OFF THE RESERVATION

The first M-only SUV takes BMW's performance division way out of its comfort zone

- Georg Kacher

DO YA KNOW WHY I STOPPED you, pardner?’ The voice framed by a pair of dazzling Ray-Bans and a brown stetson sounds jovial, but the gun resting in its waxy holster and the dancing red and blue lights inside the unmarked black pick-up speak a different language.

‘I suppose I was going a trifle fast?” The smile bares a full set of stacked ivories. The officer nods. Yeah. And you overtook a cop in the process. We don't like that much.’

I am shaking in my shoes, imagining all sorts of nightmarish scenarios. But before events take a Tarantino turn for the worse, Officer Mitchell breaks the spell, removes his sunglasses in an elegant slow-motion gesture that would have done Humphrey Bogart proud, sticks his head inside the cabin, and nods at the BMWs flickering wall of screens.

‘Feel like giving me a quick tour of this digital circus you're dealing with?’

Happy to oblige, officer. And very relieved that a telling-off and some time spent at the Arizona roadside giving a guided tour of the XM is as bad as it is going to get. But it really does take quite a while to explain everything that BMW or, more specifically, the M division—have seen fit to throw at their new SUV.

There is a lot going on inside and out this vast five-seat SUV. Parked next to the anonymous chariot of the law, the dark blue XM sticks out like a visitor from another world, despite being built here in the US at BMW’s Spartanburg plant. Its squared-off bow could have been shaped by a moonlighting Peterbilt designer; the matte gold accents would have done the late Gianni Versace proud.

This car is, in no unclear terms, a love-hate monument to excess in pressed steel, cast aluminium, and glossy carbon-fibre. It is a statement of unbridled power and grunt. Adore it or despise it, the XM will not escape your radar.