If you’re looking to spend between eighty and a hundred thousand dollars on your next mid-size luxury, two-row crossover, i think this is hands down the best option in america. Right now, for 2020, bmw has significantly bumped the power from the 4.4 liter twin-turbo v8. Under the hood up to 523 horsepower and that has had a significant impact on performance, this will go zero to 60 in our testing in four seconds flat. I’m going a little out of order here to highlight the fact that this has at the moment.
Strangely enough, no true competitor in the luxury segment sure you could look at something like a mercedes-benz, gle 580. But it’s going to be 9 10 of a second slower than this or you could look at something like the range rover sport with a 5 liter supercharged. V8, but it’s a full second slower now, if you want to go faster in your range rover, sport or your mercedes, there are options out there, but this is not a direct competitor to the amg 63s version of the gle or the audi rs q8. Those are direct competitors to the bmw x5m and you could look at this as sort of a discount x5m.
Really. This is going to be 20 to 30, 000 less expensive. Clearly, it’s not going to be as fast it’s not going to handle as well. It’s not going to be as absolutely crazy as the x5m, but it will get you at least nine tenths of the way there, as you’d expect out of a performance vehicle.
Most of the ducts and openings we find up front are fully functional the ones on the very outboard side, like you can see right here on the left side of your screen. This helps direct air around the front tire. We actually have cooling grates over here on this side, more cooling, vents down there. These have active, grille shutters as well.
In those openings, the only fake vent is over here on the driver’s side right there below the fog light. I apologize for the fog blowing in this shot. Right here makes things a little difficult to see, but this is not a functional vent right there, that’s the only one, but the one. Next to it is moving around to the side.
We find a staggered tire setup, which is certainly more common in performance. Suvs 275, with tires up front 315 with tires in the back. If you want wider tires, you can always upgrade into the x5m. The front tires become 295 widths on that model.
The interesting thing about the m50i is that in some ways it’s an awful lot closer to the x5m than the more common versions of the x5. Another way that this is a little bit like the x5m is that we don’t have the option of a third row. So if you want a third row in your x5 you’re gon na have to settle for the three liter inline six, it’s just not an option for some reason in the us in the m50i, there’s always been some hope that maybe bmw would bring us that option, But instead they really just brought us the x7. So if you want a bigger bmw with a usable third row, the x7 really has a great third row.
That’s going to be the one that you want to look at and there is an m50i version, but it’s going to be about six inches longer than the x5 and a little bit more difficult to park at just over 195 inches long. This is solidly a midsize crossover in the u.s, something like an audi q7, which you could see as a direct competitor to this is sort of in between the x5 and the x7. As we saw up front, the rear end design is a little bit more discreet than the x5m. We get full led tail lamp modules now in the us.
These are red turn signals not amber turn signals. Unfortunately, down below we have what look like large dual exhausts. Integrated into the rear bumper, but if you take a closer look, you’ll notice that there are actually two exhaust tips in each of those openings. This particular model does not have the optional tow package, but if you did get that there would be a receiver right there in the middle of the bottom bumper.
This is good for towing up to 7 200 pounds when properly equipped when it comes to active safety. The european entries play things a little bit differently than lexus acura and genesis, so we don’t find the same kind of active safety content standard in the x5, but we do find all of the latest active safety systems available that continues for the 2020 lineup of bmw. X5, the model that we’re driving has all of the optional systems on it. We have radar adaptive cruise control with pre-collision braking.
We have the blind spot monitoring, system, etc, but remember that features like adaptive. Cruise control are still going to be optional on the x5, even at the price point of the m50i, and now we should talk about this little badge right back here. This may sound a little bit crazy to some of you, but i love the fact that we get the m50i and the x5m, because in a way the x5m’s existence makes the m50i a little bit easier to rationalize. In a way, you didn’t get the full on crazy version.
You were a little bit more pragmatic, a little bit more rational and you got the m50i instead jumping into the wayback machine. The very first vehicle that was produced by bmw’s motorsports division was the bmw m1, but it was not designed to be a regular road-going car that the average joe could go out and buy the first car that met. That description was the m535i but you’ll notice. It wasn’t an m5 quite yet and in some ways that i think was the beginning of m performance, even though bmw didn’t quite know it yet.
