2021 X3 owner impressions

civis

Thought I'd share my impressions on my recently purchased 2021 X3 3.0 xdrive.
1. Purchase experience: horrid. First X3 delivered to my home apparently had transmission leaking from to the factory, and paint defects.
Towed back to the dealer using BMW's RA service, took nearly 4 hours waiting for a tow truck, their scheduling system is half broken.
3 weeks later the dealer provided a replacement car, no leaks so far, no courtesy vehicle.

2. Driving: not much to write home about, it drives OK. The suspension is busy, lot of vertical movements even on smallish bumps, not harsh though, doesn't hold the road too well. Plenty of body roll in turns. Steering is completely disconnected from the car, no feedback. Brakes are pretty good - the only thing which reminds me that's a BMW.

3. Interior: OK, the sensatec seats look cheap, out of place on $40K+ car.

4. Comfort: OK, seats are too narrow, remind me a toy car seats, some road noise.

5. Instrument panel/electronics: ok to poor, iDrive is not intuitive, too many clicks and turns to achieve simple things. Standard audio system - fine.
Speedometer - horrid, no digital speedometer can be found, the simulated analog one has 10 mile increments with no divisions in between! WTF?!

Michaell

civis said:

Thought I'd share my impressions on my recently purchased 2021 X3 3.0 xdrive.
1. Purchase experience: horrid. First X3 delivered to my home apparently had transmission leaking from to the factory, and paint defects.
Towed back to the dealer using BMW's RA service, took nearly 4 hours waiting for a tow truck, their scheduling system is half broken.
3 weeks later the dealer provided a replacement car, no leaks so far, no courtesy vehicle.

2. Driving: not much to write home about, it drives OK. The suspension is busy, lot of vertical movements even on smallish bumps, not harsh though, doesn't hold the road too well. Plenty of body roll in turns. Steering is completely disconnected from the car, no feedback. Brakes are pretty good - the only thing which reminds me that's a BMW.

3. Interior: OK, the sensatec seats look cheap, out of place on $40K+ car.

4. Comfort: OK, seats are too narrow, remind me a toy car seats, some road noise.

5. Instrument panel/electronics: ok to poor, iDrive is not intuitive, too many clicks and turns to achieve simple things. Standard audio system - fine.
Speedometer - horrid, no digital speedometer can be found, the simulated analog one has 10 mile increments with no divisions in between! WTF?!

Thanks for the feedback, but I've got to ask - did you take a test drive before you bought? I would think a decent test drive would have revealed these issues to you and you could have selected a different vehicle.

civis

I did test drive of course. A 5 mile average test drive will never reveal everything about a vehicle - besides I test drove an X3 with leather, and upgraded iDrive, which had digital speedometer, had no clue that I have to shell off another $1100 just to get a readable speed.

Michaell

civis said:

I did test drive of course. A 5 mile average test drive will never reveal everything about a vehicle - besides I test drove an X3 with leather, and upgraded iDrive, which had digital speedometer, had no clue that I have to shell off another $1100 just to get a readable speed.

Still, numbers 2 and 4 on your list weren’t affected by the car you ultimately selected.

What do you plan to do?