The End of an Era? The BMW X5 xDrive35d

(Special thanks to BMWBlog for featuring this piece as well.)

There's a lipstick sunset
Smeared across the August sky
There's a bitter sweet perfume
Hanging in the fields
The creek is running high
-- John Hiatt

To support the lavish lifestyle of a part-time car blogger, I spend more time than I care to admit traveling by air, hither and yon, as part of my day gig.  Thus, the annual car trip my wife and I take over the Christmas holiday is one to which I look forward with abject delight, an opportunity to commune with the landscape and the country with the level of detail and intimacy that automobile travel offers in a unique way.  Plus, road-food.

Last year, our trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, began by air and ended up, unplanned, in a return drive home behind the wheel of a rented Hyundai. This year, we planned our trip to The Land of Enchantment a little better and decided to outfit ourselves with a little more style, performance, and comfort: A BMW X5 xDrive35d.

The third-generation of BMW’s largest SUV (until the X7 arrives sometime soon) debuted in 2014 and received a subtle mid-cycle refresh for the 2017 model year.  (For the record, this particular vehicle is a 2014 model, but the changes from then to now are minimal enough for any conclusion to still be valid about the X5 you can currently buy.  Why a 2014 version rather than a current-year model?  Simple.  This is my wife’s personal trooper and it was parked in the garage.  So there.)

"The World's Largest Hand-Dug Well" in Greensburg, Kansas; Big Well indeed. (Image: KanonOnCars.com)

The lower-case “d” in the xDrive35d’s name (which looks to me like a string of letters and numbers a person should consider using for excellent computer password discipline) means “diesel” and that one little letter makes all the difference.  In this version of the X5, BMW installs their excellent 3-liter direct-injection diesel inline-6 engine, both turbocharged and intercooled, which makes a modest sounding 255-hp and a stump-pulling 413-lb of torque.  The single turbocharger is prone to modest turbo-lag when pulling away, but it’s a smoother engine overall and entirely loses the vaguely agricultural feel and sound of the outgoing twin-turbo model. With abundant torque, the X5 performs passes on the highway and around town with alacrity, which more than makes up for the relatively languid 0-60 time of 7.3 seconds.  This is one of those “real world” vehicles that drives and feels much quicker than it is, which in a 5000-pound SUV is a delightful trait.

Diesel vehicles have always been a study in contrasts.  Parsimonious yet brutal.  Green yet butch.  Coveted yet utilitarian.  Ubiquitous yet exotic. (I’m speaking about diesel vehicles in America, of course, where the percentage compared to gasoline is minuscule.  In Europe, where diesels have been the preferred form of locomotion for decades, none of the applies; diesels just are.)  My wife has had two successive versions of diesel-powered BMW X5s, and I remember clearly when we had our first test drive in the earlier model.  She was standing next to the vehicle when I started it up, and as its barely-perceptible ticking sound echoed from the engine bay, she paused, smiled, and said, "It sounds like being in Europe."  It surely is an evocative truck.

(And to that point:  Is the X5 a truck or a car?  It all depends on your definition of "truck" I suppose.  I'm old-school in the sense that I still tend to equate a truck with a vehicle whose body is bolted to an underbody frame; it has nothing to do with the presence of a cargo bed.  Thus, anything with a unibody construction shouldn't qualify.  To wit:  A Toyota FJ Cruiser or 4-Runner is a truck; a Toyota RAV4 or Highlander isn't.  But here's where it gets sticky.  I also tend to think about it in terms of weight, and anything like the X5 that weighs north of 5000 pounds and has ground clearance enough not to bog down in snowy or muddy ruts should, in my mind, qualify.  So, while the X5 is as unibody as they come and all gussied up to boot, this version is also a diesel, and, well, truck.  If that makes no sense to anyone, well, it’s my “it doesn’t make sense” and I’m going to own it.  So there.)

When in Boise City, Oklahoma, try the jerky; it's legit. (Image: KanonOnCars.com)

The drive took us not on the romantic (and crumbling) Route 66 of lore (which we can reach from our home with little fuss), but mostly on state highways and byways nonetheless (which often mirror, or even incorporate, parts of the historic route.  It’s a route that reinforces the notion that Jesus Saves (a message that seems to support a great number of billboard owners).  And it’s a route that makes the point that every small town in America considers their own downtown historic.