Then, of course, came the m5 and other m vehicles with just one number afterwards, but today, of course, bmw sells more crossovers, more x3s and x5s than they do sedans. So to mfi these guys we put the m at the end. That’s how we have the x3m. The x4m, the x5m, the x6m and, oddly enough, no x7m.
Yet although bmw claims that we’re not going to get an xm, i think that they doth protest too much and it’s only a matter of time until we get an x7m. But now we must explain: m performance. M performance goes back a little bit in a way to that m535i, where we don’t have the full on crazy that we find in the m lineup in the 21st century. Here’s how m sorts out.
We have m sport at the very bottom m. Sport gives us looks faster treatments on the inside and on the outside, sometimes better handling, but it really depends on which m sport options you select on your new bmw. Then we have m performance, that’s where we have an m on the badge of the vehicle. So like this one m50i for the x5, it’s a little bit of a different format when we take a look at their sedan lineup, but it’s still m performance.
The engine has an m performance logo on it, rather than a regular old m badge, and we don’t have quite the same kind of crazy alterations in these vehicles that we do find in full on m’s. So the x5m versus this, the x5m, is going to have more power. It’s going to have better handling. It’s going to have more modifications to the vehicle’s looks as well.
We see the same level of modifications in bmw, sedan lineup when we go from an m340i into an m3 and from the end performance to the m5. Generally speaking, key differences between m performance vehicles and the full on m in the lineup are going to be body. Modifications so different hoods different quarter panels, different materials being used, carbon fiber roofs, things like that you’ll find those in the full on m. You really won’t find them in m performance models, although some folks may be a little bit confused about how m performance slots in the lineup.
I think this engine line it makes an awful lot more sense than what we find going on over at mercedes in the mercedes lineup. We have the gle 580, which i suppose you could see as a competitor to this one. But then we also have the gle 53 amg, which is actually going to be slower and less powerful than the gle 580. Then, of course we get the full on amg version, which is the pinnacle of the lineup and the direct competitor to the bmw x5.
But bmw makes a little bit more sense because between this and the x5m they’re not inserting a model that is strangely less powerful for some reason like we find in the mercedes lineup for 2020, the m50i trim got more powerful. As i said before, this is a 4.4 liter twin-turbo v8 engine. It produces 523 horsepower and 553 pound-feet of torque. Oddly enough, the same amount of torque peak that we find in the x5m, but the x5m is going to give us more power, 600 horsepower or 616 horsepower, depending on which version you get now.
Of course, even though the torque figure is the same in this engine as the x5m, the power and torque curves are a little bit different between this engine and the full on m engine. If you don’t need this much power in your x5, there are two different trim levels below this. We have the plug-in hybrid at 389 horsepower, and then we have the standard base engine 3-liter, turbocharged inline-six that will produce 335 horsepower and new for 2020. You can get that in rear-wheel drive if you want to other than that.
The entire rest of the x5 lineup is all-wheel drive as long as we’re not talking about seats with available massage. I give these seats 10 out of 10 points for front seat comfort. I think that these seats are a little bit more comfortable than the seats that we find in the xc90 or the mercedes-benz gle. Bmw offers an anti-fatigue style massage, but it’s not going to go as high up the back.
It’s not going to be as aggressive as the massage that we find in the xc90. I think that xc90 seat is one of the best in this segment, but excluding the massage. I actually find this seat cushion to be just a little bit more comfortable than the volvo. For some reason, i’ve always thought that was a little peculiar.
I would love to have a vehicle with this kind of power and this kind of performance and a teeny tiny emergency back seat. But until that happens, the x5 m50i is strictly a five seat vehicle. We have some nice touches back here, usb c ports in the front seat back little place where you can dock an ipad holder that is kind of a nice touch rather than a more conventional rear seat, entertainment system. We have four air vents back here, one on each of the b pillars right there and then two in the center console as you’d expect out of a mid-size crossover.
This is certainly roomier than something like a bmw x3. So if i move over here to the middle seat, i still have a lot of room, including headroom. I have about an inch of headroom left, even though these are very bucket style rear seats. If i scoot all the way over to the right side of the x5, i still have a reasonable amount of legroom, even though this front seat back is all the way back in its tracks.
