What is the point of the BMW X6?

The 4 door 6 series bothers me more than the X6. I remember when they called it the 7 series. Wtf are you doing BMW?

Anti-stance wrote: The 4 door 6 series bothers me more than the X6. I remember when they called it the 7 series. Wtf are you doing BMW?

Whatever it is, Audi is doing the same thing.

In reply to Joe Gearin:

The Eagle is probably better offroad than the X6.

pinchvalve wrote: The X6 says "Yeah, I have a lot of money, so I paid even more to eliminate the room and space of the X5 just to show the world that I have a lot of money to spend. I could have lots of room, but I don't need it. Ha Ha Ha I could have spent less to get a BMW with better ride and handling like a 5-Series or M3, but I didn't because I can afford to do whatever I want, even make stupid decisions, and you can't Ha Ha Ha"

This. All of this.

Here is a spy photo of the new X7. Rumor has it there is seating for 9 and it has carbon fiber tethers.

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:

It also comes with a personalized collectors number plate, signed by Hindenberg.

Dear Car and Driver,

My wife and I each bring home wheelbarrows full of money, but don't know what to spend it on. It needs to be fast enough to tailgate people at any speed, and it needs a backseat large enough to fit our three children, which are full-bred pomeranians. What do you recommend?

BMW X6: The vehicle of choice for thirty-something DINKS.

This is the point of the X6:

The engineers who care about real driving cars took the smallest coupe they had, gave it a manual transmission, and shoved all the go-fast goodness they could into it. They then proceeded to have lots of fun and get enthusiasts excited about the brand.

The higher ups then asked, "Well how the berkeley are we going to make money off of this."

"Easy. We'll make a totally different car for the people who would never dream of owning a car like this. The ones who think that when their driving enthusiast friends talked about BMW having a new car that was 'aggressive and high performance' they really meant 'big with a massive engine in it'. So we made that car to part fools and their money."

"So we're still parting fools and their money?"

"Yup."

"Okay, you and the stunt driving can go back to spending all day doing powerslides."

Beer Baron wrote: "So we're still parting fools and their money?" "Yup." "Okay, you **can make that little sports coupe, but you're only allowed to make an extremely limited number of them, so we can still charge an insane amount of money. We don't care that it guarantees that nobody will ever actually use the little thing for its intended purpose. ** "

Duke wrote:

Beer Baron wrote: "So we're still parting fools and their money?" "Yup." "Okay, you **can make that little sports coupe, but you're only allowed to make an extremely limited number of them, so we can still charge an insane amount of money. We don't care that it guarantees that nobody will ever actually use the little thing for its intended purpose. ** "

I raced against one in October so there is atleast one guy willing to gut the E36 M3 out of a 1M and put a cage in it here in the US.

Yeah, the 1-Series M may be the best BMW I've ever driven. Too bad they only made 1,500 or so of them worldwide.

Awesome cars that only enthusiasts know about.

Wow, so this has now degenerated into defining any car that doesn’t meet our intended design criteria or dares to wear a 'premium' nameplate and does anything other than lap the 'Ring' in under 30 seconds is ostentatious overpriced crap.

Get real guys, some one likes the car or they wouldn't buy it. There are many cars I don't see the point of but I don't spend hours proving that they are crap.

Joe Gearin wrote: Yeah, the 1-Series M may be the best BMW I've ever driven. Too bad they only made 1,500 or so of them worldwide. Awesome cars that only enthusiasts know about.

Yeah. It's just so specialized and most people who will drool over it are folks like us who don't have the money to plop down on something like that.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: Wow, so this has now degenerated into defining any car that doesn’t meet our intended design criteria or dares to wear a 'premium' nameplate and does anything other than lap the 'Ring' in under 30 seconds is ostentatious overpriced crap.

I'm not sure degenerated is the right word - perhaps "evolved" is what you meant.

But, yes. Exactly.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson: BMW, Porsche, Mercedes Benz, etc. were elite, premium marques. Then they got on the bandwagon with the plebian brands, and started building crap, despite their performance prowess, for the masses.

I don't understand why people like and buy things I don't like! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD?!

Beer Baron wrote:

Joe Gearin wrote: Yeah, the 1-Series M may be the best BMW I've ever driven. Too bad they only made 1,500 or so of them worldwide. Awesome cars that only enthusiasts know about.

Yeah. It's just so specialized and most people who will drool over it are folks like us who don't have the money to plop down on something like that.

It's called a halo car. See: 911 GT3 RS, Corvette ZR1, etc.

Why is it crap? It might now be what you (or I) want, but that doesn't make it crap. Are Ferrari road cars crap because Enzo only built them to fund his racing?

Do you deride all BMW cars as they've strayed from their roots of building airplanes, or if you consider their post aero history do you deride them for building sports cars having strayed from their true roots of building ripped off utilitarian vehicles (blind copies of Austin 7's) I'm sorry, but the argument just doesn't make sense.

Keith Tanner wrote:

Beer Baron wrote:

Joe Gearin wrote: Yeah, the 1-Series M may be the best BMW I've ever driven. Too bad they only made 1,500 or so of them worldwide. Awesome cars that only enthusiasts know about.