(An aside:  If you want to know the difference adequate state road funding for road maintenance makes, drive west on Hwy 56 from Elkhart, Kansas, into the Oklahoma panhandle. The road goes from billiard table smooth, with an ample shoulder and creamy asphalt, to a pockmarked surface of craters and peeling layers of patchwork, as if the roadway developed a terrible case of adolescent acne; all of that in a quarter-mile of state DOT transition. Well done, Kansas. WTF, Oklahoma?)

The X5's interior is well appointed, sumptuous, and memorable (Image: BMWBlog.com, though of this author's exact vehicle)

The X5 surely must qualify as one of the best road tripping vehicles available, starting with the seats, which are supportive, massively adjustable, and comfortable in the extreme. We started the day with an uninterrupted 300-mile blast before nature intervened, and my lower back and hips (two typical problem areas for me thanks to an old motorcycle crash) didn't make so much as a peep. The heaters are well modulated and evenly distributed, and the Nappa leather is soft, supple, and pliant.  Can we even remember hot spots in once-decadent seat heaters?  And don’t even get me going on the magical wonder that is the heated steering wheel.  Gloves are so passé.   (My only complaint has to do with this vehicle's oyster colored interior, which offsets its general loveliness by being nearly impossible to keep looking fresh. Since every piece of clothing my wife and I own seem to be either blue or black, the light oyster likely wasn't the best choice. Alas, sometimes we must suffer for beauty.)

The diesel's torque makes short work of highway passing. At one point while my wife was driving, I felt a surge of acceleration and glanced up. She was passing a Toyota Highlander with verve; I saw 107 on the speedo before she backed it off (a bit; my wife is a charter member of the alacrity club), but amazingly, the diesel was turning over at a languorous 2400 rpm. Pressure combustion is fun. 

The undulations of the landscape transform from gentle rolling in the Kansas Flinthills, to bone-flat in Southwestern Kansas and the Oklahoma Panhandle, with the scrub brush growing ever thornier the further west you go.  New Mexico announces itself with a massive lump on baby-mountain as soon as you cross the border at Clayton, NM, (elevation 5056’) making a clear statement that the Plains are finished and the Rockies are about to dominate.  The air takes on an ever-more translucent sheen, as the altitude grows and the volume decreases and the light radiates all the more warmly in the thinning air.

Spikes in Elkhart, Kansas; spikes on the angry wheels of the X5. (Image: KanonOnCars.com)

The X5 is a startlingly isolated highway performer as well.  Even at speed, on small state highways with their inconsistency of pavement, the noise that enters the cabin is a minimal, dull groan, just enough to let you know that movement is taking place.  It might not be quite at the level of an Audi A8 or the big BMW 750 I spent time with earlier in the year, but for a vehicle with as much internal volume (and potential acoustic resonance), the isolation of the X5 is impressive.  Nice touches like the insulated (and massive) moonroof slider and retractable cover for the cargo area tamp down random sound waves even further.  At Springer, New Mexico, we turned south onto I25 and immediately enjoyed a fresh blacktop job courtesy of NMDOT.  The cabin got early quiet, and as I set the cruise on 85 and turned up the volume on the new Radiohead album, the only encroaching sound was a dull whoosh.  The big AWD Bimmer readily gobbles up distances.

And those distances will inevitably outlast the biological stamina of the driver and passengers.  Even at a rather rapid pace, the X5's computer showed that we'd pull over 550 miles on a single tank of diesel, and that's without really trying to stretch the distance.  This thing will go all day, drive all night, and well into the morning.  The beef jerky and Red Bull inevitably runs out before the fuel.

The styling of the F15-chassis X5 is to my eyes at the top of the heap for contemporary luxury SUVs.  It’s a large vehicle, to be sure, but parked next to its marketplace compatriots, it’s amazing how the thing shrinks in comparison.  While the Range Rover may win the prize for ultimately being the stateliest, the X5 manages to be at once sporty yet substantial, taut yet subdued, the roofline athletic and gently swooping, especially noticeable when parked next to more bloated truck-like creatures such as Tahoes and Escalades or the torqued-box creations from Mercedes-Benz and Infiniti.  Some of the midsized competitors, like the Jaguar F-Pace and upcoming Alfa Romeo Stelvio, as absolutely dialed in in the styling department, but the X5 still stands out against its larger brethren.

