We review the X4 which BMW calls a Sports Activity Coupe® Ok, that sounds good, we dig into what that means in the SUV and CUV market flooded with quality products loaded with tech and practicality. Does the BMW offer more than other brands like Mazda CX5, Lexus RX, Audi Q5, Acura RDX and more?
Yes so many people are like why don’t you do some em cars some m2 semaine 5s nah i got the ax for what else could you want let’s take a look you just got done having a look at the exterior and i’m gonna show you even more for two reasons one i’ve had a few complaints that says i don’t show enough of the exterior of the vehicle so i’m trying to find creative ways
To show you that here you go the second part is i really don’t want to look at the exterior this thing too much because i think it is difficult to put my eyes on it and i thought there’s no human way that anybody would be attracted to this car until i started driving it around and i had people pull up next to me and point and give me the thumbs up which i thought
Was strange but clearly they’re they’re doing this as an experiment probably to just put out another vehicle but also to have something that is slightly different i find there is just a strange disconnect between the ride height the front design and the rear it just to me it doesn’t look like it was designed by the same person but if you’re someone that likes
This there’s i can tell you it definitely looks different but let’s get done with that and talk about the interior of this bmw x4 it’s very much like the x3 now this has the darker red interior and the aluminum trim which i think is one of the best combinations i’ve seen and well a more affordable bmw and that’s not particularly affordable at $50,000 but it’s
A good mix of elements between kind of the shiny textures the matte the metals alloys rather and the leather i like it and pretty much everything in here works as you would expect the infotainment is one of the best the best available and i said this a lot they’ve had the longest amount of time in terms of development they had a huge jump start they did it from
The start properly and now it’s even better the gesture control is gimmicky but it works the speed of which the interface is used is great you have a giant rotary now that everybody’s copied your physical buttons are practical and easy to use and your menu structure is simple until you get deeper into the menus and it gets more confusing but i find that really
Everything that i want to use is right in front of me and i just i love it i wish this was in more cars like this they should license this out it’s that good your gauge cluster is digital your steering wheel controls are pretty good although i don’t like how you do the track selection you kind of have to roll this thing and then select it but there are physical
Controls for the track selection and you can use the infotainment so it’s hard to complain about that the paddles feel pretty solid they’re a little plasticky but not bad the hud works great overall this interior space is super comfortable the seat adjustability is good the headrest adjustments good the cargo capacity is compromised but it’s okay it’s just like
To me it’s a glorified hatchback it’s just a hatchback on stilts with a weirder body design and i think that’s what most people are going to buy this for but let’s get into the nitty-gritty since if you want more details look at the axe 3 video it’s almost identical to this let’s take a look at the underbody and see what that is all about as the winter drags out
So do the suvs and trucks but that’s not what this is it’s a sports activity coupe because it’s more aerodynamic more sporty all the things that you see in the marketing but what is it really it’s a little bit longer and wider than an axe three and it looks nearly identical to the x3 as well so what you have here is an extremely smooth underbody of air curtains
In the front you have an active shutter grill to help with aerodynamics again and pretty much the whole way back this is definitely one of the smoother vehicles you’ll see but they have something nice here that more manufacturers should do they have a little twist a twist plug here in the aero cover to get at the drain plug so you don’t have to unscrew anything
Or drop any panels which is really nice when you look at the front suspension or the suspension in general everything here is all aluminum your lower control arms you have dual lower control arms a split design your knuckle design is all aluminum all the way to your upright where you have standard struts now this is the m sport suspension so it’s gonna ride a
Little bit more firm but it’s not active there’s no motors on it there’s no electronic adjustment of the suspension at all which is that makes it a little bit more simple to probably own in the long run but other than that let’s get to the back of the vehicle before you pass out in the back half of the x4 we’re gonna see much of what we did in the front more
Aerodynamic treatments the covers smooth air flow to these huge lower control arm covers that direct air out the back of the car even the rear muffler design helps with that and the point is to reduce drag which improves improves fuel efficiency and can improve nvh as well and speaking of that you have an isolation damper on the muffler mount where it’s mounted
So you don’t have the vibration from the exile there’s one of those also on the front struts now the suspension design for weight reduction you have an aluminum knuckle here in an aluminum upper control arm everything else is stamped steel including the subframe carrier now despite what you may think bmw does have a huge stake in north america and america this
Is made in south carolina like pretty much all of their other suvs and they make about 28 i’m sorry 3800 of these a month in south carolina but they are leveraging their north american supply chain because you can see made in mexico stamped on their half shafts their struts and shocks and some of the other suspension components you know this is all the reduced
Cost as well now this does have all-wheel drive standard and people are infatuated with having all-wheel drive on pretty much everything whether you need it or not but instead of talking about all this let’s get it out on the road and see how it drives you so what is it like getting behind the wheel of the x4 well it’s a lot like getting behind the wheel of
The x3 because so much of it is similar but you’re gonna want to know what the differences are so let’s cover that there’s some serious pros and cons about the x force performance and pretty much all of its driving dynamics and i’m gonna cover the first thing that is ride quality and i have to say it’s a combination factor it’s the run flat tires and it’s the
Overly stiff suspension that does not have any adaptive settings this thing rides way way too firm for what it is they’re trying to get you to feel like you’re driving this sporty suv coupe or whatever the hell they want to call it and it just doesn’t work i mean if i want a sporty coupe and i want stiff handling i’ll get a four series i’ll get an eight series
