It's almost impossible to suppress a roll of the eyes, even a clicking "tut" of the tongue as the BMW X4 comes into view. It just appears mainly ridiculous, with its silly chopped roof and angled fastback tail, clomping along on great big alloys with its chunky M-Sport bodykit.
It looks all wrong – as if someone is wearing a glamorously cut Savile Row suit on their top half, while their lower body is clad in mud-splattered cargo pants and hiking boots. As if Bear Grylls got only half-changed on the way to the ball. It’s trying to cloak family functionality and ruggedness with sporty styling. One colleague sniped that it was like a motoring toupee.
BMW, you suspect, has good reasons for creating such a odd concoction and that good reason is called the X6. Like the X4, the big X6 (itself just recently replaced by an all-new model) takes a sensible, upright SUV (in the case of the X4 the recently revised X3 is the mechanical donor) and tries to turn it into a coupe. How we all scoffed and giggled when the X6 came along and how we all had to eat humble pie when BMW sold thousands of the damnable things. Hence the X4 – if the big one can be a success, the smaller one can be a bigger success.
So the X4 is lower and slightly longer than the X3; it has four seats instead of five (although the X3’s pretensions for seating three people in the back seat are at best largely fictional); and the sloping angle of the tailgate reduces the boot space from the X3’s capacious load bay. However, you can still squeeze 500 litres in the back of the X4.
It's more expensive, less practical and asks you to accept these twinned compromises in the name of dubious style, the sort of style that sings rather more closely to the supporting cast of Made In Chelsea than is perhaps comfortable.
Why bother?
I should utterly detest the X4. I consider myself a practical, sensible type of guy and I usually deride car makers’ attempts to ever more thinly slice car segments into potentially profitable niches. To my didactic mind, if there’s not a compelling reason for a car to exist, then why bother creating it?
Oddly though, the more time I spent with it, the farther and farther the X4 worked its way into my affections. It began with the engine, which is the latest version of BMW’s ever-brilliant three-litre straight-six diesel unit. An impressive 258hp and 560Nm of torque gives it the sort of effortless, deep-lunged performance you crave, yet 149g/km of CO2 and a claimed 49mpg mean it won’t be half so expensive to run as you fear. It’s true that the vast majority of buyers will plump for the smaller, cheaper two-litre four-cylinder engine and they’re probably right – it’s also an excellent unit and gives little away in real terms to the bigger engine.
Mind you, having driven a two-litre X3 in the same week as the X4, the two aren’t so widely separated in fuel-burn terms as you might expect. In fact, driven over the same roads, in the same style for roughly the same distances, the three-litre engines clocked in only a few mpg worse off than the two- litre.
You approach the X4 expecting it to be seriously uncomfortable, however. BMW forged an unwanted reputation for itself in the early 2000s when the adoption of hard-sidewalled run-flat tyres and stiff-sprung autobahn- friendly suspension made most of their cars feel excessively brittle over crazy-paving Irish tarmac.
With its big wheels, shallow sidewalls and the promise of its M-Sport styling, you assume that the X4 will shortly be compressing your spine over the smallest of undulations.
Not so. In fact, compared with the X3 driven in the same week, which came equipped with wholly unwanted and unnecessary sports suspension, the X4 felt positively limo-like in comparison.
It cleaves closer than expected to the current 3 Series – another BMW that you expect to ride with excessive firmness but which in fact reacts with beautifully dampened precision instead. Yes, the X4 feels appropriately sporty. It’s not soft, nor does it roll much, but it’s far, far more comfortable than you’d ever expect.
It handles rather well too, albeit the overpadded, thick rim of the steering wheel muffles even the minimal feel from the electric power steering.
Wonderfully comfortable
Cabin-wise
it’s basically the same as the X3
but lower. The optional (and pricey – part of a
€1,700 interior comfort package) leather multi-adjustable seats were wonderfully comf
ortable but it can’t match its bigger brothers, the X5 and X6, for Range
Rover
-bashing interior ambience.
In fact, I’d put the X4 behind both the Range Rover Evoque and the Volvo XC60 for interior style and comfort.
You can get an X4 for as little (cough, splutter) as
€56,870 while our M-Sport spec (plus options) three
-litre version clocked in at
€91,119. For either amount
I think I’d much prefer a nicely specced 520d Touring, maybe with optional xDrive four- wheel-drive to match the X4’s all-weather capabilities.
The second of BMW’s excruciatingly named Sports Activity Coupes grew on me rather more than I thought it would, and is rather more impressive almost than I’d care to admit. But it’s still a very silly car.
The lowdown: BMW X4 3.0d xDrive M-Sport Price: €91,119 (X4 pricing starts from €56,870)
Power: 258hp
Torque: 560Nm
0-100km/h: 5.8 sec
Top speed: 240km/h
Claimed economy: 5.7l/ 100km (49mpg)
CO2 emissions: 149g/km
Motor tax: €390