"The Road Goes On Forever" in the Great American West. (Image: KanonOnCars.com)

I've written about BMW's xDrive all-wheel-drive system before, but in the X5 it serves as the perfect accompaniment to the Continental ExtremeContact DWS all-season rubber.  I'm of the belief that "all season" generally means the tire doesn’t do anything particularly well, and with most of my own vehicles I insist on separate sets of tires and wheels for the two seasons, but in the X5 the xDrive system conspires with the versatile rubber to perform superhuman feats of traction with minimal fuss.  Two inches of snow with a thin layer of ice underneath?  No worries.  A flat stretch of pavement in the Summer's heat and a triple-digit speed possible courtesy of a trusty Valentine One?  Gotcha covered.  I suppose I can see getting V- or ZR-rated Summer performance tires for your X6M for those silly SUV days at the track, but for the 99.8% of the rest of us, an xDrive-equipped car with all-season shoes is pretty much always going to get the job done.

We stopped in Las Vegas, NM, to top off the tank and stretch our legs before the final pull into Santa Fe, and as we stepped out of the truck, the sun dipped below the horizon line and the vista exploded into one of those quintessential Southwestern lipstick sunsets, both giddily and lonely at the same instant.  Trees and shrubs lost their definition and became black silhouettes, while a joyous explosion of color was pushed down by graduated blues and blacks, wisps of clouds swirling and dissolving into the colorful morass.  I remember a science teacher in junior high school, I think it was, teaching us about the colors of the visible light spectrum (“ROYGBIV”), and every single one of those was illuminated in the strata above the horizon while I pumped diesel into the X5's tank.  The air immediately turned 5-degrees colder as the last vestiges of light faded to blue-black.  It was still and stunning; this is why we journey by car.

Now for the pachyderm in the room:  Is the X5 xDrive35d the swansong for big diesel SUVs in the US?  Maybe not, but the diesel circus tent is winding down just as surely as Ringling Brothers’ recently did.  The causes are manifest but can be distilled down to primarily two:  Electricity and Volkswagen.  The benefits and attractions of diesel engines largely distil down to fuel economy and massive torque.  Electric motors (and hybrid powertrains) essentially mimic both of those traits and do so without the added (and significant) penalty of relying directly on fossil fuels.  Which brings me to…

A lipstick sunset outside of Las Vegas, New Mexico. (Image: KanonOnCars.com)

Volkswagen, whose shenanigans with their software-based “cheat” system, which spoofed clean diesel engines while spewing nasties out of the tailpipe for years, has tarnished the entire diesel engine industry.  While Volkswagen shareholders shell out unprecedented fines here in the US and in the rest of the world, and while the FBI rounds up Volkswagen execs for very public perp walks, Mercedes has already dropped diesels from their lineups and BMW has slowed production (and availability) of those powertrains for the American market.  Audi, Porsche, and their sugar daddy VW have, of course, followed suit.  Dear Volkswagen:  Thanks for screwing it up for everyone.

So, where does that ultimately leave the X5 xDrive35d?  It’s powerful, elegant, sure-footed, and useful.  It’s also a miserly, luxurious, jack-of-all-trades treat.  But it’s one I fear may also be at the apex of a diesel-burning era.  If inclined, get one while you can.

From Bowling Green to the World: The Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

Let me get this out of the way first:  Short of Harley-Davidson, there is no brand on the American vehicular landscape that carries as much image baggage as Corvette.  Everyone who has even read this far knows immediately what I’m talking about:  Mid-life crisis after selling your plumbing company; gold from the mall rather than platinum from the boutique; a certain blue-collar gaucheness that causes similarly-aged drivers of German sports cars to turn up their lips in arrogant sneers.  But let me be absolutely clear: After spending some quality time with a 2017 Corvette Stingray, I could frankly care less.  As a friend of mine put it, “If you are a guy around a certain age driving a Corvette, just lean into it. If someone starts giving you trouble, step on the 'loud' pedal and drown them out with the sound of freedom.”

I’ll get back to that sound of freedom in a bit, but first some background.  The Corvette you see here is a seventh-generation model (or “C7” in Corvette Intelligentsia lingo), first introduced by Chevrolet in 2014, and is the most current in an American sports car lineage that dates to 1953.  Volumes have been penned about Corvette’s history (I absolutely guarantee there have been Ph.D. dissertations written), but suffice it to say that the C1, a convertible, arrived after making a splashy entrance at the Motorama display at the New York Auto Show in ’53, and the legendary “Stingray” moniker arrived with the C2 (as the first coupe in the lineage) in 1963.  The "Cx"-line continues unbroken to the present day.  Originally built in St. Louis Missouri, Corvette production was moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 1981, and many enthusiasts make the pilgrimage to the factory for tours, to take delivery of their new cars, or even participate in the "Corvette Engine Build Experience," where purchasers of the high-end Z06 model can actually work with engine technicians to assemble the motors of their cars.  (Full stop:  That's darn cool.)    In addition to the manufacturing plant, Bowling Green is also home to the National Corvette Museum, featuring not only a superb collection of classic Vettes and an overall repository of the car's history but also ground zero for the most famous sinkhole in the entire automobile world.