Yeah. It's just so specialized and most people who will drool over it are folks like us who don't have the money to plop down on something like that.

It's called a halo car. See: 911 GT3 RS, Corvette ZR1, etc.

...which calls into question the insistence that selling cars like the X6 subsidizes the development of halo cars, because halo cars are always way too expensive for the vast majority of enthusiast buyers.

I imagine that it would be easier to get into and out of this than it would be a 7 series or an X5 for pretty much every older adult who has had back problems, hip problems, knee problems, arthritis, etc. My girlfriends mom has MS. This car is really easy for her to get in and out of. Since it is out of her price range, I'm going to have them look at the Honda Crosstour and the Acura ZDX.

Guess what? For pretty much every person whow has chronic pain such that ingress and egress is a big part of car buying criterea, the back seat is going to be by and large unused.

I get it. I wouldn't buy it, but I sure wouldn't kick it out of my garage either.

Keith Tanner wrote:

Beer Baron wrote:

Joe Gearin wrote: Yeah, the 1-Series M may be the best BMW I've ever driven. Too bad they only made 1,500 or so of them worldwide. Awesome cars that only enthusiasts know about.

Yeah. It's just so specialized and most people who will drool over it are folks like us who don't have the money to plop down on something like that.

It's called a halo car. See: 911 GT3 RS, Corvette ZR1, etc.

The thing is, the 1-Series M isn't a "Halo" car. A halo car is usually at the top of a maker's food-chain and it showcases what that automaker is capable of. The 1-Series M was more of a minimalist car--- like the 911 RS from the 90s.

For BMW their Halo car would be the M3 CSL, or maybe the M5 or M6. The 1 Series M cost less than the standard M3, and had very little status value. It was a tiny production model designed perhaps just to remind us hard-core guys that the brand still "gets it".

As for the X6.... to each his own. At least BMW got the driving dynamics down right---- unlike the truly horrible Acura ZDX. I'm still blown away that Honda would produce such a truly terrible machine. Even the build quality is sub-par.

Why the hate on the X6? Because it's called having an opinion. Why the hate on the opinions of hate? And wouldn't forums like this be pretty damn boring if people didn't have differing opinions?

Joe Gearin wrote: The thing is, the 1-Series M isn't a "Halo" car. A halo car is usually at the top of a maker's food-chain and it showcases what that automaker is capable of. The 1-Series M was more of a minimalist car--- like the 911 RS from the 90s.

Which is really a shame. I'd really love to own one someday. I just could never afford to buy a new one. I could probably afford one in something like ten years, but BMW is not building cars for people to buy 10 years used. They are building cars for people to buy new, and hold their value well enough to sell in 3-5 years (which will attract people to buying them new). The group of people who would appreciate the unadulterated, stripped down experience of a 1M and the people who have the money to buy one are not going to have a whole lot of overlap between them. So, low production numbers.

I think the 1M was a halo for people like us. A very well-aimed shot, one we could actually aspire to. It's an example that gearheads will hold up and say "look! BMW still has car guys!". Just as happened in this thread, actually. And there was enough demand for the 1M that they were pretty much sold out by the time most of us heard about them.

Halo cars help BMW sell more X6s so they can build more halo cars. I don't see the problem with this. The world's a better place for the low-volume interesting oddballs.

EDIT: Skip to the last paragraph to preview why I bother with the SUVitriol.

The X6 is only symptomatic of the SUV stupidity. It's just a particularly idiotic example. There will be some people who are just completely drawn to what this vehicle is, but I suspect most people who want one have just been sold SUV koolaid in the Costco-size vat (which won't fit in the X6, but would probably go in most SUVs).

The researchers were only doing their jobs when they looked at what qualities were desirable/viable in a platform.
The decision-makers were only doing their job to maximize shareholder profits when they chose the SUV platform as offering the most opportunity to upsell among those platforms which fit the researchers' data.
The marketers were just doing their jobs when they set out to convince the soccer moms and midlevel managers that SUVs were the most prestigious, the safest for their kids, the tastiest, and the least filling.
The people were only selecting among the available choices when they bought them. (Want a vehicle with a cargo area? Would you like SUV A or B or C or an unreliable VW wagon or a stratospherically priced BMW wagon?)

[To Adrian and anybody else who actually works in the industry, this probably appears ludicrously simplistic. It probably is, and I'd genuinely appreciate corrections. That said, I suspect that while simplistic, it's not too far from the actual story arc...]

So it's not like anybody did anything wrong. It's just that in combination the result is a bunch of huge, heavy vehicles burning a bunch of unnecessary fuel to no real benefit, save possibly the money for the auto industry and any trickle-down from there. Quite frankly I'm not going to buy any suggestion that no platform save SUVs could sell profitably enough to keep the automakers afloat.

I'm certainly over-aggravated about it, but I have a very real-to-me reason: I get to choose between the best SUV I can find and a VW with a known fuel system frailty on top of the general VW bullE36 M3 in about a year. I gather the CX-5 drives very nicely. But I don't know if I can stomach it. Then I'll get counted in the statistics of people voting with their dollars for SUVs. Like I have much choice. I really am very close to going with the VW, and the idea makes me twitch.