A four-wheel expletive

It’s enthusiasm for driving, ironically, that works both as a blessing and a curse when reviewing cars.

While enthusiasm helps dissect a product on a critical level, it also goes some way towards separating the experience from that of the everyday man on the street. What I find is, the more cars I test drive, the more set in my ways I become about what I secretly like.

My list of things I absolutely adore on a car that, if present and correct, will allow me to overlook any faults, is short and quite peculiar, I’ll admit.

A small steering wheel, tightly grouped pedals and a hazard light switch within fingers’ stretch of the gear lever. That’s it.
No wonder the best car I’ve driven this year is a 10-year-old Honda S2000.

Of course, one can’t let a fondness for such acquired tastes get in the way of the job. Like driving the BMW X5M and X6M, for instance — two cars that have none of those three features but, my goodness, do they have something about them.

A few months ago, when BMW brought out the X6 Xdrive50i, with a 300kW, twin-turbo V8 engine, I may have called it the world’s only “four-wheeled expletive — a twin turbo-charged middle finger to everything on our watery Earth”.

And I stand by that. But now as M cars, both the X6 and X5, take it to a whole new level. Now packing 408kW and 680Nm from their M-tuned V8 engines, these cars will rocket to 100kph in less than five seconds. Both cars carry identical drivetrains and mechanicals, but each one has a very unique attitude.

The appeal to customers in the X5M will be that it is the most powerful and fastest SUV BMW has put out. The practicality it offers over the lower-slung X6 is obvious too, but in terms of driving feel and pace, it is identical to the supposedly sportier coupé X6.

The X6 is the better looking of the two, sporting some serious presence with its M side gills, twin exhausts and all-around anabolic antagonism. Aside from the M badging, you’d barely notice the fury lurking beneath the X5M’s flanks.

What surprised me about these two cars, however, was their civility. Driving the 300kW X6 was like being hooked up to a testosterone machine, so what was the M version going to feel like? Being electrocuted? I was expecting buttock-hugging bucket seats, a ride as hard as a lunar landing and the differentials to sound like Hannibal Lecter at slow speeds. How wrong I was. The four-wheel drive system combined with dynamic performance control shifts power seamlessly to wherever you need it when you drive it hard, but it’s utterly sophisticated everywhere else.

BMW’s six-speed (not a dual clutch SMG) automatic gearbox is whisper smooth and can be set to sport or efficiency shift mode, while the damping control allows you to choose how firm you want the ride to be. Feedback and tug through the steering wheel is noticeable at speed, but who can blame it with those 20-inch, low-profile, wide front tyres being darted this way and that over road imperfections.

A lot of the appeal comes from the massively powerful engine, of course. With its perfectly flat torque delivery of 680Nm from 1 500rpm all the way to 5 650rpm and, although you may disagree, the economy figure of 14,3-litres/100km, is actually quite good for such savage performance. It produces 335g/km of CO2, which is a lot, but it’s only 6g more than from the X6 Xdrive50i.
The BMW X5M costs R 1 225 000 and the X6M costs R 1 260 000.