BMW X1 sDrive 2,000cc

I used to blog about cars and bikes, before I switched over to watches and that has been going strong since. Have been out of the scene on writing about such rides; and I noticed that there were quite many e-mails still coming in despite my lack of entries on the cars and bikes' blogs. And if I were to summarised it simply, most of the e-mails over the last 5 years were in relation to compact cars as these were all the rage due to parking and fuel consumption woes in stop-look-go traffics of Kuala Lumpur.

Readers would know that I am an SUV lover, while my missus prefers compact cars. So when she wanted to get another run-about to complement her sedan (but she informed that she wanted something sportier), I thought of a compact luxury crossover in the form of the BMW X1 sDrive.

So why the X1? Well, simply because it had the relative convenience of an SUV as per the following :

• Height : For passing through the flash floods of KL, and relative higher stance to prevent those Mat Rempits from handbag-snatching incidences as seen in many countless videos on Youtube.
• Boot : While the X1's boot was relatively small in comparison to the Harrier's, it had the same wagon-like opening so that loading groceries could be easily-done. Moreover, the seats were foldable so one could fit in bigger stuff as and when required.

And here were the part that it differed from the standard SUV :

• Cornering : Asked any regular SUV driver about the ride's handling and you would regularly hear of descriptions like cumble-some, boat-like dips, massive body rolls, and the likes. Now, the X1 was short and Beemer parked their outstanding M-sports handling magic onto the ride, so it dove more like a sporty saloon than a SUV.

And I chose an sDrive (4x2) rather than the xDrive (4x4) as the ride would be lighter sans the 4WD system weight, and therefore drove better on regular roads. My missus would not be venturing into Camel Trophy adventure drives, so the X1 sDrive would be the preferred option.

This was how the ride looked like when it came out from Auto Bavaria, dressed in Alpina White colour :

Quite a looker, with its masculine stance and body lines; and more importantly, it suited my missus' driving skills since she was the more aggressive driver compared to my driving style these days. It would looked in standard form during the BSRI warranty period so that there was no issues with warranty claims if necessary; afterwhich it would begin its starting transformations from year 2017 ono, when I get my hands on the ride.