Motor Trader The award-winning and longest running UK magazine for car retailing professionals. Your first stop for News, Jobs and Reports for the motor industry.
The pressure on floor space for BMW dealers is being ramped up again with this month’s launch of another new model range, the X4.
The X4, priced from £36,590 to £48,990 is a sports activity coupe, pitched against Range Rover’s Evoque and the Porsche Macan.
Mechanically the newcomer is effectively the familiar X3 compact SUV, but repackaged in a coupe bodyshell to ally it to the 4 Series line. It measures up just 14mm longer than the X3, at 4,671mm, but is 36mm lower, at 1,624mm.
The X4 goes on sale with a three-way engine choice, all diesel and all matched to the xDrive all-wheel-drive system as standard – unlike a growing number of mid-sized crossover/SUV models there is no two-wheel-drive option.
Entry level is the X4 xDrive20d with a 190bhp 2.0 turbo unit. This is an all-new aluminium engine and supplied as standard with a six-speed manual transmission. BMW’s eight-speed automatic is an option, and with this the engine offers official combined cycle fuel consumption of 54.3mpg and CO2 emissions of 138g/km.
Both other engines are 3-litre V6 units, both using the eight-speed auto box as standard. That in the X4 xDrive30d offers 258bhp, good enough for 0-62mph times of 5.8 seconds, while returning combined mpg figures of 47.9 and CO2 emissions of 156g/km.
Range-topper is the 313bhp variant fitted in the xDrive 35d, with 313bhp, 0-62mph times of 5.2 seconds, fuel consumption figures of 47.1mpg and 157g/km of CO2.
Andrew Charman
