BMW X6 M 2015 Review

Every time a car company bring the works racing drivers up to speak at a car launch, the pens drop to the horizontal. After all, these guys depend directly on the car companies for their livelihoods, so they’ll just follow the company line... Except maybe for the sake of a bit of colour now and again.

But this time, BMW touring car driver Timo Glock turned out to be right. The X6 M does, actually, handle surprisingly well considering its high centre of gravity and Butterball girth.

Indeed, this behemoth SUV 'coupe' can even be flailed around at a track day and, if you have enough conviction that it will stick, you’ll surprise plenty of those people around you — not to mention your banker when the bill for new 21-inch Michelins and Brembo brake pads arrives the next day!

And it’s fast. Brutally, M5 fast... Its combination of all-wheel drive and 423kW of twin-turbo V8 mean there’s always more X6 M on tap than you’re likely to ever need.

At the heart of this 2.3 tonne madman is an awful lot of engine. It’s stronger than the Cayenne Turbo and ML63 AMG [soon to be GLE] by about 50hp and stronger than its predecessor — just.

While the extra urge is noticeable at the top end, where the power peak hits at 6000rpm and stays there until 6500, its extra torque is clinically unmistakeable. There’s another 70Nm here (at 750Nm) and it hits, hard, from 2200rpm and doesn’t begin to taper off til over 5000.

M has pulled all the tricks on this one, with direct fuel injection, a pair of twin-scroll turbochargers nestled in the 90-degree vee of the engine and variable valve timing and lift. Unlike the Mercedes-Benz and Audi V8s, which also nestle their turbos inside the engine’s vee, the X6M motor uses four cross-bank exhaust manifolds to help with exhaust flow and a closed-deck crankcase to let it smash in more cylinder pressure.

The end result is an engine that can throw the X6 M 0-100km/h in 4.2sec and BMW has, thankfully, limited the big rig to 250km/h. And it refuses to admit what it might do with the limiter removed.

You’re not buying an X6 M if you have phobias about petrol bowsers and though it has chopped its NEDC official number down by 20 per cent to 11.1L/100km, you’ll struggle to hit that number with its real-world temptations.

BMW M's engineers have had to work hard to make the rest of the X6’s donor bits cope. The chassis has seen a lot of perfectly nice BMW bits thrown out in favour of unique M parts, including the front upper and lower wishbones (for more negative camber) plus stiffer wheel bearings and suspension (and engine mounting) bushes, The standard air suspension scores a self-levelling rear.

While it’s fitted standard with 285/40 R20 front and 325/35 R20 rear Pirellis, M expects most people to opt for the custom-developed Michelin 21-inch rubber (285/35 and 325/30) to take advantage of the 10mm lower ride height.

They had to work in other areas, too, including the addition of hot and cold radiators to manage the oil and water temperatures around the 1.2G torture of the Nurburgring, along with the usual M-specific visual fiddles and quad pipes emerging from the rear diffuser.

All of it adds up to something that does what it probably shouldn’t be able to do. Haters are going to hate this car and they’ll usually be the ones who haven’t been inside it. It’s an easy concept to hate, especially if your ideal of an M car is an M3 CSL.

But it’s still stupendously fast.

There’s just no logical way that the X6 M should be able to do the things it does, especially on a racetrack as demanding as the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin (Texas). Across the layout's high-speed direction changes, tightening radius corners and three tight hairpins, the X6 M has to rely heavily on its electronics to gain access to its top drawer of speed and ability, but it still gets there. And that’s probably the important thing.

There is no wheelspin. No hint of wheelspin, even. Not even a scrap. You just pop the gearlever across to the Go position and stand on the throttle.

Being an M car (vehicle?), it has various stages of 'Go' that don’t depend on the gearlever. There are three stages of aggro for the dampers, three stages for the engine mapping/exhaust tune and three stages for the steering. Or you can just call up the MDM button on the steering wheel to put them all automatically in the settings that most disturb physics. And the skid control is switchable, with on, a bit on and completely gone being the options.

Even tuned to its mellowest settings, the thing is hardly James Taylor. It’s raucously loud, brutally effective and ferociously quick. In its loudest setting, you wonder why anybody would bother with an M5. After all, it’s only a 300kg step up to the X6 M.

Sure, the roll centre is higher and there’s mass to arrest at the end of the straights (which this thing shortens in a flurry of drama and theatre with all eight cylinders bellowing, two turbos turboing and artificial noise-makers noise-making), but that’s about it for disadvantages.

The speed is tremendous but it’s not the thing that lasts longest in the mind.

On Austin’s first hard braking corner, the steeply uphill turn one, the X6 M squirms under heavy braking. It never feels as though it’s about to come unstuck but it’s an edgy reminder that there’s plenty of work being done by the six-piston brake calipers and that every tread block is being tasked with as much work as a State Of Origin tackler.

The steering is now electric, which lets M plug it into the Comfort/Sport/Sport+ matrixes, and it actually feels like it gives its best in Sport, rather than the sharper Sport+. Here it gives good feedback from the front end, so you always know just how deep you can go into a corner and how hard you can make it yaw.

And then, once all that messy technical stuff is done, you can just stand on the throttle a bit before the apex and let the electronics sort it all out from there as the speedo needle crosses bigger and bigger numbers.

This might be the accepted strategy (even the pro racers do it this way) on tight corners, but it works pretty well on the faster, open stuff as well. Get the direction changed, eye the exit and stand on it.

If the MDM (which is M’s steering wheel-mounted go-to button for maximum safe-ish performance) is on, it will take care of the rest, including torque vectoring on the rear axle, to keep you on line even as commonsense suggests you probably should be in the gravel.

The fun part is on the track you can adjust the X6 M's attitude yourself: fiddling with the throttle as the car yaws gently around its axis; bellowing and bursting through long sweepers and whipping back and forward on direction changes.

There’s little body roll to speak of and you can bash it over kerbs and it won’t toss you around uncertainly. Its body control is a highlight.

You need to bear in mind that it won’t change direction with the alacrity of something half a tonne lighter or 30cm lower, but it’s reliable and even fun.

BMW suggests it’s capable of track days, and they’re right, provided you’re also capable of paying the prodigious tyre and brake pad bills.

And if it’s an eye opener on the track, it feels incredibly quick on the road. The ride feels firm, even in its comfort settings. It’s probably 20 percent stiffer over bumps than the X6 donor car, but it’s more accurate.

The interior is everything you’d expect at this level, with maximum everything bunged in from M on top of the already-plush X6 specifications.

The rear seat will happily swallow a pair of full-sized adults and the boot space might not be the same as the X5’s (or a Range Rover Sport or a Cayenne), but at 580 litres it’s still more than useful for most people in daily life.

There are reasons why we wouldn’t recommend buying the X6 M on purely intrinsic terms. The X5 M, for example, is effectively the same car with more luggage capacity and more interior space. And it’s cheaper. And that’s before we even consider other brands.

But people will buy this car. And if they go in with their eyes open they’ll either love it or they’ll respect it. They won’t hate it.

2015 BMW X6 M pricing and specifications:
Price: TBA
Engine: 4.4-litre, twin-turbo V8
Output: 423kW/750Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 11.1L/100km (NEDC)
CO2: 258 grams/km
Safety Rating: TBA