This sporty BMW has been heavily revamped but still handles equally well on big roads and desert sands.
The X7 is the most American BMW of all. The brand’s largest and most luxurious SUV, it’s built in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and a mere 2 per cent of the output is shipped “home” to Germany.
The huge grille polarised many when BMW unveiled its SUV flagship in 2018 but the model has been a strong seller not just in the US but in affluent, SUV-loving markets such as ours. Australians buy about 800 of them a year despite the elevated price. We drove the range-topping M60i M Sport version through the California desert, with its blend of high speeds on good roads, very low speeds on wash-outs and sandy trails, and occasional steep, tight mountain passes.
The other X7 on offer here is the xDrive40d, which replaces the 30d. This has a turbodiesel “six”, also with mild hybrid tech. It is $166,900 plus on-road costs. Speed within the national park is heavily controlled – quite rightly – but all the better to take in the view. Under such circumstances, sitting in the back is as much fun as the front, as the seats are mounted high, affording a stadium view, further enhanced by the glass roof.The road, ringed by distant mountains, wends through fields of thousands of Joshua trees, bursting out of the sandy soil with their spiky “hands” and feather-like bark covering.
From there, it was more jigs and jags to find Slot Canyon, situated among such colourfully named places as Borrego Mountain Wash and Devil’s Slide. At one stage huge dust clouds rose in the distance, despite there being no sign of wind. Only when we reached these clouds did the-like scene reveal itself. There were hundreds of buggies and motorcycles racing through the desert in every direction.
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