Jan. 3, 2006

Dan Neil of the Los Angeles Times on the X5: “… an amazing piece of machinery: complex, beautiful, capable, expensive. Driving one to the store feels like using a Trident missile to light your cigar.”
BMW’s new X5 represents a wonderful engineering feat, says Dan Neil of the Los Angeles Times, but much of the engineering goes to overcome the SAV’s ponderous weight. There’s a “feeling of sullen mass being bullied around by unsympathetic power and technology. Put another way: The X5 drives like a Formula 1 forklift,” Neil says in his review.

Neil, the first and so-far only winner of the Pulitzer Prize given to an auto columnist, also says that “cornering performance is terrific,” “the 4.8-liter, Valvetronic V8 engine [is] unspeakably refined,” and “this might be the most beautiful vehicle interior I've ever seen.”


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