Triple XXXcitement!

Most car launches are pomp-and-pageantry-filled affairs held at five-star hotels. Some are accompanied by a short drive around the block. Many are followed by week-long test drives wherein members of the motoring press get to take home a test car for a few days of make-believe-I-own-it driving experience involving usually sedate driving on public roads.

BMW, however, chose a different tack to introduce its new car-based X3 compact SAV (Sports Activity Vehicle in BMW-speak) to selected members of the press. Mere minutes after unveiling the understatedly handsome kinder Bimmer at the paddock area of the Subic International Raceway, we were madly weaving left-right-left through orange cones, taking a hairpin turn at full tilt and hurtling through a high-speed bend at 140 kph, pedal to the metal. And without a BMW chaperone on board. (There was a BMW 3-series pace car driven by a German instructor but he never served to slow us down.)

A lot of other car manufacturers would baulk at this kind of exercise but not BMW. "Sheer Driving Pleasure" is their tagline and they’re more than happy to put their money where their mouth is. And the X3 absolutely delivered.

It accelerated strongly. It braked confidently. But most amazingly of all, it cornered like no tall 4x4 vehicle ever had a right to. But then I shouldn’t have been surprised. I first drove an X5 two years ago and that car (truck?) simply blew me away with its prodigious cornering abilities. (Its 3.0-liter 24-valve intercooled turbodiesel blew away most cars on a straight line too.)

The X3 is a mere four inches shorter than an X5 and is less than two inches shorter than its big brother (whose overall proportions it echoes) in every other dimension. Still, it’s noticeably smaller when you stand next to it — seeming almost like a Teutonic Honda CR-V.

The X3 comes with either 2.5- or 3.0-liter 24-valve inline-6 gasoline engines. The sweet-sounding 2.5, which is what we drove, develops 192 bhp for a 208 kph top speed. (The 3.0 pumps out a heady 231 bhp and can go up to 224 kph.) Both engines can be mated to either a 6-speed manual gearbox or a 5-speed automatic with Steptronic manual shifting. (We drove the latter.)

The biggest news, however, is found under the car: BMW’s state-of-the-art xDrive all-wheel-drive system. We were impressed by what it can do when we viewed it in a video presentation but it was nothing to what we felt when we took the car up to speed and started thrashing it around the course trying to make it put a foot wrong. No dice. xDrive simply delivered engine torque to the wheels that had the best traction in a fraction of a second (but is rear-wheel-drive in normal high-traction driving). Go in over your head and BMW’s Dynamic Stability Control or DSC will then intervene. End result? Lots of forward motion with almost zero understeer/oversteer and the resultant tire squeal, even at high cornering speeds.

Other BMW techniques for the X3’s exemplary handling are its near perfect (50:50) weight balance (the battery is mounted under the rear cargo area), its low center of gravity (the front drive driveshaft passes through the oil sump to let the engine sit lower), and sport-tuned suspensions with low-profile tires.

Inside, it’s first-class BMW all the way: high-quality and rich-smelling materials, generous space, lots of passive safety features (front, side and head airbags) and too many bells and whistles (one unit had a navigation system) to mention.

I once thought that the BMW X5 was the best all-around one-car-for-all vehicle ever invented. But being partial to smaller cars (and with the X3 having almost the same interior capacity as the X5, not to mention being a lot less expensive), I’d have to switch my allegiance to the new kid in town, the BMW X3.