We do have a four zone climate control system back here, which is a really nice touch, the rear seats fold almost completely flat with the cargo area in the back, and they do feature a 40 20 40 folding design. So if i pull this little webbing right there, i can fold this center 20 percent seat separately from the outboard positions. But, oddly enough, the rear seat backs do not have any recline to them, they’re simply fixed in place either up or down. The x5 continues to be one of the few vehicles available in north america, with not only a lift gate, but also a tailgate, but the thing i really love about this design is that it keeps groceries and other items from flying out through when you first open.
The lift gate and it’s powered independently of the liftgate, so i can press that button and open or close it, but for ease of operation. I can also just hit the one button over here on the tailgate and close them both under the load floor. We find a compact spare tire, the jack and tire iron, and then we find a place where you can also dock the roller cargo cover. As you can see, we have that 40 20, 40 folding rear seat back, which really improves cargo practicality.
So you can still seat four if you want to carry some of those larger items inside at the same time as we look around the interior, keep in mind that we are in a model with a little over ten thousand dollars of options. This is not going to be everything that you find in the base m50i, although clearly it’s going to be better equipped than the absolute base version of the x5. The model that we’re driving has this large dual pane moon roof. You can see the seam between the panes right there, just above the driver and front passengers heads we have a smaller pane up front and that’s the one that opens you can see it slides right there on top of the other pane of glass.
Although this is something of a generalism, one of the things that i like about the m50i is that the interior is a little bit more luxury oriented than we find in the x5m. In this particular model, we have four-way adjustable front headrests with butterfly extensions. You can see you can fold those out right there. The leather interior is sort of a medium chestnut.
We don’t have ventilated seats in this particular model, but we do have a lot of extra stitching going on there and a really interesting, stitching design. Pretty aggressive side bolsters, we also have extending thigh cushions on the front of that seat. Bottom cushion as you’d expect out of a luxury car that starts over 80 thousand dollars for this particular trim. There are a lot of premium materials going on in the front door, so we have soft touch: plastics, lower there on the front door, some attractive, speaker, grilles right there, metallic effect trim, that’s not real metal trim, and then we have some inserts right there with stitched Goods you can see that matches the same color that we had on the front seats.
Moving up there. You can find the two position seat memory for the passenger seat on the front doors. We have some additional speaker grilles. We have the harman kardon audio system in this particular model.
There are a bunch of different audio system levels in the bmw lineup. So if you want to spend more or you want to spend less, there are options around there for you, we have the leather stitch. Dashboard and then we have this very attractive trim on the dashboard now. One thing worth noting is that the m50i is also available with wood trim, which is certainly my preference, but this definitely has an interesting look to it in the middle of the dashboard.
We have the same touch screen infotainment system that we find in the rest of the x5 lineup. As you can see, it supports wireless apple. Carplay idrive also gives you a sport display, so you can see how much power your engine is making, but it’s worth noting that we don’t get all the same kind of sport displays that we would find in the x5m continuing down the dashboard. We have some physical buttons for the infotainment system as well.
These are touch sensitive. So if you hover your finger over them, it’ll actually display on the infotainment screen what option you’re trying to select and then moving down from there. We have a storage area. This is where we find the qi wireless charging mat, a 12 volt power port and then heated and cooled cup holders.
You can see this one is on heat and that one is on cool right over there. We have the typical joystick shifter that we’ve come to associate with bmw for a while. This one has a park button right there. If you want to pull it into drive, we press this unlock button, pull all the way back for drive manual and sport mode is over to the left.
We push away from the driver for gear up. If we press the p button for park, you’ll see that it returns to center, to the left of that we have stability, control. The camera button parking sensor, button, auto start, stop disable engine start stop button and then drive mode selections. These control not just the way.
The engine and transmission behave, but also the way the adaptive suspension system in this model behaves. We have an auto brake, hold button hill, descent control, electric parking brake and then, of course, the i drive controller for the infotainment system. The center console features a bi-fold lid. We press that button to open it right there, and then we see a usb-c charge port inside on the driver’s side.
