This car has everything — including a great left hook

I know I should be old enough to know better and admit I am fully aware that I have an unfeasibly large head – but I still blame the doors on the BMW X6.

Stephen Corby

3 min read

11:28AMFebruary 22, 2024.

Updated 11:40AMFebruary 23, 2024

The Weekend Australian Magazine

It’s eye-catching, some might say ugly, but if you must have an SUV at least this is one you can enjoy driving. Just watch your head. Picture: Newspress AU

I apologise if my thoughts are even more scattered than usual, and my allusions more illusory, but I am writing this with a head injury, and possible concussion. I wouldn’t let myself on a rugby field, but then neither would any coach.

I know I should be old enough to know better and admit I am fully aware that I have an unfeasibly large head – my mother famously had to cut wider collars into my potato sacks as a child just to get my bonce through – but I still blame the doors on the BMW X6.

They are, like everything else about this SUV, simply too big, and too much, and so it was that when I thought I had extracted my Sputnik-sized noggin from the closing arc of the driver’s door, I had not, and it struck me right on the ear, as flush and sharply as Mike Tyson’s teeth. Now these doors aren’t just barn-sized big, they’re also very heavy – all the better to give that satisfying smack of European quality you expect from a German car. Yes, I probably could have been killed, and thank you for your concern.

The doors on the BMW X6 aren’t just barn-sized big, they’re also very heavy. Picture: Newspress AU

The resultant brain fog left me feeling very confused over the next few days as various people told me how much they liked the look of the X6, a vehicle I’ve always described as looking as though its butt cheeks touch the back of its neck, enabling it to remove its wallet with a bent elbow and great ease. (You’ll need a fat wallet, too, with the xDrive40i M Sport model I tested starting at $144,900 and adding a $6000 Enhancement Package that features “crystal glass accents”, sexy wheels and a premium Harman Kardon sound system.)

The X6, first launched in 2008, is sometimes credited with inventing a whole new and unfortunate category of vehicle, one that combines the sleek, low-lying looks of a coupe with the uglier undulations of an SUV. Not so much putting lipstick on a pig, then, as fusing one with a gambolling spring lamb, or a kitten.

And yet, aside from a gushy BMW employee, actual people I know liked the look of the X6, and even highly rated its colour, accurately described by one as “greige”. I’d call it no colour at all, or just Horribly Boring.

I’ll admit that I like the interior, which feels far more shiny and modern and less underwhelmingly minimalist than BMWs of old, although the air-vent adjustment twiddlers look, according to my wife, like a giant nipple. Oh, and there’s a very weird bit of decorative twaddle just above the glovebox that changes colour depending on what mode you’re in and looks like it’s been lifted off the side of a teenager’s sneaker.

The interior feels far more shiny and modern and less underwhelmingly minimalist than BMWs of old. Picture: Newspress AU

What I found most infuriating about the X6, however, even more so than being boxed around the ear by it, was how excellent, how surprisingly sporty and thrilling and fun it was to drive. While it doesn’t look like a proper BMW (that would be an M3, or even just a 4 Series), it has a proper, classic BMW engine: a 3.0-litre, inline six-cylinder making 280kW and 520Nm, some 30kW and 90Nm more than the previous model and enough to send you growling from 0- 100km/h in 5.4 seconds (yes, it sounds lovely too).

Put this X6 in Sport mode and, once you’ve gotten past how ridiculous all the red lighting and Very Serious screen displays are, you can seriously shift it along a windy road. Tying the whole experience up in a pretty bow is the steering, which, in typical BMW fashion, is just muscular enough to make you feel like you’ve actually got visible pectoral muscles.

And the great thing about that chunky, tasty steering feel is that you can even enjoy it at legal speeds around town, unlike parking the damn thing. I had almost forgotten the X6’s attempt to sideways lobotomise me when I thought I’d try one of those functions I always avoid – the car’s Reversing Assistant. Parallel parking a vehicle with pricey-looking 22-inch wheels is always slightly stressful so I pressed the button that was offering to do it for me at my cramped local shops, took my hands off the wheel and let it do its thing.

Perhaps I approached at an unusual angle, or otherwise did something wrong, but the BMW immediately tried to reverse-park me away from the kerb and into oncoming traffic, which would have been amusing (I did try it twice) if it wasn’t so alarming.

Once again I find myself having to admit that, while this is not a vehicle I would personally want in front of my house, I can absolutely see why someone else might buy one, particularly if they prefer Picasso to, say, Renoir. It’s eye-catching, some might say ugly, but if you must have an SUV at least this is one you can enjoy driving. Just watch your head.