From e60 550i to e70 40d at weekend

[jboy]

So - after a deep breath and far greater expense than I have previously incurred when buying a car I took the plunge into x5 ownership on Saturday. Leggy, unwarranted X5 ownership. Why? I am extremely fussy and had also been spoilt by my 550i. Any replacement therefore had a lot to live up to in terms of spec. This popped up on Friday afternoon, I put down a holding deposit that day and bought the car Saturday lunchtime.

It has about £16k of options which is why I felt a little pressured into moving quickly.

I drove it about 140 miles over the weekend, country roads, motorways and town and my very initial observations are this:

Despite riding on stupidly large (although I think cool) wheels and stupidly thin rubber, the ride is great. Very comfortable and quiet. I do not know whether the car has runflats, I will have to check that.

Perhaps because of said wheels and rubber, the car handles unbelievably well. Better than my e39 530i and SO much better than my 550i. I was utterly dumbfounded. Each corner had me in raptures, perfectly weighted steering, outrageous grip and non existent body roll (the car does not have adaptive suspension, allegedly).

I had imagined that with a combination of the torque of the 40d and BMW's excellent cabin soundproofing driving the 40d would feel quite similar to driving the 550i. I got that wrong. That n/a 4.8l v8 engine truly is in a league of its own.

Looking forward to some more driving soon, although ironically it will be not for the grunty pace of the car but for the sporty handling. I wouldn't have expected that!

[X5Sport]

These cars have a seriously good set of road manners for 2T of engineering when pushed, and can give some quite quick hot hatches a nasty scare  :devil:

[graemeX5]

Hi

Congrats on the new car and sounds like a good buy with those options as it can bump up the price when new.

It seems like you already enjoying driving one, the're also pretty rapid for the size of car but yet comfortable.

Graeme