4. BMW M6
Like Hearst Castle itself, the M6 strikes
us as a noble project that got entirely out of hand. It’s just so enormous. And
heavy. Yes, we know it’s a 5-series sedan underneath, and it is handsome. But
how can the M6 weigh 368 pounds more than the Benz, which has an entire
forced-air furnace system in its seats and a team of robots aboard to fold its
metal top like the Hôtel du Louvre’s house maid s working over a bed?
Like
Hearst Castle itself, the M6 strikes us as a noble project that got entirely
out of hand.
Well, the M6 has semi-usable back seats,
for one. And it spares no inches to make you comfortable up front. The beam is
wide, leaving room for generously tailored front buckets and a center console
as broad as a deli counter. The nay info screen stands prominent, like a
roadside billboard, and is easy to operate. As you repose in com fort, you
survey your vast estate of leather ($3,500 extra for the full dash-and-doors package),
carbon-fiber trim and wind wrought sheet metal, and you feel mighty.
Especially when you poke the 4.4 liter twin
compressor V-8. A launch-control mode makes the M6 the second quickest to 60
mph and through the quarter-mile after the Benz, and the big BMW is always
ready to surge forward on a fat if somewhat lumpy rush of torque from its
industrious engine. If your transportation needs involve crossing time zones,
you could do a lot worse.
The
beam is wide, leaving room for generously tailored front buckets and a center
console as broad as a deli counter.
However, you can also do better. Even with
all its many driver-adjustable settings for steering effort, throttle response,
and suspension stiffness, it’s impossible to make the M6 fully at home on
winding roads. The steering is duller than the others and the body wallows and
leans more as the mass pushes the suspension around. An overriding sense of
isolation meant the clearest feedback we got came from our drivers, complaining
that they felt less confident driving hard into corners, unsure if the grip would
hold.
Certain details seem haphazard. Where the
top’s great spinnaker of canvas meets the body behind the cockpit, it sits on a
thick, black-plastic coaster that clutters the bodyline when the top is down.
All of the cars except the Jag have wind blockers. In the M6, the squat,
rectangular rear window can be motored up separately to serve as such, giving
the open M6 an especially quiet cabin at freeway speeds. But it looks buck-
toothed and totally uncool. Nothing on a car this expensive should be uncool.
There's an artificiality to the M6, from
its soft then hard brake pedal to the way the engine sounds more like
interstellar gas eruptions than internal combustion. We know BMW plays engine
sounds through the audio system’s speakers, and the M6 is the only car here in
which the engine note gets quieter and more distant with the top down. Hmph!
There's
an artificiality to the M6, from its soft-then-hard brake pedal to the way the
engine sounds more like interstellar gas eruptions than internal combustion.
The M6 is not horrible, but it’s not really
an M, either. It’s too girthy, too soft, and too ersatz. If only it were as
good at generating emotion as it is at generating test numbers. BMW needs a
separate badge for these ultrafast luxury barges, the Mand M6, to separate them
from the M3. Until then, we’ll just rate it a “U” for uninspiring.
3. JGUR XKR-S
In contrast to the anodyne BMW, the Jag is
pure animal rage. Start the engine, and it sounds like it’ll leap through the
hood and eviscerate you. You can’t turn your back on this car or it will take
you out - you and a telephone pole. W.R. Hearst had a thing for exotic beasts;
he would have had a place in his hilltop zoo for this one.
JGUR
XKR-S
We’ve written about the XKR-S before. It’s
got a bit too much horsepower for the polite society that Jaguars normally
inhabit. It’s obscenely, wonderfully loud, and the chassis does not suffer
fools. It eats them. If you dare to switch off the stability control, you’d
better have quick reflexes, because this thing likes to run sideways.
We recently had one at a track, and it
proved too much of a handful. With the red mist dialed down, we said, it would
make a fine road car, and sure enough, it does. The steering still feels
remote, but the grip and path control are superb, and the suspension feels more
natural and fluid with its single setting than the BMW’s does on anyone of its
three.
We’ve
written about the XKR-S before. It’s got a bit too much horsepower for the
polite society that Jaguars normally inhabit.
Top down and windows up, the Jag goes quiet
in cruise mode, the ride stiffness a respectable compromise even if it can’t be
electronically adjusted. Jaguar lovingly renders the cabin in leather, this one
in a black-and-caramel combo evocative of a Christmas box from Callard &
Bowser. The “R-S” logo is elegantly embossed in metal like trim on a dashboard
trimmed with lovely French stitching.
Thickly cushioned down the center, the
seats feel a little high and unsupportive with a ridge that cuts some drivers
across the lower back in an odd way. At least you can pinch in the torso
bolsters with the door-mounted controls.
Lacking electronic launch control, the
XKR-S can't lay down its power as effectively as the big Germans, so it suffers
some in the acceleration times. But it never seems slow, as the gas pedal feels
connected to the 5.0- liter V-8 via piano wire that provides instant response.
And it's the only car in the test that holds its driver-selectable competition
mode-which adjusts the throttle, transmission, and stability-control
settings-after you switch the car off. The others default back to their Sunday
church modes.
Lacking
electronic launch control, the XKR-S can't lay down its power as effectively as
the big Germans, so it suffers some in the acceleration times
So what's it going down here in third? In
some ways the Jag feels as eight-years-ago as a Motorola flip phone. The
cockpit touch screen is clunky and slow to boot, and the nav display is all
thick lines and bare color fields lacking in detail. It's embarrassingly old
school in the iPad era. So is the simple display screen between the gauges that
offers little additional car info, and the general lack of amenities, such as
the all windows down button found in all the others. Even staid, stalwart
Mercedes has finally cured its numb steering.
Though its overtly thrilling personality is
a winner, the Jag feels outdated, a fact we'd make less stink about if its
hefty price wasn't so very au courant.
