I’d planned to travel by air to a distant family celebration in late May, but then my adventurous, impulsive younger brother Dave called and said, “Let’s drive there together! I want to spend more time with you — and not when it’s in a nursing home.”
It would be a long road trip, but I’m always up for road trips, the longer the better, so Dave flew to Seattle from his home on the California coast and soon we were on our way to Wisconsin.
I’d already arranged to have my vehicle of choice from what was available in the press fleet at the time: the 2008 BMW X3. It fulfilled all my requirements, which were, in this exact order: fun to drive, roomy enough for travel gear and extra passengers, a navigation system, and stability in snow. There would have been bonus points for Sirius satellite radio, which is an option on the X3, but this particular vehicle didn’t have it. No problem during our trip, though. We both brought piles of CDs, and our X3 did have the optional premium audio system with upgraded power and 10 speakers, including two subwoofers. So we played our music, at a volume Dave said would have had his wife and two daughters yelling “TURN THAT DOWN!”
His Robert Earl Keen CDs sounded especially good.
We encountered snow in the mountains of Montana, torrential rain several times in Wyoming and Minnesota, and some off-road action when we took a side trip to Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota so I could do some birding.
No problems here, either. BMW’s xDrive all-wheel drive system, dynamic stability control (including brake drying, brake stand-by, start-off assistance and brake fade compensation), hill descent control, front and rear anti-roll (stabilizer) bars, and rain-sensing windshield wipers are all standard equipment on the X3.
A panoramic moonroof, also standard, gave us grand views of the night sky, and allowed me good looks of overhead birds at Arrowwood.
There is one version of the X3, the X3 3.0si. It has a six-cylinder engine that generates 260 horsepower and 225 lb-ft of torque. A six-speed manual transmission is standard, but a Steptronic six-speed automatic is available at no extra cost. Zero to 60 mph can be reached in 6.9 seconds with the manual, and in 7.1 seconds with the automatic.
My tester had the silky-smooth automatic transmission, which gives the X3 an EPA rating of 17/24 mpg. (The manual’s numbers are 16/23.) On our trip, mostly highway driving, we consistently logged 24 mpg. The X3’s engine and transmission work beautifully together — the Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjiic of powerplants.
The navigation system ($1,800 option) got as good a workout as the audio system.
We used it all the time, to calculate exact distances from one city or town to the next, check ahead for lodging for the night, look up restaurants, and get voice guidance to a dozen different places we wanted to go. Its finest hour was directing us right to the doorstep of our niece’s home in Chicago, in the middle of evening rush hour. The anxiety, irritation, anger, frustration, lost time and sibling alienation that navigation system spared us in Chicago, I’m sure you can imagine.
X3’s navigation system isn’t the easiest to learn or most intuitive on the market, but it’s close. Even my brother, who avoids high-tech equipment — unless it’s related to cable television — figured it out pretty quickly.
Though we put in long hours every day on the road, there was no fatigue.
For that we thank the X3’s comfortable seats, smooth ride, quiet interior and extreme fun-to-driveness.
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