In addition to celebrating 30 years in USA, our recent road trip was a way for me to bond with my X6 which I hadn’t really done since collecting it from Spartanburg more than a year ago.
On paper my 2025 X6 is amazing, with more engine than the 2018 X3M40i I replaced, and pretty well every available gadget / extra – and yet I found something to be missing when driving it. I assume it is the “M-ness”, whatever that is. The X6 engine has the same power but isn’t tuned to respond as keenly as the X3M; the steering is a bit gentler, overall it wasn’t as satisfying as I wanted.
So I found a 2025 X4M that was basically a cash swap, at Bert Smith BMW in St Petersburg and on Friday we drove over to test drive it. I expected it to be the same sort of experience as my old X3M but with more modern tech. And yes it had better steering but it was obviously a cheap version of tech compared to my X6; it also wasn’t the car for me.
Jokingly, I wondered if there was any X6M to test … and there was! I later got Gemini AI to compare my X6 and this X6M and the difference is incredible!
We test drove it … it had all the incredible technology that my X6 has, but with it a crazy responsive engine, excellent steering, a growly exhaust, basically all of what I had lost when I sold my X3M!
And so, I bought it …
(that last pic is of one of the speakers in the door, which have illumination!)
It’s clear that I am not going to be getting 600 miles and 30+mpg on this car, but I am going to get a lot of smiles when I drive it 🙂
M&I / GBMINI 