We have a full lcd instrument cluster, although this display is not quite as techy, i guess you’d say as a mercedes or an audi full lcd. We don’t have the google satellite imagery that we find available in the audi displays and we don’t have some of the star trek looking screens that we find in the mercedes display, but we still have a moving map right there in the middle. You can turn that on and off of course, and we can change some of the information that we see over here on the right side of the lcd. But most of this lcd is simply reserved for what you see here: the speedometer the tachometer, the fuel gauge and, of course, the engine temperature.
It does change a little bit based on the drive mode that we’re in. If i put this in eco pro mode, you’ll see that we get a different theme there, adaptive looks very similar to the comfort mode and then, if i put it in sport mode, things change a little bit more. But if you’re looking for cluster with the latest in whizbang features, it’s not gon na be this one. The steering wheel is a round three spoke design.
We have a little m logo right down there at the bottom and on that bottom spoke. We have a button to turn on and off the steering wheel. Heat function, you’ll find the infotainment buttons over here on the right side of the steering wheel, volume up down track forward backward. This roller dial allows you to choose from your playlists or other selections within the infotainment system, using the heads-up display or the instrument cluster.
If you don’t have the heads-up display, we then have a dedicated phone button. There voice command button. This may look like some sort of menu button, but it’s actually a source selection button. You click that and then you scroll through the sources with that little selector on the left side of the steering wheel.
We have the controls for the radar adaptive cruise control system, as well as an aggressive lane. Centering enable disable button panel shifters on the back up on the right down on the left, and they do move with the steering wheel. A really nice touch with this steering wheel that not all luxury car companies get right, i think, is the air bag cover. This is a leather wrapped air bag cover and even in some really expensive cars out there that we’ve driven recently, i’m looking at you rolls-royce.
We don’t have a leather-stitched airbag cover for some reason, but here in the x5 we do let’s get the numbers out of the way. First 0-60 happens in 4 seconds even again, that is significantly faster than the 2019 m50i and significantly faster than the comparable mercedes model, which, i suppose you would say, is the gle 580., remembering, as i said before, this is not a competitor to the gle 63.. It’s really not that long ago, that 523 horsepower in a mid-sized crossover, all-wheel drive and 0-60 times of 4 seconds flat would be absolutely insane. But of course we don’t live in that world anymore and for some reason now we have considerably more powerful options out there.
In many ways this is in the middle of the performance color chart not drastically out on one end, that’s where we’re going to find the x5m and if you want to go even further down the crazy rabbit hole, obviously something like a trackhawk now it may seem Crazy at first to be comparing this to something like the trackhawk with 700 horsepower, but remember this is not going to be that far off the trackhawk in terms of price. The model that we’re driving here is just under a hundred thousand dollars and the track can get over a hundred thousand dollars, depending how you have it optioned out and, of course, there’s some decent deals which will drive down a base trackhawk down to pretty close to The base price of this x5 – the big difference between this and something like the grand cherokee trackhawk aside for the fact that once a jeep and one’s at bmw is going to be the level of refinement that you would assume should come with those labels. The jeep does very well for itself and i think it punches above its weight in most versions of the grand cherokee, but by the time you’ve gone up to a hundred thousand dollars. It just doesn’t feel as special as this.
It certainly doesn’t feel as refined as the x5m or the x5 m50i, and the weird thing about the trackhawk is that both of these models of x5 are competitors to that jeep. But, oddly enough neither one is going to be quite as fast as that. Jeep. Also.
Interestingly, they share transmissions, essentially the same zf 8-speed automatic transmission is found under this hood under the hood of the x5m and, of course, under the hood of that jeep grand cherokee. This is also going to stop shorter than the grand cherokee at 120 feet. Stopping distance from 60 miles an hour back to zero, and it’s able to do that over and over and over again without much noticeable fade that stopping distance may sound a little bit long to some folks out there. But remember this is a pretty heavy vehicle in the form that we’re driving right here it weighs over 5 300 pounds so 120 feet is not a long stopping distance for a vehicle like this, and if you want to stop faster, there’s of course that x5m, that Is definitely going to stop shorter than this thanks to bigger, more aggressive brakes and, of course, wider tires up front when it comes to the handling score, i’m going to give this model an a bmw has done an excellent job time after time after time of making The x5 drive more like a sport, sedan and less like an suv or crossover and you’ll certainly feel that out on the road, especially when the road gets winding.
