The Bad 8 v4.0 Part 3 – BMW X6

If there is a symbol for everything that’s wrong about excess in the automotive world, the BMW X6 is it. The BMW X6 is an overweight machine with overwrought styling and an overeagerness to be “sporty”. 

Why go ugly and impractical when you could have a 2011 Porsche Cayenne? Why challenge everything that is completely understood by chassis engineers at McLaren, Ferrari, and Lotus by fitting the X6 with enough unsprung weight to hold a crime family under the Hudson? Why delve deeper into ever-expanding niches to find the limits of desirability when time and money could be spent improving the BMW M3’s brakes and stripping weight out of the BMW 135i? Why oh why oh why?

To fully explain the BMW X6’s styling catastrophes would be to write a book called What Not To Draw. Expunging the myth that the BMW X6 is worth being seen in is as easy as staring at it for more than a couple initially presence-filled impactful seconds. There is so much wrong with this vehicle, and the wrongs aren’t the kind of wrongs you set aside because its wheels are gorgeous or its powertrain is magical. The BMW X6’s wrongs are halfway to criminal.

Alternatives: Porsche Cayenne, BMW X5, drunk dialing.

Base USD/CAD Price: $57,000 / $65,700

Improvements Required: Could we just forget the BMW X6 ever happened? We could, almost. BMW hardly sells any of’em, and the X5 could easily take over the X6’s marketplace position, just like it had been doing quite nicely for a decade before the X6 came along.

Historical Significance: BMW introduced the X5, their first SUV (or SAV as they like to say) in the late 90s. It was controversial, not entirely unexpected, and wonderfully successful. A decade later, BMW thought they’d go for totally unexpected, terribly unsuccessful, and completely controversial.