New BMW X5 India review, test drive

The new X5 meets us at the airport and it’s right into Delhi’s rush-hour traffic for us. The very accurate satellite navigation system estimates two-and-a-half hours for the 40km to our destination and traffic is so thick and unruly, it eventually does take us that long. No sweat though – because of the crawl, I’m forced to pay attention to the interiors of this car and, because I’ve had the chance to drive the new 5-series and the 6-series recently, the new X5’s dashboard seems over-familiar. It is, however, a big step up from the dash of the old X5. In here, BMW has gone the Merc way, so there’s my new favourite interior feature – the un-lacquered wood strips across the fascia, on the doorpads and around the gearlever (the ML and the GL were the first to bring this new trim in). The X5’s dash also gets a standalone 10.25-inch iDrive screen and its high-resolution means that the reverse camera view is very clear.

But, like I said, the dashboard is very typical of a BMW and this is a good and bad thing. Good because I instinctively know how to turn off the annoying stop-start system and how to activate the auto-hold function, and bad because it seems to me like all BMWs, regardless of the price, seem to feel so similar on the inside.

Anyway, this is a pretty big car – the new X5 gains 29mm in length and 5mm in width over the old car. Still, the new, electrically assisted, very accurate steering system makes slicing through traffic rather easy. The front seats are very comfortable, the air-conditioning seems to be battling the intense 38-degree ambient temperature and the 3.0-litre, in-line six diesel is responsive enough to let me dart into gaps that present themselves.