Even though this model weighs over 5 300 pounds, it doesn’t exactly feel heavy and you’ll certainly notice that once the road starts to wind a bit more, this feels a little bit more like some folks might expect an x3 to feel out on the road now. It’s certainly not small, it definitely takes up more road than something like the x3, but it doesn’t really feel that much heavier than some of those smaller crossovers. That’s down to the amount of grip, the electronic systems and, of course, the strong rear wheel, drive dynamic. The x5 also has a good weight balance, and that is something to keep in mind if you’re trying to compare this to something like an audi q8 now, the tricky thing with the audi q8 comparison is that the regular q8 is a lot slower than this, because We don’t have really a corollary to the m50i engine in the audi lineup.
If you get the rsq8, that’s trying to be more of an x5m, even though it’s not quite as fast as the bmw, but even the rsq8 is not going to feel quite like this. X5 and that’s down to the weight balance, the audi has a lot more weight in front of the front axle. The entire engine, in fact, and a portion of the transmission is in front of the front axle just due to its overall design. That white balance is noticeable in the corners where the audi is going to be a little bit less willing to turn it’s going to feel a little bit bigger and a little bit heavier out on a winding mountain road.
Like this, the model that we’re driving has an adaptive suspension, but this is not the adaptive height suspension that is available in the x5, so this is tuned a little bit differently than that suspension. The difference is that this suspension can adjust the damping, but it cannot adjust the height even in its most comfortable setting. This is going to be a little bit firmer than the base. Bmw x5.
Now some of that’s going to do with the suspension tune. Some of it is also going to have to do with the wheel and tire sizes that we have on this particular model. I’m going to drop the ride score down to an a minus, because this is going to be a little bit firmer than the base versions of the x5 and also a little bit firmer than some of the suspension options that we find in the mercedes gle. But i really like the balance of the suspension that we find in this m50i trim.
This is not as firm as the x5m. Now the x5m is still quite livable. Really, if you want a vehicle that has incredible performance and won’t knock your teeth out on a rougher road, the x5m will do that, but this is still going to be a bit more comfortable, and this is a bit more, my preference, i have to say if I put the suspension into the sport mode out on this rougher section right here. You will definitely notice the difference.
It certainly gets an awful lot firmer. The x5m, on the other hand, is just an incredible amount of fun and the amount of power you get out of this engine is insane. We also get a transmission that is practically psychic now, if you have it in the sport plus mode, it does tend to hold those revs a little long and it’s making a lot of noise in the process. But all the noises are excellent.
If you want to calm things down, you can just switch things over to comfort mode. The exhaust gets a little bit quieter and the cabin remains one of the quietest in this segment at 69.5 decibels. This is actually one of the quietest cabins that we’ve tested. If you’re out there shopping for a twin-turbo v8, i’m going to go out on a limb and say that fuel economy is probably not high on your priority list, and indeed it is not seemingly high on this xyz priority list either over a week of mixed driving.
We’ve been averaging 15.1 miles per gallon. That is definitely below the 18 miles per gallon, that this is epa rated for. So i’m going to give this a c, but definitely keep in mind how much fun we’ve been having with this x5. Of course, there is an absolutely enormous caveat with that fuel economy number and that’s the fact that i’ve been driving this pretty darn hard over a week.
It is an awful lot of fun to flog out in your favorite windy. Mountain road certainly done a lot of that, and that is clearly going to have an impact on the fuel economy. Now that we’re stuck behind this truck clearly it’s time to bottom line, the x5 m50i. I think this is the best version of the x5.
Now clearly, the x5m is that next level and crazy that next level in performance, but the x5m also gives up a little bit in terms of creature, comforts and suspension ride quality. It also isn’t going to fly quite as below the radar, as this x5 m50i now. Clearly, if i put this in sport mode, all the cracks and burbles from this exhaust are not really going to fly below the radar either, but in comfort mode it certainly can – and this is definitely a very, very comfortable vehicle. But it is lightning fast when you want it to be, and that combination is my favorite kind of luxury car and i’m willing to give up a little bit of handling ability in order to get it.