I’ll get an em car i don’t want it on this like bigger hatch platform and i feel like for that 2% of times where you’re gonna drive this thing more aggressively like in some corners the ride quality trade-offs are just not worth it and i think that’s my biggest problem and i think that’s what most people are gonna complain about now in this environment right now
It’s really cold the pavements bad and you know when the shock oil or the shocks get cold to it the ride gets a little bit even more firm but even that was standing it should be far softer than it is on to the next thing and obviously that is the biggest problem for me but there are some really good things and that is bmw uses a variable gear ratio steering rack
Which means that it’s not a gimmick a lot of manufacturers what they do is they give you an electronic power steering rack that when you go into the different drive modes it just makes that the steering wait feel heavier almost synthetically with a variable gear ratio steering rack in normal mode it’s slower to turn in it doesn’t have that instant immediacy and
If you’re driving on the highway sometimes you don’t want twitchy steer but the system is capable of when you go into the sporty-er modes when you go into sport then it can adjust the ratio where it’s quicker to turn in and i like this a lot it makes it a lot more usable than a lot of the similar systems and of course this costs more to implement but they have
They do a great job tuning it and i feel like the drive modes make that system more usable so steering’s a pro now let’s get into one of the best thing that the mw does it does the transmission performance is remarkable there’s zf 8-speed has the best programming pretty much of any modern cars and an affordable price range and one of the reasons why is they
Understand how to program this or convert they understand how to get this thing going whether you’re up shifting it manually down shifting it manually or just in fully automatic mode this thing is always good and the best part is they include paddles and they include a true manual mode where it will hold rubs it won’t auto up shift it down shifts so quickly with
The rub matches it’s a true automated manual and then when you’re in automatic mode it is smooth and good all the time it doesn’t need the two extra gears like a lot of companies are trying to pack in and that’s a big a big deal and i think this is one of the biggest selling points of bmw cars is the transmission now let’s get this thing off the line and this
Is this is one of the negative parts about this car so let’s just do it in drive i’m going to put it in sport mode and just peg the throttle so here’s my problem with it this is the mw s global turbo for popper and it is a sulha motor and if you don’t know what that is it’s designed for the ultimate in efficiency for emissions and fuel economy they need to put
This in as many vehicles as possible to meet those regulations so you get the typical string of what you get on for popper turbos except this is a twin scroll when you accelerate it feels almost like a v6 because it makes so much torque between about 1,400 rpms to about 3800 i’m sorry 4800 rpm so it really has this sense of pull but the big issue i have is off
The line this thing is dead off the line and i have to constantly inject myself into a heavier flow of traffic i’m in a lot of rural roads so you have to pull out until these 55 or 65 mile an hour areas and you really have to get in without you know having somebody behind you slam on their brakes and when you get off the line from a dead stop there’s nothing
Having it feels like you’re driving a 90 horsepower car and this is where you can’t replace displacement it doesn’t have that inline-6 instantaneous takeoff feel it doesn’t have the v6 feel at all and as a side effect i don’t get a lot of confidence getting off the line in this and in fact i often find myself to be i find myself being a lot more careful than i
Need to be and the only remedy to it is to hold the brake with your left foot and bring up the revolutions of the engine with your right foot to get the motor going a little bit to get the turbo spooled up and then you will peg off the line very fast but it’s just it’s annoying and it’s one of the biggest deficiencies of this four-cylinder on most of the bmws
I’ve driven but you know i think it’s a mixed bag between the ride quality and the performance there’s too much compromise here for this price point and you know the interior comforts good the wind noise is very well controlled i mean there’s a lot of quality on the interior space i don’t know let’s get to the final thoughts final thoughts on the axe 4 and the
Best way i’m gonna sum this up it’s not for everyone and it’s not trying to be for everyone i feel like this is that experiment that manufacturers do that says we have all this data we have a slight hole over here and we have the money to fill it let’s put this model in between all of them and that’s what you see bmw doing you have an x 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 i mean
It’s just ridiculous and me and exhaust sports auto kevin we’re joking around how all they need to do now is add a decimal point system in between all those so they can fill in the x gaps with point 5 point 6 and i feel like this is where the ax 4 suffers the most it has an identity crisis it’s trying to be a coupe it’s trying to be a sedan a crossover an suv
And that’s why i couldn’t really connect with it i don’t know what it’s trying to do but there are some good things that bmw does the interior space they know how to blend comfort security the feel of control with physical controls your electronic systems on the car work great your hud your infotainment is good there’s a great use of physical buttons and knobs
Where you need it this is the highlight of it when you’re not looking at the outside and you’re spending your time on the interior they do it great the cargo capacity is pretty good it’s a mix again between a sedan and a hatchback like a cuv but not really overall driving dynamics great transmission no other way to put it the engine despite it you know having
Some eco routes it’s tuned great it feels smooth all the time and the only issue is getting off the line the handling well it feels much like the x3 did this is one of the better parts of it dynamically it feels very rear-wheel drive it’s got almost a 50/50 weight distribution but because it’s raised up you feel once you start pushing it through turns you still
Feel it’s wait you feel it start to roll over you feel like there’s too much body roll when you’re driving it hard which makes no sense because when you’re driving it every day it’s vastly too firm and i think if i was going to have two major negatives its ride quality and kind of exterior proportions and the best part transmission engine interior appointments
So take that for what it’s worth hopefully this was helpful and i’ll see you next video this is savage case i hate them i see them i’m gonna show you how to get back at him on yelp and all that other stuff
Transcribed from video
2019 BMW X4 Review | Identity Crisis By savagegeese
