Gadgetory

now enthusiasts and journalists alike lamented the day BMW stopped making really good sport wagons or at least importing them to the United States but after spending some time with the bmw x3 I'm convinced that maybe they pulled a fast one on us because this SUV has a lot more in common with the wagon than you might think I'm Antoine Goodwin let's take a look at this 2013 BMW x3 xdrive28i now our example is equipped with two different performance packages the first being the in performance package which amongst other things that these cool little in badges all over the vehicle but mostly it gives us 19-inch wheels and adaptive suspension and BMWs version of a torque vectoring system you also get really nice sport seats on the inside they're going to grip you in the corners the second part is the dynamic handling package which adds adaptive sport steering so when you go between your different driving modes the steering feel actually changes also now you'll actually control all of those sort of adaptive performance bit with this rocker switch right here give you the access to four different drive modes the first in default drive mode is Comfort that's the the one that you'll get when you get in the car and crank it up you can also rock it forward for sport which is going to give you a little bit more responsiveness on the pedal it's going to liven up the adaptive steering just a little bit and also firm up the adaptive suspension for better responsiveness all over you can rock forward one more time to liven things up just a little bit more and to loosen up the traction control just a hair there's also a traction control button here if you want to turn it completely off but I'm not sure why you'd ever actually want to do that in an all-wheel drive vehicle plenty of grip then you can also rock back to the Eco Pro Mode this in my opinion is probably one of the most interesting modes in this vehicle because it's not really a performance cards kind of a get from point A to point B vehicle so Eco Pro will let you do that in the most fuel-efficient way possible in addition to resetting the steering and suspension to they're most comfortable settings it also does that Eco mode trick that we've seen in a lot of vehicles where it sort of dulls your pedal inputs and kind of tempers your lead foot so it takes a little bit more pedal to get the vehicle going but the upside of that is that you use less fuel in the Eco Pro menu you also get a couple of options that will allow you to further increase the fuel economy the first thing is you can turn on what's called eco pro climate controls which sets the air conditioning and heating system to their most efficient settings so that you save more fuel you can also set a speed limit warning so that when you exceed a certain speed you get a warning we all know that the faster you drive the more fuel you use so you can sit like a gentle reminder for yourself to keep it under a certain limit there's also an interesting Eco Pro potential meter right here that will let you know how much fuel that you're going to be saving by for example if you reduce the Eco Pro speed limit to 60 you'll see that number jump up and if you turn climate controls off of the Eco you'll see it drop down own dashboard technology is pretty much what we've seen in about maybe four or five different BMW vehicles of this generation before if you want to get a really deep in-depth look and here with Brian Cooley has to say about that you can check out maybe the BMW x1 review it's probably the most similarly equipped vehicle to this one in short the standard packaging is going to include a full array of digital audio sources including HD radio and Bluetooth you've got a technology package equipped here which is going to add navigation and rear view and around view cameras technology and then we've also got a premium audio package that's going to add satellite radio and a really nice sounding stereo now when you lift the hood you'll notice first that there's actually a lot of empty space here in the engine bay I don't want to get my hand caught in any moving parts there but that's because the x3 makes space for BMWs of v6 engine but this 328 example is actually powered by a twin-turbo two-liter four-cylinder engine so it's a much shorter engine pushed back towards the rear of the vehicle now when I say twin turbo what I actually mean is twin-scroll there's one turbo charger there with two Scrolls it spins up a little bit faster than a one large turbo would so you get less lag at the end of the day what you're left with is 240 horsepower and 260 pound feet of torque which is a pretty good amount of power for a vehicle of this size that's going to go through all four wheels by the xDrive all-wheel drive system and an 8-speed automatic transmission fuel economy is about 24 miles per gallon combined which breaks down to 21 in the city and 28 on the highway maybe it's me but it seems like the x3 has gotten smaller the ride heights not much higher than your average large sedan I go down the road I look over them I almost I leveled with Prius drivers and the handling is just it's very natural it's not very truck ish but then what do you expect things built on a slightly elevated car platform now in the the sport mode the the engines actually very responsive the turbocharged engine is not very much lag and I've got pretty good grunt it's not really what I would consider a performance car though don't let all those embed just fool you now the interesting thing is the Eco Pro Mode as I said earlier it does kind of adult the acceleration a bit but I get the feeling that people who are interested in the x3 particularly the 28i are not going to be interested in all-out acceleration the car still has pretty good pickup the acceleration is acceptable it handles about like you would expect a large sedan I've been driving smoothly and efficiently and as a result I've squeezed at this point four point four more miles out of a tank then I would have without the Eco Pro climate controls and speed warnings and the benefits of that softer accelerator pedal a part of me is still kind of leaning towards the ex ones because I you know personally I like smaller vehicles small hatchbacks that's just my personal taste in my heart of course will always belong to the BMW 3-series touring which we can't get here in the United States anymore now one of the most common comments that I read on our BMW x1 review was why would you buy a small car when for a couple thousand more you can get this big BMW x3 now not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison because the 38 5 that'll get you out of the door on this x3 it's actually the starting point it doesn't include about eight hundred and ninety five dollars in destination fees three thousand dollars for the M Sport package thirteen hundred dollars for the adaptive steering and we haven't even started on the tech all in to get it as equipped as we have it see next out add a fifty four thousand ninety five dollars now that's a pretty penny but it's actually not bad for a vehicle that's as well-equipped as this one