THE X6 DRIVES LIKE NO OTHER SUV OUT THERE... A VERY SPORTY SEDAN, OOPS SORRY, COUPE, ONLY WITH A HIGHER GROUND CLEARANCE.

How do Mercedes Benz and BMW have the audacity to call the CLS and X6, coupes? Neither has two doors and, both seat more than two persons. Ah yes, their roofline profiles look like a coupe’s - well sort of.

I didn’t like the X6 the first time I saw it in the flesh at the international launch in South Carolina in late April. I thought it was grossly disproportioned and was quite upset to see how BMW got it so wrong after having gotten it so right with their new X5 launched last year. I took a walk around, looked at what seemed to be a beltline that was too high, a rear end that was as seriously out of place as J-Lo’s would have been on Sarah Jessica Parker’s body, and proportions which just didn’t seem right at all. Later, I looked at the car again only to find that I still couldn’t make sense of its proportions. And finally before heading back to my hotel room, took one final look. Perhaps it was the heavy dinner I just had or perhaps the crispness of the night’s air, but something clicked in my head and the X6’s looks were finally starting to come together in my head. This car grows on you, and the more you stare, the better it looks. The next morning, I stepped outside in anticipation of being handed over the keys only to find myself puzzled as to why I had deemed the car to look so offensive just 24 hours ago. Sure, it is just a matter of taste at the end of the day, but I found that quite a few of my colleagues went through the same transition in just 24 hours.

I took my time to examine the interior of the X6, settling into my seat, adjusting it to what was a surprisingly compliant and pleasant position. The steering wheel is thick rimmed, similar to the M3 and M5’s and really gives you a lot to wrap your hands around, something which I like but can clearly see others with smaller hands hating very quickly. The two rear seats, which are separated by a centre console, are comfortable and offer good legroom although headroom, which was borderline for my driving partner was no good for me. At 179cm my head was literally a few millimetres from the ceiling, which no doubt would have resulted in quite a few headaches if I were to sit here through a bumpy ride. So right off the bat, this is something to consider if you are in the habit of having adult passengers. The head up display was great, not annoying in the least as I would have imagined it to be, reflecting your speed and navigation directions onto the windscreen just below your line of sight. The i-drive, though improved is still nowhere near as intuitive as Mercedes’ COMAND system in my opinion and was just slightly less annoying than previous versions.

Setting off in the car, I immediately understood why BMW’s staff with whom I had dinner the night before had a mischievous twinkle in their eyes when they asked me to give them my opinion of the X6 after I’d driven it following my discourse to them on how the Porsche Cayenne is as close to ‘sporty’ driving as you can get for any 4x4. Basically, take everything that you know about 4x4s, SUVs, SAVs or whatever you want to call them, and throw it out the window. The X6 drives like no other SUV out there. This is not a truck. This is a very sporty sedan, oops sorry, coupe, only with a higher ground clearance and SUV sized dimensions. It drives like a 2008 BMW 328xi, which has all-wheel drive, a sports suspension and sport tuned chassis, an excellent sports sedan in every right, but is higher off the ground. The seating position is quite comfortable and totally unlike a traditional SUV’s, the complete opposite of the Range Rover’s stratospheric seating position. The ride is a very firm one on the highway and every bit as pleasant and compliant as a 3 series. Once we got to the Caesar’s Head State Park’s mountainous passes, we were treated to some of the best roads I’ve ever driven on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. The X6 amazed my driving partner and I who were hard pressed to make the car step out of line. Make no mistake about it, the more I drove, the more confident I became with the car’s abilities and was driving the X6 with exactly as much pace through tight corners and around bends with little visibility and nerve-wracking drops as I would have a proper sports sedan or coupe. Body roll is virtually the same as a sports sedan, and only the slightest hint of understeer can be experienced, nowhere near as much as you would have gotten with an X5 or an ML had you driven them the same way. Come to think of it, I probably would have ended up going home in a casket had I dared driven either of those two the same way I drove the X6 on these roads.

We were lucky enough to sample two different variants of the X6. The straight six twin turbocharged diesel with an output of 286bhp was plenty of fun enough although it did lack a little in initiative at times. You would be forgiven however for believing that you weren’t driving a diesel at all judging by the engine’s roar under hard acceleration. Later we were treated to the ‘X6 xDrive50i’, a real mouthful of a name and even more in terms of fun! Powered by a twin-turbocharged V8 with an output of 407bhp, this was one of the most responsive and flexible V8’s I’d ever driven and actually reminded me a lot of BMW’s rev-happy inline six cylinder unit on the previous generation M3. The six speed electronic transmission was superbly mated to this engine too.

A few laps around the Michelin testing grounds’ closed circuit left me scratching my head. This car, or SUV rather, which weighed 2.1 tons had absolutely no business handling the way it did. I know some sports cars which would be easily put to shame by the 50i’s pace around the track, bite through the corners, and superb braking. The entire time you drive the X6, you feel completely confident in areas where you would normally have been very nervous, or quite possibly upside-down in most other ‘sporty’ SUVs.

So what does the X6 amount to finally? A one of a kind looking SUV with superb performance far more akin to a sports sedan than an off-road 4x4, a great interior with a far higher quality finish than some other BMW’s I can name of the past few years. What’s bad about it? Well, the rear seating space for one, although referring to Webster’s dictionary’s definition of coupe’s, they are supposed to have tight rear seats anyways. Plus, the rear view is virtually non-existent, but you do have the back-up camera option, which can help out there.

So who’s this car for? Someone who loves both sports cars and SUV’s but only needs one car. And I do believe that there are quite a few of them out there which means that BMW is about to make the Cayenne GTS, AMG ML and other ‘sporty’ SUV’s wonder what just hit them.