BMW XM 2022 Review – International

In its storied history, BMW’s M division has only ever built one standalone car, and even then it only made 453 examples of the 1978 BMW M1 coupe.

That’s about to become two standalone cars and, in a sign of the times, the second-ever pure BMW M will be the 2023 BMW XM SUV.

The hyper-luxury XM has been conceived to be the most powerful and most expensive car to ever wear the BMW badge, sitting well upstream of even the BMW X7 and the 7 Series.

It is also, by far, the heaviest.

It will launch next March as the only V8 plug-in hybrid, with a 4.4-litre twin-turbo ‘S68’ engine out of the forthcoming BMW M5 Competition, and it will deliver 80km of WLTP-measured EV range to boot.

There will be at least two power outputs available, with this car’s 480kW of power and 800Nm of torque and a heavier-punching version of the same powertrain with 550kW and 1000Nm.

It does this riding on the X7 SUV platform, complete with rear-wheel steering, steel springs with three-step dampers, and 48-volt active anti-roll bars to help counter all that mass.

With the heft of the V8 up front, BMW stuck the batteries in a saddle configuration under the rear seat to keep the balance at 50:50 front-to-rear.

The 59-litre fuel tank is in the rear, lifting the loading lip for the luggage area’s flat floor notably higher than in any other M-badged SUV.

It’s also fast, with M quoting a 0-100km/h time of 3-point-something seconds, but BMW hasn’t nominated a top speed yet.

For guidance, the Lamborghini Urus is cited as the performance target, and BMW M boss Frank van Meel thinks the Italian car’s 3.6-second sprint and its 306km/h top speed are “within reach”.

While we had access to the prototype of the 2023 BMW XM for a one-hour drive around the hills behind Salzburg, it was heavily camouflaged.

For good reason.

Nothing quite looks like the BMW XM, not even within the BMW range and its recent controversial grille treatments.

The XM won’t be for the shy, with a swooping roofline and its enormous kidney grilles protruding forward.

van Meel insists the XM is not necessarily aimed at BMW buyers, but an entirely new demographic.

“It is logical to do an SUV,” he insisted. “The performance SUV segment is now the biggest globally, and it has lots of potential for further growth.

“The people who will buy this will not need it as a daily driver. They will have many other cars. This is the car they will drive to feel special.”

BMW M claims its XM is shorter than the three-row X7 SUV, but there’s only a couple of centimetres in it, so all the space the X7 uses for two rows is simply given over to the rear seat of the XM.

They’re generous doors to go with the generous legroom portions, and the rear seat has been dedicated as a pure luxury and fun zone, complete with hundreds of LEDs in the glass roof.

It will use the same split headlight treatment as the X7 and the 7 Series, with the option of laser headlights reaching deep into the distance.

The four-door SUV prototype we drove had custom-developed 275/40ZR22 front and 315/35ZR22 rear Pirelli P Zero tyres, and van Meel admitted there would be 23-inch options.

The charging port for the battery pack – which is “around” 25kWh – is under the left front quarter panel, but only charges on alternating current and only at up to 7.4kW.

BMW M is being exceptionally cagey about what lurks beneath the 2023 BMW XM, but here are the things we know for sure.

There will never be a six-cylinder version of the XM, because van Meel insists that while BMW customers are fine with cars beginning life with big engines before being opened up to smaller and smaller powerplants, that strategy would diminish the XM’s credibility with big-dollar buyers.

A halo is a halo, and the mere hint of a six-cylinder will make the customers in the market for a Lamborghini Urus, Bentley Bentayga or the new Aston Martin DBX707 sneer down their noses at the XM – if the BMW badge doesn’t already.

So it will remain with the twin-turbo S68 V8 up front, bolted to an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission with a disc-shaped electric motor tucked away inside it.

While there are some weight and complexity inefficiencies with that layout, what it gives M is the ability to plug-and-play with proven BMW technology, including an all-wheel drive system that can go from a 0-100 per cent front-to-rear drive split, and vice-versa, in a heartbeat.