That is something that this simply does better than the gle 580. The gle 580 is not slow by any stretch, but it is just not this fast. The range rover sport is a little bit of a different animal because it’s not slow, either 5 seconds 0 to 60, for something that size is pretty good. It has a great exhaust note from its supercharged engine, but it’s certainly not going to handle like the mercedes and the bmw.
The audi q8 also is not going to handle quite like this. It’s not going to feel quite as dynamic as the x5. Now. This is not going to feel like a 5 series, exactly it’s not going to feel like a 3 series, but it is going to be an awful lot closer than you might think.
When this generation of the x5 launched it was available initially only with all-wheel drive, but now there is a slightly less expensive model if you want rear wheel, drive and, of course, the three liter inline six model. If you want to be able to plug your x5 in that’ll, set you back at least sixty five thousand four hundred dollars and the entry level for the v8 engine. Lineup is eighty two thousand eight hundred dollars. That’s for the m50i that we were driving today and, of course, if you want an x5m, because you want to take things to the next level of crazy, that’s going to be available as well, but it is going to be a lot more expensive.
Eighty two thousand eight hundred dollars is not exactly inexpensive, but it’s pretty darn close to the gle 580 at 77 600, our first competitor here, but the gle is not going to be nearly as swift. In fact, if you want to get faster than this version of the x5 you’re gon na have to buy the absolutely crazy amg versions of the gle, i think the two big selling points for the gle 580 are that we have an available third row. For some reason we don’t get that third row in the x5 with the v8 engines in america. I’m really sad about that.
I don’t understand why bmw makes that particular decision and the gle 580 comes standard with the mercedes-benz mild hybrid system. That mild hybrid system is pretty unobtrusive and it does have a noticeable impact on real world fuel economy. The other thing to know about the mercedes-benz is that options get pretty expensive, so, although it seems like it’s less expensive than the comparable x5 by the time, we’ve comparably equipped that gle 580 to the x5 that we were driving today, it’s gon na be about the Same price, or perhaps a little bit more expensive, honestly, it’s hard to go wrong with either the gle or the x5. There are pros and cons to both of these vehicles.
I think that idrive is easier to use, but the graphics in the mbx infotainment system definitely feel snazzier and more modern, but the system is a little bit more complicated. The big thing i love about mbx is the driver’s instrument cluster. It certainly gives us a lot more customization ability and a lot more information than we find in the full lcd clusters that we see in the bmw lineup. If i were to score these two vehicles, i think i like the interior design of the gle a little bit above the x5, but i like the comfort level and the parts quality in the x5 interior.
Oddly enough, a little bit more than the gle, the latest bmw models, x5 included, have really upped interior parts quality and that’s obvious when you step inside this model. Next up we have the other german option: the audi q8, the q8 and the q7 both compete with the x5, but in this instance the q8 is probably the more appropriate competitor. The q8 is supposed to be a little bit more luxurious. A little bit more driver oriented a little bit more fun out on the road and it doesn’t have a third row option which we don’t find in the v8 versions of the x5, either at 68 200.
The q8 is notably more expensive than the base versions of the x5, but oddly enough, there really is no version of the q8 that directly competes with the m50i version of the x5. But, depending on the options you select, pricing can be pretty similar. A q8 with the luxury package, for instance, is a little bit more expensive than the base version of the x5 m50i. We just don’t get as much power under the hood, because it’s targeting a slightly different shopper.
Then, of course we have the audi rsq8, which is certainly targeted at the bmw, x5m and x6m. So it’s not really the same thing as the m50i version: either there’s just no middle engine choice in the audi lineup and that rsq8 is pretty expensive. It’ll cost you a hundred fourteen thousand five hundred dollars. So, logically, you would expect that model to beat what we were driving today in terms of performance.
Our next alternative hails for america in the form of the all-new lincoln aviator. I suppose in some ways you could call the aviator or competitor to the x5 and the x7, both but theoretically, the x7 is more in the territory of the lincoln navigator, even though the aviator is a little bit bigger on the inside than the x5 and the Third row is always going to be standard over the last few years, lincoln has really undergone a renaissance, they’ve decided to focus more on crossovers and suvs, less on sedans and more on interior quality, and that’s why the aviator is here in this conversation there really is: No cadillac corollary to the bmw x5. At this time. They of course have their xt models, but they’re all front wheel, drive vehicles with a lot less power going on things are quite different than the aviator.
