Jeremy Clarkson takes the BMW X3 on a road test. It’s not the car for you if you need to use your spine or go off-roading!
This is the bmw x3 like the x5 it handles beautifully but unlike the x5 you sit fairly low down now sure that means you can’t vlog is over other motorists with a commanding driving position but because you’re so low down seriously well sort of salute and because it has the same sort of electronic four-wheel drive system as a mitsubishi evo 8 it grips well to
Air box is a bit dim-witted but the engine more than makes up for it it’s really good growly bass note and some fairly serious polish as well then there’s the question of value an x5 3 litre sports is 37,000 pounds an x3 3 litre sport with exactly the same engine its 33,000 pounds 4000 pounds less and don’t think you’re getting any less space because in terms
Of length there’s only 2 inches in it if you can manage without a top speed of 137 you can buy a two and a half litre version for 29,000 pounds and that’s pretty good in fact this is shaping up to be a pretty good car so fantastic achievement well done bmw top of the class because you see there are problems first of all it has a truly dreadful gel wobbling
Bone-shaking ride you honestly couldn’t possibly live with it you really couldn’t i mean i know this road is as smooth as silk and yet the x3 is finding huge potholes and massive mountain ranges to bump over the last time i was this uncomfortable i was on a windsurfer and it’s not just the ride either you may have noticed by this stage that the stylings a bit
Iffy as well it has the grace and the architectural merit of a 1950s secondary school it is ghastly and inside things get even worse it’s an unremitting sea of dreary gray drizzle bmw say everything is made to be recycled but to be honest everything feels like it already has been one of the things that worries me is that this car isn’t made by bmw it’s made by
A subcontractor in arnold schwarzenegger hometown actually in austria and i think they’ve used some of his melted down dumbbells to make these bumpers very cheap and look at the shape of this rear window i mean what happened here did the designer sneeze perhaps i mean actually really is a very hard car to like this and it gets worse when you take it out there
This isn’t a particularly tough off-road course off come on kick off and at first everything seemed to be fine come on now this isn’t gonna work i’m gonna say it’s got reasonable traction reasonable and i say reasonable ground clearance what i was going to say is really appalling ground clearance we are teetering that’s the word i’m looking for now try to think
What the underside looks like basically the x3 was like a yachting dog endlessly dragging its bottom along the ground they see at this point the most useful thing you can have in a four-wheel drive car is a sound recordist get out there push that is a horse of a man the extras onboard computer is supposed to send the engine’s power to whichever wheel has the
Most traction worked on the road but not here can you bring a range rover and a rope after thunderbird two had pulled me out i only had a hundred yards of rough stuff to go before i was back where the x3 belongs on the road always hoping sun roof to escape out or gonna be here forever i’ve got to wait for basically wind erosion to blow away the soil
Before i can get out all i have for sustenance of these mins and all there is to do in here is think that really this isn’t a particularly good off-road car as off-road car builders you’ve not another good one oh they’re that bad afraid so yeah and it’s not just the ride and the cheapness of the materials and the styling but the thing is is that you’ve got no
High driving position and it’s no good offroad so i can’t see the point why don’t you just buy a 5 series estate yeah i mean it’s just gonna have the same number of seats it’s gonna be a lot more comfortable a lot lot lot lot lot more comfortable it’s almost exactly know it’s the same price it’s faster it’s more economical and people if you have a car like that
Won’t hate you know you’re driving it i mean it’s not it’s not exactly beautiful no it’s not beautiful but compared to this granted compared to that it is beautiful but what if you are one of it you know that one in a million who do want to go hang gliding on a mountain bike off a cliff or whatever oh perfect easy solution i give you this land rover okay no no
Now we’ve had that you can buy one of these for nineteen twenty thousand pounds okay four thousand pounds will kit it like this with the lights and the seats and aluminium and the big wheels and so on and the great thing about this is it will go off-road because it has the three big deals that it has this chunky tires big chunky tires lots of ground clearance
When you get stuck you pull it leaver and there’s a good boom noise as a big bit of metal moves and then you keep going i mean in this thing okay but all those stupid suvs they were all ridiculous it’s not just this one you push a button and a light comes on what good’s that just a lie it’s a lot how can electricity help but i want to leave a good boom and that’s
What you’re getting one of these these are fantastic they really are
Transcribed from video
BMW X3 | Car Review | Top Gear By Top Gear
