REALITY CHECK

An M340i Touring seems all the car you'll ever need. Andrew Frankel sees if that's true

- Andrew Frankel

Generally speaking, when a journalist attends a car launch, the idea is to write about the car you've been invited to drive. Quelle surprise. But the BMW X1 launch didn't work out quite like that. I turned up to the event to drive its new, rather inoffensive compact SUV but left with thoughts only of the other car I drove while there. For as I was leaving, I walked out to the car park, there to find an M340i Touring sat amid the ranks of Xls gathered for the press to drive. This M340i, as it happens. So I turned on my heels, went back inside and asked if I might be allowed to take it around the block.

Which is all it took. Sometimes - and I'm afraid it is an increasingly rare occasion - you get in a new car that makes you wonder whether its designers had a picture of you on the wall during its development, so closely does it align with what you need and hope such a car might deliver. Somewhat more concisely, it just felt right.

So when its wider duties were completed, it became mine for a while.

In so many ways, it's such an old-fashioned car. For a start, it's an estate, currently the most endangered body-style of all. Soon not even Volvo will sell them here. And it derives its power not from some hypercharged compact four-pot 2.0-litre motor, but from an elegant straight six, some 3.0 litres in capacity and so lightly turbocharged that the boost arrives like a gentle cooling breeze on a summer's day. Its hybrid drive is as mild as the mildest Waitrose cheddar, smoothing out the stop/ start process and adding a small wafting hand of torque when overtaking, but I'll bet plenty that there will be owners who go their entire lifetime with their M340i unaware of anything other than petrol powering their car.