Although BMW is known for engineering excellence, the company's cars always were firmly rooted in reality. Not so with the X6 M. Taking the useless body styling of the standard X6, BMW adds M gear to make it a performance monster.
Wayne Cunningham
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
The BMW X6 M is a strangely shaped beast with excessive power. It has the same running gear as the X5 M, a vehicle with more practical body styling.
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The X6 M undercuts the standard BMW grille with big air intakes below the bumper line, designed to feed the turbochargers.
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The engine is a direct injection 4.4-liter V-8, with twin turbos nestled in the V of the engine, each feeding a bank of cylinders. The result is 555 horsepower and a blistering 4.38 seconds to 60 mph.
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We can't really like this body design, as it has the bulk of an SUV, but none of the interior space. The X5 M has all the performance of the X6 M, along with a spacious interior.
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What makes this car special are its driving dynamics, a suspension system that monitors various data points and quickly adjusts to counteract roll and slip.
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All-wheel-drive is standard on the X6 M, its first implementation on a BMW M car.
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The sloping hatchback compromises the rear cargo area.
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With the X6 M, navigation is standard. A Premium Sound package, with iPod connectivity, is an option. But you can also get iPod connectivity with the less expensive Smart Phone Integration option.
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Rear headroom is low in the X6 M. And the divider between the rear seats makes the car only a four seater.
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The suspension tech makes the X6 M handle like an M car, the thick steering wheel providing plenty of grip as you crank it through the corners.
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BMW's bizarre-shaped shifter controls a six-speed automatic transmission with sport and manual settings. In sport, the transmission does an excellent job of finding the right gear for performance driving.
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Satellite imagery is included on the maps, but only when the zoom level is out to a quarter mile or more.
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Dynamic traffic routing works very well in the X6 M, keeping you out of the stop and go.
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BMW reserves 15 gigabytes of the navigation system's hard drive for music storage.
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HD Radio is included with the X6 M.
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A back-up camera provides distance and trajectory lines, and is a necessity, considering the car's small back window.