(Image: KanonOnCars.com)

This particular 2017 Stingray lists at $55,450, and came with the 2LT Package, the sublime and essential Magnetic Selective Ride Control suspension, the 8-speed automatic transmission, and several other largely cosmetic options, for an as-tested price of $70,200.  Take it from me when I tell you this qualifies as the performance (and quality) value of the century.

(Thanks to the fine folks at Van Chevrolet in Kansas City, Missouri, for the extended test drive.)

The title-winning C7.R at Sebring in 2016 (Image: Chevrolet)

My tester was finished in a vivid shade of yellow the Chevrolet folks call Corvette Racing Yellow, the color a nod to the world-beating Corvette C7.R’s that have been winning races and championships for years (including 2016) in various incarnations of the IMSA series in North America and at the Le Mans 24-hours race itself.  What wasn’t painted yellow (including the massive brake calipers) was finished in black, with the interior swathed in supple Jet Black Nappa leather.  (For a mere $994, you can buy a car cover that clothes your C7 in a stretch-fabric likeness of the racecar itself.  This is likely the greatest automotive accessory in the history of the world.)  The look was certainly not modest, but brilliant and vibrant in a preening peacock way; go big or go home.  If a buyer opts for this combo, I might suggest an install mount for a Valentine One as well, as the local gendarmerie will likely have a betting pool on how many of these they can ticket on an average Sunday afternoon.

The Wall Street Journal’s Dan Neil referred to the C7’s styling as “wrathful-dragonfly” and that pretty well captures it.  There’s nothing remotely voluptuous about the Stingray’s design language, with none of the curvaceousness of an Aston Martin DB11 or sculpted muscularity of a Jaguar F-Type.  With 21 body panel assemblies formed from a material GM calls “TCA Ultra Light,” the Corvette’s angles are all bent and twisted flat-planes, origami made from advanced composites, hard creases and subtle curves that appear and dissolve with sharp, defined edges: The Stingray cuts with a glance.   It doesn’t look remotely like any other sports car on the market today and the design works from all angles.  Lexus tries with a variation of this design language and generally falls flat.  Chevrolet nailed it.

The configurable digital dash is bright, flexible, and responsive; an excellent design.  (Image: KanonOnCars.com)

The interior if the Stingray has sloughed off virtually any hint of the previous-generation car’s corporate parts-bin assembly.  From the supple Napa leather with contrasting stitching; to the quality-of-feel plastics, padding, and brushed aluminum; to the supportive, multi-adjustable bucket seats; the Corvette’s interior outshines other cars in much higher priced stratospheres.  The digital instrument cluster, a bright LCD screen with three configurable “themes,” is superb.  And the Chevrolet MyLink touchscreen system, which controls all other interior and multimedia functions, is intuitive and handsome, responds quickly to finger touches, and includes a row of analog buttons underneath the touchscreen to simplify common tasks.  (It also beats the pants off the system found in one of GM's other jewels, the Cadillac CTS-V.)  Of note is a nifty little switch that raises and lowers the entire screen unit, revealing a storage cubby (with USB port) for small items.  The only negative is the occasional low-rent part sullying the overall quality of the party; what’s up with that flimsy turn-signal stalk that clicks into place with the same precision as that on a three-year-old rental car?  I guess the GM accountants insisted.  But it's easy to forgive given the overall content and quality of the interior.

On the road, the car’s pillbox seating position offers surprisingly good vision, with the vestigial windows behind the B-pillars letting in just the right amount of light and visibility to offset the fun-slit minimalism of the rear-view mirror.  And even usable shopping space!

Who needs an SUV when your trip to the grocery store can look like this?  (Image: KanonOnCars.com)

Now, back to that sound of freedom.  More specifically, the sound of 6.2-liters of normally-aspirated V8 freedom.  There are lots of big, powerful engines in the car world but few with the storied history and dogged commitment to tradition of the Corvette’s push-rod motor.  The pushrod engine architecture in the Corvette is a long-held, though increasingly anachronistic, engineering philosophy, sort of an American version of the Porsche 911’s engine hanging out over the rear axle.  While essentially all other makers of powerful sports car engines have fled to the safety of dual-overhead-cam engine designs (with forced induction, natch), Chevrolet has doggedly continued to develop the relatively ancient push-rod design to the delight (if not demand) of enthusiasts and no doubt amusement of competitors, but they’ve also ended up with a hugely capable engine that’s both lighter and physically smaller than those from pretty much anyone else.

