We just got back from seeing our middle son Kyle in Santa Fe. He’s now separated from his wife, but we’re still close friends with his in-laws. They’re absolutely wonderful folks. Not only did we stay with them during the visit, they said not to bother renting a car because they’d be glad to pick us up at the airport (AirBnB and Uber) and then loan us a car. Sure enough, when they met us at the tiny Santa Fe airport, Jane was in their Honda CRV, and Michael was in their 2017 X3. He then got out and gave it to us so we could head off and see Kyle and come and go from their house as we please. Very special people.
Now, I’ve made no bones over the years about my distaste for SUVs in general and BMW’s “SAVs” (X cars) in particular. I owned just one, a unicorn 6-speed sport and tow package 2004 E53 X5, and was glad when I sold it and went back to daily-driving my E39—its bulk, width, and driving position simply weren’t to my liking. And on the newer X cars, don’t get me started on the whole grilles-you-can-see-from-space thing.
And yet, sometimes you get surprised.
Let me preface all this by saying that I rarely have the chance to drive new, or new-ish, or different cars than the ones we own, and so I am both easily impressed and easily revulsed by things I’m unfamiliar with. So our annual visits to Santa Fe have been an opportunity to rent cars and get a tiny statistical sampling of newfangled technology that other people report loving and/or hating.
I usually rent from National/Enterprise, as I still get a good rate from the account associated with my 10-year-gone engineering job, and I like the “walk the aisle pick out what you want” flexibility. Three years ago when we flew into Albuquerque, I grabbed a new Toyota Corolla, sort of the Applebee’s of cars (you know what it’s going to be, and it’s unlikely to be horrible or to leave you mumbling in adoration). Plus, the dashboard controls of Corollas historically have been designed so that an 80-year-old driver can hop in it and instantly figure out how to turn the heat and defrost up to high. But on that particular late-model Corolla, as soon as we began the hour-long nighttime drive from Albuquerque up to Santa Fe, I found that the lane assist came on along with the cruise control, it fought me at the slightest deviation from lane center, and I could not figure out how to turn it off. Further, at the slightest provocation from headlights or taillights visible at virtually any distance, the auto-dimming headlights would trigger, and they were almost homicidal—they’d kill the high beams in favor of low beams that were so dim that I could barely see. And it inexplicably did this in the middle of nowhere on gravel roads as well, presumably something about the reflectivity of the gravel. I had to search online to figure out how to turn off both of these features. I usually don’t decry the safety “nannies,” but both of these were just awful.
If the Corolla is the Applebee’s of cars, this one had failed a health inspection.
The next year, I got an Audi Q3. I didn’t want a crossover SUV—in fact, I’d made a beeline for an Audi A4 sedan, but someone was already inside it. The Q3’s turbo lag was unforgivably bad, but I absolutely loved its adaptive cruise control. It worked so well that I didn’t initially even realize it was on. I would absolutely make sure this is on any replacement daily driver I buy.
Once I got over the turbo lag, god help me, I liked the Q3.
So when Michael picked us up in the X3 and handed us the keys, I felt like we were getting National/Enterprise concierge service. He explained that there’s something of a rotating car ownership with him and his other daughter—sometimes when he goes to visit her in Kansas City, he winds up coming home with a car that they were getting ready to trade in. Such was the case with the 2017 F25 X3 with 60,000 miles on it.
“Rob Siegel likes an X3. World ends at eleven.”
The funny thing was that I swore that Michael had said “X5” to me, and I kept referring to it as that. It was Maire Anne who noted that it was an X3. I could be forgiven for my mistake, as the F25 X3 is nearly identical in length and width to the E53 X5 I’d owned, and is visibly larger than the predecessor E83 X3. It took me a while to figure out the gearshift lever with its odd push-the-top-button-to-park and push-the-side-button-for-drive-and-reverse-and-oh-by-the-way-you-move-the-lever-forward-to-get-into-reverse-and-backward-to-drive-forward design, but then I was underway.
Really, who would design this?
For some reason, and maybe it was how Michael had configured the default settings of the nannies in the car, I instantly liked it. The lane assist was off, but the lane drift warning was on, giving a gentle vibration to the steering wheel. And I loved that both sideview mirrors had little triangles in their bases that lit up if someone was in your blind spot, so you were warned about it even if you didn’t see them in the mirror. Add both of those to my next car along with adaptive cruise.
Even though the car was very similar in size to my E53 X5, for some reason it didn’t feel as bulky. It felt quick and taut. When I looked at the little heads-up windshield display, I found myself going 85 without even realizing it. And, unlike both my E39 and Maire Anne’s Honda Fit, the car had heated seats. We’d left Boston in very cold weather, landed in Santa Fe in cold snowy weather, and returned to Boston in very cold very snowy weather, so while Maire Anne and I had the X3, we kept joking about “Set seat heaters to stun.” And since there was snow in Santa Fe, we were glad for the all-wheel drive.
To be clear, I doubt that my next car will be a BMW X vehicle or even all-wheel drive car of any vintage or body code. The one all-wheel drive BMW I owned was the E46 wagon, and when it needed its front axles replaced, the repair was such a PITA that I vowed never to own another one; the hassle of the repair that they’ll all eventually need simply isn’t worth the AWD capability to me.
But this is how we’re proven wrong about things. Someone loans us a relatively low-mileage car with features on it we don’t have, and we have the right-brain pleasure-center “This is niiiiiiiiice” reaction to it.
So, Michael, if Kim needs to give another car away, I’ll see what plane fares are from Boston to Kansas City. Then I’ll drive it to Santa Fe and you and I can arm-wrestle for it.
—Rob Siegel
Rob’s most recent book, The Best of The Hack Mechanic, is available here on Amazon, as are his seven other books. Signed copies can be ordered directly from Rob here.
