There are about 44 hours since I landed in Austin, Texas, and only now I find some time to write something about this car. Clearly, time is short when you’re ten thousand kilometers away from home, because it’s always interesting to do things than to write. To have something to write about.
Therefore, I will be (relatively) short. People at BMW were inspired to choose Austin, Texas to launch it from at least two reasons. First, in the US petrol costs 1.70 dollars a gallon (one gallon is 3.8 liters) and, secondly, the car combines the extravagance of X6 the performance of an M in a way that few places on earth consider such arrogance socially acceptable. Austin, Texas, is certainly one of them.
In Texas (ie everywhere across the state of Texas) everyone drives a V8 on a daily basis because gasoline costs $ 1.70 a gallon (one gallon is 3.8 liters), and in Austin people have the reputation of being rich, or cosmopolitans, or avant-garde. In the midst of this state of rednecks, Austin is a kind of oasis of modernity and common sense airs, where are available not only all kinds of first world services for people working in high tech industries, but even Google Fiber, ie 1G per second internet.
Therefore, here seems totally acceptable to go with a 575-horsepower BMW. Here it seems natural to have the most powerful engine under the hood of BMW ever built for a car with four-wheel drive, a pair of TwinScroll turbochargers, 750 Nm of torque available between 2,000 and 5,500 rpm anywhere or, attention, 10 radiators and 5 water pumps dealing with the cooling of the engine.
Here on these highways which stretch as far as the eye can see, it’s still illegal to go more than 80 miles per hour, but it’s comforting to know that your car can reach 250 km / h before your girlfriend remain without breath that allowed her to scream when you started to accelerate from 0.
Here, near Austin, it is where they built Circuit of the Americas, a route absolutely gorgeous, extremely technical and dizzying level differences, on which I tried to follow Augusto Farfus, DTM Champion and BMW pilot with blood in the plant probably as cold and calm as Claudiu David.
Farfus drove a peace X6 M car on the track in front of me on the “y’all like me” principle. Of course, somehow his car accelerated faster than mine out of every turn and even though the man was screaming in station that I can trust the xDrive system immediately after the apex and that I can gradually but hard break the acceleration, even if our cars were the same power somehow his car were getting far from me.
On this circuit, where you have enough space to play with 575 horses, learn more things. Some about the car other about you.
About the car, for example, find that it has a superb chassis built to give you confidence in any turn, even if you go all the time with two wheels on the vibrators. That, in addition, the suspension department pulled enough experience so that the center of gravity of this SUV look incredibly down.
That the gigantic brake discs visible through special 21-inch wheels can stop the monster so quickly on emergency braking, that the seatbelt leave traces on your body. That information transmitted at the press conference, that the X6 M has a “split biased torque rear”, meaning in the real life that this SUV does not react understeer on turn, but that if you have enough cold blood, you can give your car a splendid oversteering path.
Anyway, you’ll find out that the direction, even in the sportiest setting is the only one that betrays the real weight and real sizes of the car. The direction is actually the only one that brings you down to earth and sends you alarm signals over the limit that you’re are very nearly to overcome it.
At the same time, all the direction is able to get you out of trouble if you react fast enough and coordinate instantly with the acceleration too. I speak of what Farfus says, not from experience, because I would never be able to get back on the track this beast, if it gets out of control.
This, is thing I learned about myself, on the test of X6 M on the Circuit of the Americas. That’s one thing to drive a M3 to the limit for example, and that is something totally different to drive an X6 M to the limit. I’ll sleep a little and get back to write more stuff.