And what an engine it is.  The 6.2-liter, direct-injection V8 makes 455-hp at 6000 RPM, with maximum torque of 460-ft/lbs available at 4600 RPM, and propels the 3300-pound car from 0-60mph in 3.7 seconds.  In practice, the car propels the driver forward like one of those classic NASA rocket sled test from the 1950’s, a sledgehammer in the small of the back that goes and goes and goes and builds and builds and builds until…well, if you’re like me, until you back off (I wasn't on a track), but if you keep your foot in it, the Stingray will electronically top out at 181 mph and I imagine some owners have put that to the test out in the wilds of West Texas or Eastern Montana.  It’s a visceral engine, alright, an old-fashioned bruiser, and it’s pretty much everything a Corvette engine should be.

The brakes, wheels, and rubber are not lacking for grip or stopping prowess.  (Image: KanonOnCars.com)

When cold, the huge engine wakes with a prodded snore and immediately settles into an idle that sounds like so much dull boredom.  The exhaust tuning doesn’t call much attention to itself; on startup, it’s not the wailing-from-the-hills screaming of a Jaguar F-Type R or the look-at-me-look-at-me turbo flatulence of a BMW M4, but a more mellow, reserved rumble, one befitting such a massive displacement powerplant.  But when the big beast spins up, look out.  An untidy stab at the throttle before the Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires (merely huge P245/40ZR18 in the front, gargantuan P285/35ZR19 in the rear) are warmed up will see the rear end of the car slewing hither and yon, the dashboard traction control light blinking wildly while the onboard systems go to full self-preservation mode.  Though the front tires tend to scrub at parking-lot speeds due to sheer width, when tire temps get to operating levels the grip is everything you’d hope, with this car’s optional Magnetic Suspension Ride Control delivering almost 1-G of lateral grip on a skidpad (which amounts to crazy levels of road grip in the real world).  Step on it and the exhaust bellows with a roar akin to what I imagine the imperiled hikers on Mount St. Helens must have heard; the car plants, grips, and vanishes into whatever horizon you’ve got it pointed.

Fortunately, Chevrolet’s vehicle dynamics programmers were also on the job with the C7, because the five selectable driving modes (weather, eco, tour, sport, and track) all do a bumper job of tuning the car’s various systems to behave well in virtually all driving conditions.  Of special note is Eco mode (admittedly incongruous in a car of this class), which deactivates four of the eight cylinders when the car is loping along, allowing the Stingray to return a 30-MPG-Highway rating (take that, Prius!).  And the magnetic suspension, found on such down-market econoboxes as the Ferrari 599 (yes, really), soaks up pavement imperfections imperceptibly and without drama, the Corvette’s brain sending electrical currents through the fluid-filled, iron-particle rich shocks, essentially providing unlimited viscosities for the dynamic fluid contained within; the fluid reacts multiple times a second.

The Stingray's design is at once modern and edgy while being true to Corvette's tradition.  Not a bad angle to be found. (Image: KanonOnCars.com)

Corvettes are one of the few super-sports cars still available with a manual transmission (in this instance a 7-speed, rev-matching unit), and to the credit of buyers almost 25% still choose this option.  My tester was not so equipped, but rather came with the optional 8-speed paddle-shifted automatic, which was fast and precise and intuitive and (heresy alert!) seemed to suit the personality of the car quite well.  I’ll never fault a buyer these days from choosing one of the few remaining manuals, as rowing your own is clearly a glorious (though increasingly anachronistic) choice that’s quickly going the way of the carburetor, but the Corvette’s 8-speed auto unit shifts as quickly as Porsche’s hallowed PDK transmission and is an excellent choice all around.

In the end, the Chevrolet Corvette Stingray overcomes all preconceptions I’ve ever had about these American bruisers.  At racing circuits all over North America, one guarantee is that the Corvette Corral will inevitably turn out a number of proud and committed participants whose sheer numbers make the Porsche, BMW, Audi, and sundry other clubs blush with embarrassment.  After having spent a few days with a current example of this American icon, I can resoundingly say their zeal is well deserved.  In terms of performance value, the Stingray is laughably ahead of everything else on the market.  Taken as a whole, the quality, aesthetics, sound, finish, and general presence of the car is extraordinary.  And in the newly released Grand Sport trim level, this car qualifies as one of the most lust-worthy on the market.  Well done, Chevrolet.  I'll take mine in Black Rose Metallic.