BMW X3 SUV xDrive30d M Sport Sport Automatic 5d Owner Review

Extremely spacious and comfortable inside. High driving position with great visibility. Smooth powerful engine combined with an impeccably behaved 8-speed steptronic automatic gearbox, never runs out of power or torque but nevertheless surprisingly economical with the diesel on those long motorway journeys.

Tight responsive steering and the adaptive suspension in sport mode keep you feeling firmly planted on the road with very little body roll when taking curves at speed. When cruising or in town, I dial in comfort mode suspension for a smoother ride - although, as with all BMW's you might find even that to be a bit stiffer than with more girly marque; the ride is smooth enough but you could never describe it as floaty. The M-sport brakes are progressive but ultimately authoritative - you'll come to a stop exactly where you wanted to.

The cabin is generally very quiet thanks to the acoustic glass, but despite the engine begin almost inaudible it doesn't eliminate all road noise when rocketing down the motorway and if you like listening to quiet classical music on the excellent Harman Kardon stereo, you'll need to turn the volume up a bit.

I only have the basic Parking Assistant feature on this car but it has several times prevented me from expensively hitting something when parking in a difficult spot (eg next to a high sloping grass bank or a bollard that's below my line of sight). If it sees something in the way it jams on the brakes and refuses to move any further.

I absolutely adore this car, it's luxurious and comfortable enough to quietly glide your mother to church in, and moments later you can be powering through twisty country lanes edging the gears manually through the bends while glued to the tarmac like a shadow, or effortlessly threading through motorway traffic. I wouldn't exchange it for any other car, and literally the only thing about it that irritates me is that when BMW implemented CarPlay for iDrive6 they thought it was ok to forgo support for Android Auto and they didn't rectify that until the X3 got iDrive7 in 2019/2020.