Sadly, I was to be disappointed. First of all, the X1 looks like a Hyundai that’s been subjected to a thousand years of wind erosion. It’s dreary. And it’s much the same story on the inside, where you are greeted with lots of extremely scratchy plastic and almost no equipment at all. You want a built-in sat nav system? Well, tough.
A friend of mine, who runs the car I drove, says that the wiring loom is cheap as well. Quite how he’s determined this, I have no idea, but there you are. It’s cheap to look at, cheap to sit in and cheap to touch. But it’s not even slightly cheap to buy.
No matter, you might think. It’ll be a stormer on the road. Well, yes, it might be if you could buy it with a creamy six-cylinder petrol engine. But you can’t. Instead, sir can have it with any engine he likes, so long as it’s a diesel. Normally, BMW diesels are rather good, but the 2-litre version fitted to the X1 is not. It sounds like a dump truck when you start it up, and any request from the helm for more speed is met with a recalcitrant, “You want to do what?”
It’s very uncomfortable as well. The ride is much too rigid and the seats are very nearly as firm as those fitted to a Ford Galaxy. Which means they are hard enough to shape diamonds. That’s nice if you actually want to shape diamonds, but if you just want a comfy place to sit while you go home, the X1 won’t do.