It’s going to end up with about 110 horsepower more than the current M titleholder, the M5 CS, with its 467kW of power and 750Nm of torque.

Thing is, M isn’t suggesting the V8 will have more power than the M5 CS. In fact, it admits the V8 itself won’t be the most powerful M V8. It is, though, insisting it will have more system power from the combination of the two power sources.

It isn’t saying how much power or torque the fifth-generation electric motor totes, either, only that the car is the most powerful PHEV ever made. By anybody.

Its total gives the XM about 2kW more than the Lamborghini Urus, nearly 10 more than the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT and easily more than Bentayga or the X6 M Competition.

M has admitted the XM catches the same V8 updates as the new X7 M60i, including a new oil pump, crankshaft and revised turbochargers, and it revs to 7200rpm.

The XM also has its own transmission mapping, so it has its own character in the powertrain as well as in the body design…

Yeah, the 2023 BMW XM might weigh north of 2.5 tonnes, but it sure doesn’t drive like it weighs north of 2.5 tonnes.

It drives like a very slick sports sedan most of the time, and like a silent EV partner at other times. It’s astonishingly impressive.

Its EV mode is beautifully refined, with the motor only becoming noticeable on hard acceleration and the majority of any external noise coming from the enormous tyres rather than anything in the powertrain.

Its hybrid modes are eye-opening, with the fat torque of the e-motor giving the XM the sort of step-off urgency even the M5 CS can’t manage, and it does it all without losing the howling fury of the V8 at high revs.

It’s brutally quick any time you stab at the throttle and it’s as though nobody has told the XM’s powertrain that it’s accelerating the heaviest BMW ever made.

The powertrain treats the mass of the XM with utter disdain.

Besides the EV, Hybrid and Sport modes, the transmission itself has three different shift settings for Comfort, Normal and Sport. While the first two were beautifully slick and clean, the torque feed into the transmission’s Sport mode was brutal, and M admits it’s the software part they’re still working on.

But the ride and handling package is what’s really mind-boggling here. It’s beautifully tied down, balanced and even accurate.

The steering inputs are well weighted and perfectly judged in the initial movements just off-centre, and the body control is astounding.

It gets firmer in the Sport mode, but it’s never too firm and it does allow for some body roll; the Comfort mode is still being finetuned to dial out some nervousness over repeated bumps.

The interior is equally convincing, from the use of the curved glass screens from the facelifted BMW X7 to the infotainment, it’s all here and it all works intuitively.

The front seats are equal parts grippy and soft, with a wide range of adjustment, with a lower driving position than other M X cars, and the control surfaces are all logically placed.

The rear seats are stupendously comfortable places to be. They offer tremendous legroom and the enormous wheelbase means it can retain the rear headroom while still using a sloping roofline.

We suspect any doubts about the bona fides of the 2023 BMW XM at this stratospheric end of the market will be wiped out with any test drive, if initial impressions are accurate.

It’s an enormously convincing effort, based on proven mechanical pieces slotted together very well, in a comfortable, engaging interior package.

BMW doesn’t have the cache of a Lamborghini, a Porsche or a Bentley, but M just might, especially if, as van Meel insists, the XM is never BMW-ised with more volume-driven ideas.

And it’s no bad thing to share big modules with lesser cars here. The major competition – the Urus, the Bentayga and the top end of the Cayenne scene – all share the same underpinnings, engines, gearboxes and suspension hardware, so why can’t the XM share stuff with the X7?

I came in wanting to hate the XM for what it stood for. I came away wondering how they did it so well…

How much does the 2022 BMW XM cost?
Price: $300,000 estimated (plus on-road costs)
Available: 2023
Powertrain: 4.4-litre V8 twin-turbo petrol-electric
Output: 480kW/800Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: TBC
CO2: TBC
Safety rating: Not tested