Well, as you may or may not know, our third child was born in February. We thought we'd try and see if our growing family could survive with the STI, but through a myriad of reasons, including but not limited to,
- increasing mileage
- rust
- disappointing race season
- growing contempt from neighbours
- wanting to try something new
I felt it was time to move on. The new owner is excited and I'm excited it sold so quickly and painlessly. It'll be painful to watch what happens to it but... I wash my hands clean of it. Right?
Anyway, you're not here to read my laments of lost love and remorse, so in the words of the great former Governor of California, I...
...finally possess my own f*****g tank!
I present to you, this 2006 X5 4.8is:
Das Rindfleischkuchen by
Jonny W, on Flickr
I have a surprisingly low amount of pictures for having owned the thing for 2 weeks now, but my gosh, life is busy. In fact, I've been piecing this post for a week now. Some cool things:
- Panoramic sunroof
- Heated everything
- Automatic everything
- Black leather everything
- V8
- It's blue
- More power than my STI could ever dream of
- It's a BMW
But the really special thing about this particular X5 is the 4.8is badge. This is the 4.6L bored and stroked to 4.8 and tuned by Alpina and they use their own spec'd crank, pistons and cam.
So, it looks like an unassuming SUV, but I love the sleeper quality of it. The acceleration is impressive but moreso is the noise. It's not as quick as the STI but it still pulls strong, especially below 4000RPM. I can still make it go slideways in the ice and snow
Oddly enough, I don't really miss having a clutch (yet) and the 6 speed gearbox shifts smoothly and rationally. So far, it shifts intuitively when I would want it to and I haven't really felt any desire to use the tiptronic feature. I must be growing old.
Wait, old? People need to hear the V8. So an exhaust is high on the priority. As is though, it sounds like a muscle car.
And it looks muscular. I've always liked the styling of these older BMW's. Particularly the kidney grills, and the square boxy lines with slightly rounded corners.
OK, I'm out of time, but I'll post this for now. More deets, pics and family reaction to come!
