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.
This is where it all comes apart. Even in standard form the X3's suspension is too firm, causing an abrupt bouncing and checking from the rear over anything less than perfect roads. The Sport version is even worse, fidgeting constantly and proving close to intolerable when terrain gets rough. BMW claims the X3 is stiff to make it feel flat and stable, something not always felt in a tallish 4x4, but the compromise is too skewed. Otherwise all is well, with good seats, low noise levels and an efficient air-con system.
As you would expect, there's rather more space in the X3 (headroom especially) than in the 3-Series, and in fact it's not far off the X5 for overall roominess. The boot floor is high, though, which restricts ultimate load height but it does mean there's no step down from the back bumper. The 60/40 split rear seat backrests fold forward onto the cushions, but the resultant extended load floor isn't quite flat and the seats neither slide nor recline. Optional recessed rails in the boot floor can be fitted with various cargo-carrying 'solutions', including an internal bike rack. Unlike in other tailgated BMWs, though, the rear window doesn't open separately.
There's plenty of storage space - a pair of cupholders in front and another in the back, at the forward edge of the openable rear centre armrest (their reverse side forms a centre headrest when the armrest is raised), plus various nets, decent door pockets and glovebox, a front centre armrest with a phone compartment in the top, and a facia-top storage box (occupied by the retractable sat-nav screen if fitted). The luggage cover is the usual retractable roller blind.
The stereo has two central woofers so even the basic single-CD system sounds rich, while options include systems with eight or 10 speakers and even a DSP sound processor for surround-sound effects. A CD stacker, sited in the front central armrest, is also offered.
There's a choice of fast-acting DVD navigation systems, the 'Business' unit with symbols in the stereo display and the 'Professional' - great names - with the retractable colour screen able to display a map and TV programmes. Both can take real-time traffic information into account.
Latest Readers' Drives About the BMW X3
wrote on 25 11 2007