You might consider BMW offering SUVs as the height of blasphemy, but there’s no arguing that monster wagons like today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe X5 M embody the Bavarian marque’s sporting heritage. Let’s see if this twin-turbo monster’s price is yet another heresy.
It’s a true fact that if pressured to be competent at a few tasks, it’s extremely difficult to excel at any one. In the motorcycle world that’s long been the lament of the dual-purpose, or adventure bike, riders.
That was a criticism rightly leveled at yesterday’s 1994 Honda CB250 Nighthawk, a street bike that had been lightly modded for backwoods duty as well. The conversion was not considered wholly successful, but that didn’t stop its $1,600 asking from winning a narrow but decisive 56 percent Nice Price win. What an adventure that turned out to be!
Another form of dual purpose machine is represented by today’s 2010 BMW X5 M. On the one hand, it’s a 5,300 pound, AWD two-row wagon that will probably get you to that tony ski resort no matter how inclement the weather. On the other paw, it’s one of the fastest ways to move five people and all their crap that you are likely find.
The hot E70 Bimmer also represents some notable achievements for BMW. It and its Quasimodo-like X6 sibling are the first xDrive AWD cars to come out of the company’s M GmbH shop. At its launch, the X5 M also featured the biggest brakes ever fitted to a production BMW, and with fully 550 brake horsepower on tap it was the highest output X-anything of its time.
The big Bimmer competed for private school carline duty with such rivals as the Porsche Cayenne Turbo, Mercedes Benz ML63 AMG, and Ranger Rover Supercharged Sport, and by competed I mean blew them away.
The BMW was the fastest and highest output of the whole category. That’s a pretty good bragging point to raise while you’re filling its 22 gallon fuel tank with premium, something you’d be doing quite frequently considering it gets, real-world, about 10 miles per gallon around town.
That’s the price you pay for the freedom to unleash the mighty S63 V8’s 550 ponies and macadam munching 501 lb.-ft. of torque. That’s all from just 4.4 litres of DOHC-topped displacement. It really gets its go from a pair of intercooled turbos hidden deftly under some under-hood plastic shrouds lest you try and touch something hot.
The overachiever engine is backed up by an M-mapped six-speed automatic with manual shift and flappy paddles. Suspension is ludicrously competent for something this big, allowing the wagon to keep up with the Joneses even when the Joneses hot the twisties.
This particular one comes in Silverstone Metallic over a black Merino leather interior. It rides on its factory Style 299 alloys and features all of its M badging on all sides. Notable options include a cold weather package, rear seat DVD player for the kiddos, and a panoramic moonroof up top.
Everything looks to be in fine shape with the sport seats exhibiting no evidence of bolster wear nor the steering wheel suffering from excessive sheen from oily hands. The kit here—power everything, automatic everything else—is comprehensive, but of course you would expect that from a car that went for nearly $100K when new.
Despite looking pretty good, this one isn’t in fact new. It sports 146,000 miles on the clock and an engine bay that looks like its seen a few mechanics over the last 9 years. The engine cover is dirty, although the rest of the bay looks reasonably clean and intact.
There are only two questionable aspects here that I can see—I mean outside of the overall insanity inherent in the X5 M. The first is what looks to be a loose wire connecting some sort of electronic device in the center console. What is that? I don’t know.
The other is the offering dealer’s seeming inability to produce satisfying vacuum patterns in the under-hatch carpet. Sigh, when will people ever learn what’s important?
The title is clean and as noted, this X5 is dealer offered so plan on witnessing some bad fashion choices should you decide to buy it. If you do want to buy it, you’d probably want to take along $16,995 in some form or another, as that’s the asking price. That’s a far cry form the car’s $90K base when new, and we’re now going to vote on whether that’s depreciation enough for the X5 as it’s presently presented.
What do you think, is this uber-hot hatch worth that $16,995 asking? Or, like everything else about this X5 M is that price just over the top?
You decide!
Portland, OR Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to EdHelmsBakery for the hookup!
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