BMW’s X4 is 3-seriesbased, but longer and lower than
its X3 sibling. Porsche and Audi are playing the same game. Who’s winning?
Despite the X4’s coupe-style roof, sitting in the back isn’t
the compromise it might first appear. You don’t feel like a basketball player
trying to get in a country pub when you duck under the roofline, and, once
you’re in, there’s plenty of headroom for those of six-feet and a little over.
That’s partly down to the artfully scalloped headlining, and partly because you
sit 8mm lower than the front-seat passengers. Despite this, you don’t feel
hemmed in or claustrophobic in the X4.
Despite the X4’s
coupe-style roof, sitting in the back isn’t the compromise it might first
appear.
However, the coupe roofline does limit loadspace (down from
the X3’s 550/1600 litres to 500/1400) and visibility (like all these cars,
you’ll be grateful of a rear-view camera) and the boot lip is a good two inches
higher than both rivals. It’s all very well having an electrically opening
tailgate as standard, but where’s the Stannah stair lift to retrieve your
shopping?
The X4 rides pretty well on our car’s optional adaptive
dampers, and it’s steering is mid-weighted, with a variable-ratio rack that
imbues a real energy to B-road carving. Thanks to its turbocharged 3.0-litre
diesel, our car has a proper turn of speed, and the all-wheel-drive chassis is
so deft at moving torque about that you just keep your foot planted as you
swoop through a corner. There’s body roll, yes, but a composure and flow too.
It’s comfortable, it’s quick, it handles quite neatly, there are certainly no
major disappointments when you first get behind the wheel.
But the X4 does have formidable opponents: not long before
it launched, Porsche let loose its Macan, it’s second-ever SUV. The Macan is
vaguely based around the Audi Q5’s underwear, but it’s 52mm longer, 25mm wider
and 31mm lower and porsche just has a very special way of working its magic, no
matter the bean-counters’ constraints.
Porsche has capacity to build 50,000 Macans a year in
Leipzig, meaning its new SUV could account for around 30% of all Porsche sales
and take great chunks out of the opposition. It will.
At $118097 it’s a couple of grand cheaper than our X4 in its
bells-and-whistles M Sport spec, it’s a dead heat on horsepower at 254bhp for
the 3.0-litre V6 TDI - two V6 petrols and a Turbo are also available - and
there’s a small victory of i5lb ft torque for 428lb ft all told. The BMW,
though, just edges it on fuel economy with 47.8mpg to the Macan’s 46.3mpg.
The Macan looks more comfortable in its skin than the X4 and
certainly has gravitas when it strolls into a busy car park. You’d be
hard-pressed to call it pretty, though, and even our 20-inch alloys look like a
Slimfast champ wearing an XXL wardrobe; a Macan on standard 18s must resemble a
supermarket trolley.
The Macan looks
more comfortable in its skin than the X4 and certainly has gravitas when it
strolls into a busy car park.
Inside, four six-footers have room to sit in comfort,
there’s an easy-to-load 500-litre boot (1500 litres with seats folded) and the
Porsche feels far more luxurious than the BMW. That’s partly down to our car’s $1743
leather interior, the 18-way sports seats at $2011 and
$3314’s worth of multimedia gubbins to help push the
price to $94463. But it’s also partly because the underlying
architecture looks cleaner and classier. Only bits of Passat-like plastic and
the sometimes bewildering flight-deck of buttons detract.
Inside, four
six-footers have room to sit in comfort, there’s an easy-to-load 500-litre boot
(1500 litres with seats folded) and the Porsche feels far more luxurious than
the BMW.
