Monday, April 7, 2014

A Test Drive of a Friend's X5 (Part 2)

Now, my impressions about the drive.
I would refrain from calling it “simple driving”. X5 is capable of turning an even routine trip from home to the local supermarket into a thrilling ride. I guess that the engineers of BMW have reached such heights in their craft that made this “non-tuned” car excessively powerful.
Driving X5 is unbelievably hard in the city. It’s not just in traffic jam and cram. As I came out of the yard, I had a feeling as if all the drivers were purposely slowing down. I was kind of driving quietly, safely,with a good reserve for any maneuvers,but,all the same, I had to drive around all the cars.The situation changed as I accelerated the car somewhere up to 180 km/h. This speed X5 reaches within seconds showing total obedience to any action of its driver.
The normal traffic speed of 70-80km/h is perceived quite differently on X5: it seems as if you are not moving. You only need to slightly push the foot-throttle and it's already 120 km/h!
The five-speed automatic gearbox functions absolutely silently: you can notice the moment of changing a speed only through the shake of the tachometer arrow.


There is no breathtaking speed, the car behaves as if it's in a normal driving mode. And only the traffic police Inspector disagrees. He doesn't care about the reliability of the car-it's simply banned, that's all.

According to manufacturer's data,the car reaches 0-100km/h in 6,9 secs. and the top speed is 240km/h.
The suspension is slightly stiffer, but only to the extent that allows the driver to evaluate the quality of the road. The specialists of BMW succeeded in creating ideal chassis-your every part of the body feels the position of the car on the road. You can take turns at least twice as faster than usually without experiencing any drifts.
The Xdrive system is configured in such a way that under normal conditions 70% of traction is transmitted to the rear axle in order to conserve the rear-steer habits. On a slippery road the torque distribution gets equalized.
Switch the car into Sport+ mode, which sharpens the throttle response and slightly clamps the suspension, and you can drive like the wind.
Of course, it would be a pointless challenge to use X5 on extreme off roads with its 209 mm ground clearance. Besides there is no "algorithmized" off-road transmission.
But who cares?
The car ideally behaves without wallowing in the mud!
Words can hardly describe the experience of driving an X5.  The Bavarians have come to a completely unattainable level of developing and customizing techniques.
BMW X5 is a crossover of higher caste.

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