The year: 2018 or somewhere close. Location: BMW’s M division bunker. A whole row of 7-series transports the Board of Directors to the front door. “Good news, gentlemen,” they tell the assembled faithful. ‘Now that M has reached the beautiful age of 50 years last year, we think it is high time for a special M model.’
A wave of excitement ripples through the room. Since the 1978 M1 supercar, M has not made a model that was only available as an M. While Audi RS and Mercedes-AMG have been partying with their own supercar platforms, M has been tuning business cars. “We believe the time is right for a plug-in hybrid M car,” continues the boss.
Worried faces can be seen – doesn’t that stuff weigh way too much? – but Günther from Powertrains grins at Hans van Ondersteldynamica. Immediate response. No turbo lag. Torque vectoring. Low center of gravity. The possibilities for this new M supercar are endless. “Oh, one more thing,” says the Talking Suit before running off. “This new M will be the largest rear legroom SUV in the Chinese market. Bye!’
The XM should have been the best of both worlds
And so it is now 2023 and the new BMW XM, as the name suggests, seeks to pair the best of BMW’s intensely lucrative X model range with everything the M division knows about top performance. Which failed miserably.
To be fair: BMW has gotten away with high and therefore automatically lagging SUVs before, with the original X5 and then with the X6. Those cars raised the bar significantly when it comes to expectations of how a heavy, tall car handles, and that certainly hasn’t hurt the lower echelons either.
Which is why there’s now a fancy X1, and a huge X7, and every number in between is neatly covered too. So why isn’t the XM just called X8 M? BMW engineers say that simply a higher number would not do justice to the quantity oempf and extravaganza that the XM has to offer. The largest market for the XM is America, followed closely by China.
BMW insists the XM has a coupe-like roofline and that it pays homage to the M1 through the two badges etched into the rear window. But that’s like claiming that the Burj Khalifa pays homage to the pyramids of Egypt because they both end in a point.
There has probably never been a car made that looks so repulsive. And you can call that brave or daring, but you can’t get around the fact that the XM is almost begging people to have an opinion about it (and you, as a driver).
Does it make up for that look with power and sound?
If you buy a car that radiates ‘and now all salt up’ in such a menacing way, you expect a hefty bump of power. And you get that. Behind those two huge, LED-lit nostrils hides M’s 4.4-litre twin-turbocharged V8, developing 489 horsepower. It gets an extra push from an electric motor that lives in the gearbox, which brings the total to 653 hp and 800 Nm.
That’s enough to drag your Public Declaration of Deep-Seated Personal Insecurity to 100 km/h in 4.3 seconds and gallop to an (optional) 270 km/h. But: after you climb aboard this robotized warthog and notice the M logos thrown around, you press the blood-red start button and… nothing.
Yes, one ‘woes’sounds and screens that come to life. It’s ready to ride, but it’s an anticlimax. M’s first PHEV always starts on its electric motor. Now that engine has a complete Golf V GTI of power, but because the XM weighs more than the Reichstag building, there is certainly not much spice in the whole. Quiet, it is.
What do you hear in the XM?
The rolling noises of those huge tires (21-inch rims are standard, 22 or 23 inches are also possible) are remarkably well damped. Only when you drive about 70 or 80 kilometers per hour will you notice that the complicated M mirrors produce a colossal amount of wind noise. Fortunately, BMW mounted a V8 that can put an end to that irritation. He might be something overkillbut at least by waking up the 4.4-litre biturbo you are busy with very different things than the overweight of the XM.
Where this thing feels really insanely fast is when accelerating from a standstill. Press both pedals at the same time and the car braces itself. appears on the screen ‘eLaunch active’. Release the brake and for the first 10 meters it feels like unbridled unleashing in a potent EV – full bucket of instant torque. That is the electric motor doing its thing while the turbos are already spooling up.
Just in time, the V8 comes to life and the advance rumbles on. It’s a merciless sensation, but it would have been even more overwhelming if the V8 hadn’t sounded so pinched and shrill. This is one of the few M cars in which dubbed autotuneengine sound is welcome.
