Gadgetory

in its second generation the x3 is almost as big as the original x5 did BMW make it better or just bigger let's drive the 2011 bmw x3 xdrive35i and check the tech this is only the first major redo of the x3 a compact sports activity vehicle in BMW speak and it speaks with a different accent than the first generation x3 because it's now made in South Carolina at a BMW plant instead of in Austria by a contract partner of BMW for what it's worth now I'll say this I Drive a lot of cars every year and this one got more comments than 90% of them a lot of folks either knew there was a new x3 on the market or they just took one look at it and said that must be a new x3 it's a very different looking vehicle this one's got all kinds of contour lines stuff going on here is pure fashion the front end the headlights are much more stylized in keeping with the rest of BMWs line so they've clearly moved the whole vehicle upmarket in terms of what it says as it drives by let's get on to what's really new in this car it's quite a few things actually first of all BMW Assist that has always been there telematics platform but there's a lot more to it now you can drop down here to BMW search hit the ok and now even with my phone not connected I'll prove it battery out I'm gonna get online it'll take all damn day but I'm gonna get online the car has a built-in wireless radio a cellular data radio once a few bits of data make it into the car here's what you've got you've got some business quotes on the top that's Bloomberg powered you've got business search this will let you do a free-form search powered by Google for a business you might want to navigate to or call but as you can see with all this stuff slow does matter it's not just a matter of degree it's a matter of impatient beyond my level distraction comfort well it takes that long I'm not going to use it and here my results notice this stuff's all Pio I our point of interest oriented it's not a wide open Google search if I put Lady Gaga in there it's going to go find local concert dates not pull up pictures of her this is one of the first beamers to offer BMW apps that means support for Facebook Twitter and web radio right in the iDrive interface under the hood of this technology is also iPod out support which should mean your iPod or iPhone can stream video to the dash and in the future even echo its interface there as well should BMW let it new x3 is with nav also supports some blackberries for email integration the emails displayed on the screen and/or read to you with text-to-speech I would have tried it but nobody I know carries a blackberry anymore now for your audio choices a lot of things are familiar here you've got am/fm and HD radio BMW has been pretty warm that technology even if consumers aren't under our CD multimedia category we of course have CD or DVD playback when you're parked through our single slot right here in the console music collection takes us to our hard drive external devices I've got my iPod plugged in right now to the USB port here in the console and new ish for BMWs Bluetooth audio not just bluetooth for hands-free calling these guys we're kind of late to the game on this compared to some of their competitors particularly the Asian ones and we have a rear-view camera on this car as you can see I've got trajectory lines I've also got zone markings see those yellow boxes right there they're telling you where there's something in the way I've also got sonar on the right-hand panel so you see it's picking up things like garbage cans and that and that pole over there and that totally tech more mechanical tech is this panoramic roof it's all a cart not part of a package you don't have to get this but I love these when they're done well and this one is it's pretty wide and you've got a fixed panel in the second row moving panel here although like all of these when you move the front panel back it kind of parks it a convoluted mess of dividers and bars over the second panel someone's gonna crack that code it's gonna be a breakthrough all right because we had the xdrive35i we get the hotter motor same size displacement as the 28 but this guy's got the twin stage turbo 1 turbo but it's a twin scroll internally so you can operate efficiently at different rpm ranges bottom line you've got 300 horsepower 300 foot pounds of torque very even easy to remember gets this guy up to 16 about five and a half seconds while delivering 1926 mpg now all X 3s are all-wheel drive which is the X Drive part of the name and one choice on the transmission 8-speed automatic highly electronic even from the controller which is this paddle that just moves switches around no mechanical linkage there now driving the x3 is a more refined proposition that it used to be again everything's been smoothed out made a little more luxurious a little more sophisticated feeling I did find tossing this thing around on little nice country roads like this it felt a little Jhansi and or a little tippy not you know in a really incompetent way but I don't know more than I expected other than that you've got the 8-speed automatic here as I mentioned the paddles here it's up shifting the right downshift on the left there on the wheel so they're basically a gimmick you got your rocker switch here for sport normal and Sport Plus no comfort mode this car doesn't go there to a really soft cushy situation with the amount of suspension travel it has I'm not sure it needs that as I said this thing's got a lot of give already the power generally comes on well as it always does in these n55 BMW motors although I seem to find this one's a little more a little more flat-footed than some of the other cars like the 3-series with this it's always hunting it's Top Gear I'm detecting more either downshift delay or turbo spooling lag or both so it was not a fun car to cut and thrust in city traffic with unless you had it down here in the sport gate and we're running your own gears then you're in good shape it's really quite manual then but in any of the sport modes of automatic I don't know it's a car that feels a little bit disconnected sometimes not horribly just more than you might expect from a car that says it's this sporty but you may have noticed all that efficiency dynamics stuff on the car on an x3 that means it has electric power steering and brake regeneration both techniques reduce parasitic drag on the engine by eliminating one rotating accessory steering pump and lessening the load on the other the alternator that in turn increases mpg okay let's price this guy may take a while to BMW after all starting off at 42,000 base for a 35 I the turbo motor to go seen that style you got to add thirty two hundred bucks for the tech package that'll get your hard drive GPS hard drive space for audio the rear camera the panoramic roofs not included by the way that's thirteen fifty more the tech package also rolls in the blackberry stuff and also the Google search but not the apps those are 250 extra I'm measly 250 and an insulting all a cart move by BMW ad 1,300 bucks for the head-up display it's pricey but it's the best of the business and finally a lot of folks like the M Sport Package which includes that performance handling stuff and some fancy wheels and some different trim at 3,000 more