Long-term report: The BMW X3 gets straight to work

I sometimes wonder what it would be like if cars had emotions and a way of talking. Take the X3 that I’ve been running for the past few weeks, for instance. It probably started out its life in a relatively quiet fashion, being used for performance testing. But after a short period down here on the south coast, I imagine that it has had the shock after being thrust into work during a busy bathroom fitting job.

Honestly, I doubt the engineers back at Munich ever designed their latest X3 to accommodate a full-size bath, sink and other associated bits and pieces, but the way this car swallowed them all up, you’d think that they had. In fact, with the seats down, the X3 is impressively practical, but that’s little surprise given how large this car has become. Far from being the ‘baby’ in BMW’s range of SUVs, the X3 is now larger than ever, which has been very useful lately.

This X3 is the ‘hot’ M50 version, too, and when it isn’t transporting a bathroom suite, a punchy 3.0-litre turbocharged straight-six engine with 376bhp makes this family-focused model into a car that’ll shock even the most committed of hot hatch drivers. Zero to 60mph takes just 4.4 seconds, in fact.

During my first few days with the X3 M50, I was quite surprised by how loud it was. Even moderate presses of the throttle were accompanied by a steady grumble – until I worked out the car’s ‘Iconic Sounds’ system. With this turned off, the M50 is no longer loud, that steady in-car noise silenced in favour of a subtle engine note. I couldn’t quite believe the difference, actually, but since switching it off, I’ve not been inclined to reactivate it – the car is lovely and quiet with it disconnected.

With its big arches and prominent M50 badge at the rear, there’s no mistaking this car for a ‘normal’ car, but I actually believe that BMW is missing a trick by not creating a more luxurious version with the same engine. The straight-six feels quite old-school in design and, in my view, a more comfort-focused model that offered the same level of performance as the M50 could go down a treat.

Yet despite being accomplished in the bends, the X3 is just as impressive over long journeys. It’s a wonderfully smooth car, this one, and it bowls along at motorway speeds with excellent refinement and very little road noise. The ride is great, too, and though it’s a little firm when you’re going slowly, it’s more than supple enough for those higher-speed jaunts.

When I first drove the new X3 out in Germany last year, I felt that the interior quality was a bit of a let-down, and I still maintain that feeling. It’s not that it isn’t impressive to look at, it’s just that some of the plastics feel decidedly un-BMW and given that this car falls just short of £80,000, it’s not what you’d expect.

I’m also not a fan of the mesh-style material, which is used on areas like the dashboard. It’s also applied to the tops of the doors and given that I often rest my arm there while driving on the motorway, it makes doing so quite uncomfortable. If it were trimmed in leather, the whole car would feel far more upmarket, and I’m not sure why BMW chose this material instead.

Mind you, I do think BMW has hit a sweet spot tech-wise. Everything works brilliantly and intuitively, with features easy to access. The steering wheel now gets an integrated switch-off for annoying systems like speed limit alert, so you can get it all set up just as you’d like it from the moment you get behind the wheel.

This is, however, the first non-electric vehicle that I’ve run in several years and I’m already feeling the pinch at the pumps. I’m lucky enough to have a home EV charger and with a low rate of home energy for charging, even a big-battery electric vehicle costs in the region of £10 to charge up. So paying £40 for just over a quarter of a tank of unleaded felt a bit painful. As for efficiency, I’ve just managed to get 39mpg – but that was at a very steady cruise for over 200 miles. Around town, it’s closer to 30mpg.