Road Test
Boy, have we got a darling little German family car to show you! It's handsome, it's poised, and it's six-cylinder powerful. It attacks roads like a sports car, just chews them right to pieces. You also get four-wheel drive for better asphalt adhesion. It's really something!
This blue thing? No, no, no, that's just the new BMW X3. We're talking about the BMW 325xi sport wagon, base price of $32,845, and a humdinger of a quality automobile. Put down the magazine right now and go call a dealer. He has plenty.
Whadja say? You want us to shut up about the 325xi because you bought this magazine to read about the X3? Okay. Fine.
But maybe you don't really want to hear about the X3. Conventional wisdom says if you really wanted a true sport-utility, you wouldn't be talking to BMW. And if you really wanted a BMW, you wouldn't even think of buying an SUV.
Except for those 43,000 or so people who annually motor off in a new BMW X5 sport-ute. Worldwide, the X5's success is encouraging BMW to sink its tires deeper into the SUV swamp, especially since Americans treat all station wagons as if they come standard with tuberculosis. We're less at ease with this latest BMW, however. The X3's flaws are glaring, especially from a company known for clipping the perfection apex tighter than most.
More specifically, we like the idea of the X3 better than the vehicle itself. Our ears pricked up when BMW invited us to sample what is essentially a smaller, lighter, less expensive X5. Gosh, just saying that feels good. Plus, the X3 is assembled in Arnold Schwarzenegger's hometown of Graz, Austria, not by BMW, but by a subcontractor, Magna Steyr Fahrzeugtechnik AG & Co. KG. Armed with that fact you can suck the air right out of the room at your next dinner party.
The X3 is certainly lighter. Towed by the same 225-hp, 3.0-liter inline six as that in its bigger brother, the X5 3.0i, the 4095-pound X3 weighs between 600 and 700 pounds less than the X5. It is certainly cheaper, too. Although prices weren't finalized at press time, the X3 should start at about $32,000 for a base 2.5i with the 189-hp, 2.5-liter inline six and top out just north of $40,000 for a fully loaded 3.0i with the 225-horse six like the one pictured here. The 2004 X5 starts at $40,995 and is hurdling safely over $60,000 equipped with the bigger engine, the 4.4-liter V-8, and all the boxes checked.
Smaller? Just by gerbil whiskers. The X3's wheelbase is less than an inch shy of the X5's, and the X3's black-plastic bumpers are only four inches closer together. The width and height differences are minimal as well. The X3's seating space offers more rear-seat headroom and legroom. Compared with the X5, the X3's cargo hold is actually bigger by 30 percent with the rear seats folded (almost) flat, 26 percent with the seats up. The unloved 325xi wagon is significantly tighter in every respect, especially in the back.
We also like that BMW spliced the 3-series' curve-straightening DNA into the X3, including the same basic front-strut, multilink-rear suspension with some extra structural beefiness for off-road duty. The X3 also debuts BMW's new xDrive, a nifty single-speed torque-transfer coupling with a microchip-administered multiplate clutch pack that constantly varies engine thrust between the front and rear axles from 100 percent rear to 50/50. Combined with brake-based traction control and a hill-descent function that works the brakes to control downward velocity, the xDrive is a more flexible doohickey than the planetary gear differential and its fixed 38-percent-front, 62-percent-rear torque split found in the 325xi and the '03 X5 (the '04 X5 also features xDrive).
If the X3 never rose up from the paper, we'd be quaffing schnapps in its honor. The doubt creeps in out on the road. The otherwise supple 3-series suspension has been radically hardened in the X3, kind of the way they harden ICBM silos. Shod in the rear with the 45-series, W-rated rubber of the optional Sport package, the X3's ride is hard-edged, concussive, and insufferable. Hit a craggy, undulating section of road, and the X3 bucks like a mare with Little Richard's pinky ring stuck under the saddle. Do it at speed, and the X3 is almost as good as a guillotine for testing your neck joints.
