>> It wasn't too long ago that the strange new trend with the car business was to take a sloping back sedan with four-doors and call it a coupe, a four-door coupe. Now we've got a four-door coupe that's also big and tall and riding high. It's an SUV and it's still called a coupe -- of sorts. It's the BMW X6 and it's one of the strangest cars on the road. Let's check its tech.
^M00:00:21
[ Music ]
^M00:00:30
>> Now I must say, for a biggish SUV, it's one of the most responsive you'll ever drive. The power on this guy comes from a 3-liter
twin-turbo inline six -- you know the motor. It's on the 335i that we love to death. It's not as responsive on this big old tub of lard, which is pushing 5,000 pounds, but it's still ample power from a very small lean motor, displacement-wise, it's a nice package, but if you think you're gonna get in this thing, cover your eyes and say, wow, I feel like I'm driving a 335i -- not. Bottom line, this is a large utility vehicle and it drives like one. But there may never be a better driving one in history. I've got mixed reactions of the steering wheel in terms of its layout and in terms of what happens with it. First of all, you've got these funky shifters here, which is BMW's new shift logic, which is pull back for an up-shift, thumb forward for a downshift. It takes a little getting used to, but you know, it's no different than any other, it's just different than every other, you know what I mean? In terms of getting into a different gear, blessedly, you don't have to go into the manual mode with this little dildo shifter. You can leave that and drive and just hit one of these guys here to snatch a gear and then pull it back, so slipping in and out of manual mode is not a problem. What gripes me on this car is the navigation screen. Look at those fonts on the map. Part of the Y is thick, the other leg is narrow, same thing for the N. If you had that going on your PC display, you'd say, ah, I got the wrong graphic setting on my display card, we go fix that. On a car, you can't fix it, you're stuck with it. It's just not pretty, but never mind all that, here's the payoff in terms of interface on this car. When I go set my directions and I get my destination and all that's done, look what I see. That is the best heads-up display I have ever seen in a car. I wonder if military jets get it that good. You see, I've got my speed displayed up there, and my navigation instructions are right above it. That to my mind is what every in-car nav will do one day. That's exactly what the directions ought to be. Oh, by the way, as if they're admitting this thing really is an SUV, look what's under my elbow, a rear seat entertainment system for the kiddies in the back. I like it here, I don't love it, I wish this was a pair of headrest monitors. But this is better than here, where it's gonna block my rear view. BMW is smarter than to do that. Oh, by the way, did you notice that badge out there, X Drive? That's BMW's intelligent all-wheel drive system, standard on the X6 series. And one of the things it does that I find fascinating is called Dynamic Performance Control. It's kind of an extreme limited-slip differential in the rear. It can really buy us the torque way to the left or way to the right wheel. That can be used to combat under steer and over steer real effectively on this car. And in the future I bet they're gonna use it to create one of those lane departure correction systems. Not available yet, it's got to be coming. Let's price our X635i, about fifty-three base and you're gonna want to do it up CNET style. Add 2000 for a navigation package with nav, voice activation and rear view camera. Another two grand for the full audio options of better audio, iPod connector, all of that. By the way, HD radio is 350 a la carte. Rear seat entertainment is 1700, and you got to get the heads up display for 1200.
^M00:03:52
[ Music ]