The aviator is a rear-wheel drive, crossover and out on the road. It reminds me an awful lot of the bmw x5. You can also get a decent amount of power in the aviator. I think the aviator surprised a lot of folks when it came with so much standard power.
The base engine is a three liter twin turbo v6, giving you 400 horsepower and 415 pound-feet of torque. If you want more oomph, then you add a plug-in hybrid system to that model, bumping things up to nearly 500 horsepower and 630 pound-feet of torque, but there is a big caveat and that is curb weight. The plug-in hybrid system adds an awful lot of it. It’ll get that aviator up to 5838 pounds of curb weight, nearly 900 pounds more than the x5 that we were driving this week and that’s why?
Although the aviator really does remind me of the bmw x5 in terms of its driving dynamics out on the road, it reminds me of a slightly heavier x5. If we’re talking about that plug-in hybrid version, it’s also not quite as smooth, but it’s certainly in a similar price range. Eighty-Seven thousand eight hundred dollars. So if you want some extra oomph and you want plug-in hybrid ability – and you want everything that that aviator is bringing to the table, including a nice roomy third row – it’s gon na be about as expensive as many of these european options, but it’s finally worth it.
I think when it comes to competition from asia, we don’t have a lexus corollary to the v8 version of the x5, and we don’t know whether we’re going to get one from genesis or not. We have their new gv80, but it doesn’t come with the kind of power that we find in the m50i version of the x5. So if you want another competitor, we have to move along to england in the form of the range rover, sport or perhaps the range rover velar. The velar is going to be a bit more expensive, but it’s going to be the option that will give you similar performance. 90 790 dollars gets you the 550 horsepower supercharged for lar boy, that was a tongue twister.
At any rate, the thing you need to know about the velar is that it’s an awful lot smaller in terms of size, it’s somewhere between the x3 and the x5, but on the inside it actually feels a little bit tighter than the x3 in some areas. So it’s certainly not going to be as spacious in terms of dimensions. The range rover sport is going to be closer to the x5, but we get a little bit less power and more curb weight. It’s 518 horsepower for 87 500, but in terms of dimensions, the range rover sport is pretty similar with this pair of competitors.
The valar is the one more focused on on-road driving ability, the range rover sport more on off-road driving ability, and that is going to be noticeable. The vlar is going to feel more engaging, not quite as engaging as something along the lines of an x3m, but perhaps a little bit more engaging than the bmw x5 on average. Keep in mind, of course, that it also is smaller than the x5 and that’s part of why it’s gon na drive smaller out on the road. The range rover, on the other hand, even though it’s about the same size, it feels a little bit bigger a little bit heavier a little bit more ponderous, because, even though there are certainly some on-road focused versions of the range rover sport, that entire platform was really Designed for off-road ability and, of course, the range rover, sport is going to be noticeably slower than the x5 m59, even though it still produces about 515 horsepower bottom lining.
This segment isn’t too hard. I think it’s easy to see why the x5 is one of my top picks in the luxury segment. If i were shopping for something – and i wanted the extra amount of power, but i didn’t want to go all the way up to the x5m territory or the absolutely crazy, mercedes amg territory, the x5m really is the sweet spot here, because you’ll pay about the same Amount for something along the lines of that gle 580, but it’s not going to be as quick, you’ll, actually pay more for a range rover velar. But it’s not going to have the same kind of room inside the infotainment system is definitely going to be dated feeling compared to the bmw, and it may still not be as quick, depending on exactly what’s going on at the time you’re trying and the range rover Sport may be a little bit more off-road capable, but if we’re talking about that 518 horsepower model, it’s not going to be that much more off-road capable than the bmw x5 be sure to.
I have to admit that i don’t think i would spend the extra cash on the bmw x5 with the twin turbo v8. I think i would just stick with the inline six, because performance with that engine is absolutely excellent and it’s also a pretty decent deal in this segment.