The new BMW X1 is, for the most of the part, a very good car. Yet there is a big asterisk to this: It just doesn’t observe much like a BMW. In this very age when executives and product planners wax poetic about retaining the “brand DNA”—seemingly to no end—this feels simply like a model that tosses great of it to the wayside.
Conceal the styling and obvious bits, and we would venture to declare that even BMW loyalists might not single out the grand X1 as one of their own. If you are a longtime BMW fan, that’s damning praise.
You probably appreciate some of the qualities that you know will be authentically baked into every BMW model—like good, near-neutral handling, superb comfortable seats, and the feeling that you are sitting down quite near the vehicle’s center of mass.
The old BMW X1 wasn’t a very roomy or space-efficient car; it didn’t drive all that well; and the cabin could be somewhat noisy; but it handled like a back-wheel-drive sport coupe—just one that occurred to have a tall roof, a hatch, and four doors.
The new 2016 X1 is fairly much the polar opposite. It is the first ever front-wheel-drive-based BMW; it’s amazingly well laid-out and space-efficient. It rides silently and comfortably; it makes advances directly toward unpaved terrain in a way the X1 never performed before and its handling is tidy.
The X1’s steering is exceptional, and it’s what really redeems this particular model as a pleasant city and suburban roundabout. It very well tracks on the highway or in tight alleys, with exact, well-weighted control off center, unwinding effortlessly under power in a way that’s relatively back in front- or all-wheel-drive cars.
It is small-car fuel-efficient, too. Over 140 miles, surrounding mixed conditions that involved an hour in dense urban stop-and-go and an hour in ideal relaxed highway cruising—and almost everything in between—test takers averaged 25 mpg following to the trip computer; that nearly ties the smart X1’s 26-mpg EPA Combined figure (and 22/32 mpg city/motorway ratings).
The X1 includes 2.0-litre turbocharged, direct-injection “Twin Turbo” four-cylinder strong engine is essentially what’s used in many other locations in the BMW (and Mini) lineup, and now it makes 228 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque; laboring with the eight-speed automatic transmission, there is excellent straight-line acceleration (0-60 in almost six seconds) plus strong passing power when one need it.
Through Driving Dynamic Control, one can bring up Sport, Comfort, and Eco Pro modes, which alters the calibration of the electric power steering, shift behavior/points and accelerator sensitivity While the lack of a Sport+ mode is pretty saying about BMW’s intent with this version, test takers found a wider range than normal between these three settings—mainly in powertrain respects.
Rapid transitionary bursts of power are painfully reluctant in Eco Pro, and even Comfort mode sometimes, still they’re a lot smarter in Sport or if one shift over to the manual-control shift gate.
Overall, the BMW X1 has all-wheel drive, or xDrive as BMW declares it, which uses a multi-plate clutch and hydraulic pump system to send up straight to 100 percent of engine power to the back wheels when required—in less than a quarter of a second.
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