the niche-within-a-niche four-seat hatchback stands as the first performance soft-roader from the Bavarian brand.Being only a little unkind, the stock US-made X6 looks a little like a startled American pit bull. You know, the big, square head dropped low; strong, muscular haunches held high; paws splayed as wide as they can go.The X6 M, then, shows what happens when you poke that pit bull a few times with a stick. It starts to look a little angry.For a start, the M hunches 10 millimetres lower than its less-potent sibling. Then there's that snarling front air dam, with intakes so big that they seem to be gulping air rather than just swallowing it, and the mean-looking kidney grilles.Down the rear, quad chrome pipes stick out brazenly from the stumpy, raked profile. Beneath the plumped guards, sticky 20-inch track tyres costing $800 a corner, we're told, are likely to have a tough job ahead of them distributing the 4.4-litre twin-turbocharged V8's 408kW of power and 680Nm of torque to all four wheels.Sitting in the pits at the challenging Phillip Island racetrack offers a chance to give the throttle a few nudges and see what sort of noise comes out.Instead of the wonderful V8 burble you'd get from, say, the M3, there's only a muted rumble with a metallic rasp to it.Never mind. It's time to see what this ugly puppy can do.Join the track, tap the left steering wheel-mounted aluminium shift paddle a couple of times to drop through the gears, plant the right foot and the X6 M hunkers down and leaps. A warning light on the typical-for-an-M-car performance-oriented dash reads "MDM", meaning the X6 M is already set up for the track via the steering wheel-mounted "M" button that can raise the thresholds of the stability control, retune the dynamic chassis and remap the throttle and gearbox to the driver's liking.It transforms the 2.3-tonne crossover utility vehicle into a spitting, howling monster. The exhausts are nestled between the cylinder banks and join both rows of cylinders together. They feed into twin-scroll turbos, so boost turns on like a tap from very low in the rev range.The brakes are only four-pot fixed calipers fitted to platter-sized discs on the front that, surprisingly, aren't cross-drilled or slotted and floating four-pot calipers on the rear. They are deep, fade-free and quite up to the task.Cornering grip is there and the dynamic chassis does well to give the X6 M sports car-like handling with little, if any, body roll. Handled clumsily the M will dissolve into lots of tyre squeal and slow, predictable understeer.But hit the sweet spot and the M can swallow corners whole. The tricky electronic differentials are so clever that they can push drive to the wheels on the outside of the corner, helping to turn the X6 into them. Officially the X6 M will do 13.9 litres per 100 kilometres, which, given its deep well of potential, is astonishing.Bear in mind that the X6 M is strictly a four-seater. If you're after five seats, well, it's only a few months' wait until the X5 M hits our shores, priced from $172,900.For more on the BMW X6, go to drive.com.au/bmw
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
