BMW iX xDrive50 M Sport UK first drive 2022

BMW’s controversial current design philosophy hits a higher gear with this car, and lots of people have had lots to say about the iX’s styling as a result. That may even be considered a measure of the car’s success back at BMW HQ.

We know the rationale well enough by now. This car’s intended to look confident, characterful and arresting rather than beautiful - and to these eyes, in the metal rather than pictures, it does. You can make anything look confident and characterful, after all - but consistently designing beautiful SUVs, crossovers and compact MPVs of awkward proportions is near-enough impossible. So BMW is aiming instead for cars so esoteric, bold and distinctive that they seem to fully ‘own’ whatever effect they have on you, and they leave a lasting impression.

Without any sense of irony, BMW describes this as a car that’s been designed deliberately from the inside out. That ‘grille’ has actually been redubbed an ‘intelligence panel’ in the press material. (This car has five cameras, five radar transceivers and 12 ultrasonic sensors around its exterior, and is alleged to be ready for the enabling of level three autonomous driving ‘over the air’ - at an additional user subscription cost, needless to say - when it becomes legally allowable.)

At any rate, the styling didn’t offend me in the raw nearly as much as other recent BMW designs have. And the longer I looked at the iX, the more I saw the story of the development of the modern BMW i brand being retold in its design. This is a bit like a supersized BMW i3, you know. It’s a simplistic comparison, but just look. It has the pinched C-pillar, the scalloped lower flanks and the clamshell bonnet; and while it’s not quite as high-waisted or cabin-forwards as the electric supermini, otherwise its proportions aren’t too different.

On the inside, the echoes are clearer still. You find a chunky two-spoke steering wheel, a low sloping dash and a lowish scuttle offering good all-round visibility. A flat cabin floor with open footwells and a clever raised centre console. Exposed carbonfibre around the door closures and a predominance of appealing natural and recycled materials further inside. A floating digital instrumentation and infotainment screen. Remind you of anything? 

It sounds a bit ridiculous to suggest that BMW would have used a slow-selling £35,000 electric city car as the design inspiration for its all-important, £100,000 techno-flagship SUV, but that’s very much how it looks to me. Maybe they’re just referencing what they’ve got, adding intrigue and familial character where they can. 

The risk with designing the luxury car of the future, I guess, is that you sire an orphan – something that just doesn’t fit. BMW has certainly sidestepped that problem. The iX is also a car with less of the affected grandeur that can prevent you from building affection for a big luxury car. It’s a lovely place in which to travel – not just spacious but really smartly and expensively appointed, and somehow still a little understated. But moreover, it doesn’t take itself too seriously; not inside or outside. It’s not aloof.

It is, however, seriously comfortable on the move. We said as much about the car on its standard steel suspension, but the xDrive50’s air springs take its suppleness and isolation on another step. Our test car rode on optional 22in wheels, but you’d never have known. The car’s motorway ride is exceptional. Its filtering of bigger, sharper lumps and bumps around town is very impressive as well. If it falters anywhere, it’s only on cambered and uneven country roads, where asymmetrical suspension inputs can make the body joggle from side to side a little, movement you feel principally because you’re sitting high up in an SUV.

There are some recognisable BMW qualities about the car’s performance and handling, and some new ones - but they combine to agreeable effect. Those electrically excited motors certainly seem to respond very quickly, even by electric car standards, and they keep working really hard and giving abundant extra thrust at motorway speeds. 

The iX xDrive50 would be a very fast car just about anywhere you’d be likely to drive it in the UK. It’s quicker than it needs to be, frankly, allowing for its size. If anything, it could afford to have had slightly more dulled throttle response, just for the benefit of drivability - not that wrapping your head around the car’s sheer keenness takes very long. You just learn not to dive in with big pedal applications, because the car’s part-throttle potency is more than enough to meet most roll-on demands. Get on terms with what those motors can do and you can control this car’s progress and momentum very finely indeed. Drive it bullishly, though, and it can feel surprisingly aggressive and antisocial.

It’s a little frustrating that BMW’s energy recuperation regime forces you to accept the car’s default ‘adaptive’ regen setting if you want the car to fully coast along an open road and conserve momentum. (The manually selectable alternative settings are high, medium and low - but there’s no off, and there are no paddles.) When the car decides for itself to blend up regenerative braking on a trailing throttle, it can be an unwelcome surprise - especially in close-quartered traffic.

We criticised BMW’s decision to go with an off-circular ‘polygonal’ steering wheel for this car with the standard steering set-up, and you’ll know if that’s the sort of move that’ll bother you. It didn’t bother me too much in combination with the iX xDrive50’s Integral Active four-wheel steering system, at any rate, because the progressive pace of the system is such that you don't need to ‘feed’ the wheel around roundabouts and T-junctions. 

The car rolls a little, but corners with pleasing agility and a consistently neutral, stable line and balance of grip. There is a filtered lightness about the steering, but it’s in keeping with a luxury car - and in spite of it, you don’t feel the need to give notice for the car’s front end to respond. The car doesn’t struggle to regain its steady-state cornering composure when unsettled by a bump or an application of power. And there’s just a hint of rear-driven rotation about its lower-speed cornering attitude under power – just enough to make a big car feel BMWish.