Quote:
Originally Posted by Overtaxed
I'm looking for the video of the M3 vs the Jaguar XF supercharged comparing the offroad performance and max wading depth. I can't seem to find it. 
It's only SUVs where we've suddenly (last 10 years or so) felt to need to take a Corvette and a F150 and meld them together in some unholy mix. I do have to kind of wonder why; as I said earlier, when I was driving the RRS supercharged I just had to keep shaking my head, why would anyone build such a thing. I feel the same way about a upcoming X5M. If you have the money to buy that truck, why not get an X5 and an M3. Going to cost about the same, and then you'll actually have "a" vehicle (well, 2 vehicles) that are actually good at what they are supposed to be good at.
I'm just as guilty as anyone, my X5 has 20" rims on it which pretty much precludes you from taking it on anything rougher than well groomed dirt road (you'll ding the rims if you take it in nasty stuff) and you can't possibly hope to drive the thing in the winter (because of the tires that come on it). I love the car, but it's so silly to configure them like this; you're spending more money to make it less capable offroad and in the "slop" where it actually will perform better than a car. So, you wind up with a truck that's almost as good as a car and a truck that's straight up worthless as a truck (without spending more money on it).
This isn't a slight at BMW or the X5.. Or any of the buyers; shoot, I have one too.  I just don't get why they build these things like this; you know the German (in particular) engineers are laughing when they start pulling these things together.
"Stupid American's will buy anything, let's put a tire size on it that doesn't even have a run flat winter option and see if we can get them to buy that!".
"4 wheel drive offroad mode with 500 horsepower"
"Launch control in a truck"
I can see them crying their eyes out laughing at us when they build these things.
There's only so much I can take, the RRS SC felt like it was a car somebody built on a "bet", I couldn't bring myself to buy it. I just felt like the dealer would be laughing at me because I was the one stupid enough to bite. At least the X5 had the good sense not to put a low range transfer box in there, that would have been too much for me to take. Huge rims, low profile tires, adaptive suspension and low range? Sure, why not, next up is a Ferrari with a factory trailer hitch and stock studded snow tires. |
Spot on...
Since we had a cold front move through last night and our high temp was 83 today, I made an excuse to run to the store (closest being 12 miles away), opened all the windows and sunroof, selected "sport" and proceeded to break most traffic laws out here in the country. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though I had a choice in vehicles - the other being an SL550.