The BMW XM has been deliberately made noisy
We have now become accustomed to plug-in hybrids with an imperceptible transition between electric and combustion engine. The BMW XM is not that polite. According to the BMW engineers, that’s a conscious choice: V8 engines don’t have that long in this world, so they want to celebrate the moment it is brought to life.
Cute idea, but if you drive it in everyday life, it just comes across as a bit clumsy. Take a roundabout with half throttle and the electric motor will happily whir you over it. Then the V8 blows itself awake and you feel a small but nonetheless annoying break in your momentum. It’s just as difficult to come to a smooth stop – the braking feel is fine, but just before the wheels come to a complete stop, you can feel a shift.
Can you get the BMW XM through a corner a bit?
It is certainly not due to a lack of hardware with the XM. Entire warehouse racks have been thrown against him. Rear-wheel steering, 48-volt roll-over stabilization and the M5’s suspension tech are all present. And when you line up how the XM goes through a corner, it gets better and better. It’s quite manoeuvrable, there’s no scribbling when the unloaded wheels lose traction, and it does lean unreasonably little.
The cornering speeds you can achieve go beyond impressive: they are terrifying. But as with so many cars that use aerospace-sized amounts of engineering to fool the physics, there’s a disconnect between what’s happening and what you’re experiencing. A distance that is unworthy of a real M car (and that is the XM, BMW keeps hammering it in).
The steering is unclear just off the center point – probably due to the rear-wheel steering counteracting early steering movements to keep the car stable. It seems in the XM that all the good things are there, but the whole thing just doesn’t want to merge into a nice car.
So you’re better off buying one of its competitors?
It’s not as relentless in conquering a road as a Cayenne or a Urus, and not as flamboyant and entertaining as a DBX 707 or BMW’s own half-ton lighter X5 M. And when you’re done clowning around, it changes almost any other super SUV that has to cost this kind of money in a friendly, tall GT that protects you from the evil outside world. The BMW XM is much too hard damped and sprung to offer the same bandwidth. Even in the Comfort mode in which you start as standard, it is just too loud.
On the one hand, we see BMW doing its best to contain the considerable mass of a hybrid powertrain in an already heavy car, but on the other hand: usually that 48-volt stabilization controls the leaning of a thick car. SUV in corners, but also helps to keep things calm when going straight.
It’s almost like the marketing department insisted that the XM should always feel sporty, so buyers would always feel it’s an M and not, say, an X8. The result is an extraordinarily fast SUV that isn’t particularly pleasant to drive at speed, is chunky when driven slowly, and isn’t comfortable enough to have any success as a luxury transport.
For those who still want to buy a BMW XM
Still interested? Serious? Well, inside you’ll find seating for five people, with Rolls-Royce-esque wrap-around seats in the back. In the front, the screens et cetera come from the facelifted 3 series. At the very back you will find a luggage compartment that is over 500 liters in size, but a quarter is filled by a kind of thick Louis Vuitton bag that contains your charging cable. There is no space under the floor.
By the way, it lasts an electric drive for about 80 kilometers and it takes just over four hours to charge it. But the BMW XM is definitely not the compromise of the best of all worlds, not a car with a conscience. It’s embarrassingly vulgar, and unlike the equally atrocious X6, it doesn’t even have the excuse of at least being fantastic to drive.
Specifications of the BMW XM (2023)
Motor
4.4 V8 biturbo hybride
653 pk
800 Nm
Drive
four wheels
8v automatic
Performance
0-100 km/u in 4,3 s
top 280 km/u
Consumption (average)
1.5l/100km
33 g/km
Weight
2.685 kg
Luggage room
527 l
Prices
€ 177.825 (NL)
€ 173.900 (B)
Judgement
Yes, the greed of a marketing department can overwhelm even the best engineers in the world. X and M don’t go together
2023-07-09 17:06:26
#BMW #review #brilliant #controversial #muzzle
