Category: Small 4x4s 
Price Range: £27,870 to £39,170
Remarkable roadholding and handling, smooth engine, covetable looks, surprising off-road ability.
Inappropriately cheap-looking fittings, unacceptable ride comfort, overpriced.
Intriguing entrant to the ranks of soft-roaders, but BMW is stretching its premium credentials a little too far here.
Weight is the X3's downfall here, because weight needs energy to move it. Owners will be doing well any of the engines official fuel consumption figures in the real world. It claws back some ground on service costs, however, because it needs infrequent attention as gauged by the service indicator. Typical service intervals are at least 14,000 miles, the air filters and spark plugs last for 62,000 miles and the camshaft uses a maintenance-free chain drive.
There's a lot of good technology in the X3, but somehow its price seems just too high for a car seemingly not quite up to BMW's usual impeccable quality standards. Similar money will buy you a Volkswagen Touareg, a bigger and better-finished 4x4 with terrific off-road ability to match its fine on-road manners.
Latest Readers' Drives About the BMW X3
wrote on 25 11 2007