[12] Bmw X6 2014 Becomes This Week Headline

Here’s the new BMW X6. No honestly, it’s the new X6. Yes, we thought they’d sent us pictures of the X4 by accident, but a close look showed the X6 badge. See for yourself. Among the X6s in the shots here, there’s a cherry-red car (pic 3) - and that one is an X4.

First drive: the BMW X4

We might have wasted few opportunities to say that the last X6 was a vulgar machine with a fat backside and a stuff-you outlook. But hey, that didn’t stop a showroom stampede. Around the world, BMW sold an astounding quarter of a million of the things in its lifetime. And they’ll sell some more yet, because it’s still on offer. This new one doesn’t actually go on sale until the end of this year.

The new X6 is, as you’d expect given BMW’s inexorable across-the-range technical evolution, better in pretty well every measurable way than the old. Among its claims are more power, less consumption, more strength, more space.

The new design feature is that second crease that curls over the rear wheel-arch. It’s also present on the X4, but not the X3 or X5. A quick spotter’s point to tell the X6 from the X4: only the X6 has BMW’s ‘air curtain’ breathers behind the front wheel arches.

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Of course under the skin the X6 is closely related to the X5, albeit tweaked for a sharper drive. All versions have permanent four-wheel-drive, and an eight-speed auto. The engine to have is the astounding 50d, a triple-turbo unit with 381bhp, an 0-62 time of 5.2 secs and a scarcely believable CO2 rating of just 174g/km. There’s also a less urgent 30d version of that engine, and a turbo V8 petrol in the 50i, for those of you who like to pretend you are (or actually are) in Americaland.

The X6 has are three optional suspension packages. Dynamic nets you an active anti-roll system and adaptive dampers plus a torque-vectoring rear diff. Comfort means air suspension at the rear, and adaptive dampers. Professional means all of the above. Oh and there are sharpened M options too. Choose carefully. And no doubt you’ll get big wheels too, because it’s an X6 and everyone does.

BMW is also pushing a range of lush cabin trim packages. They reach new heights of nomenclatural ambition: who could resist ticking a box on the configurator labelled Design Pure Extravagance?

As sure as night follows day, an X6M will follow. We can feel the tarmac rumbling beneath us already.

So, Internet, do you like? The new BMW X6: so good they designed it twice.

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