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      10-01-2012, 03:19 PM   #1
jnm
Second Lieutenant
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Drives: fast, but could be faster
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: CA

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First US X1 European Delivery

We just picked our (well... technically it more 'hers' than 'ours' ) '13 X1 (Xdrive28, M sports package, Le Mans Blue) from the BMW Welt this morning. We were told by the person that she thought it was the first US-bound European Delivery for an X1.

It's a really cool way to get your new car if you can swing it, we spent 3/4 of the day at the welt since we also did the factory tour (which is fascinating with all the robots welding and painting) and if the Museum had been open (it's closed on mondays) probably would have spent the whole day there. Even the food at the restaurant was very good.

First impressions of the X1 are very good indeed, looks great in Le Mans Blue, and that 2 liter 4 cylinder (built right next to the welt at the factory we visited) has that easy stack of torque right down low that make the car faster than it feels. Even though because of break-in I'm hardly pressing the pedal at all (the car came with 1 Km on the clock!), within 10 minutes of leaving the welt we entered the autobahn, I barely squeezed the gas and looked at the speedo showing 80 and was like ... it does feel a bit fast for 80 Km/h ... that's when it dawned on my that I was driving a US car after all and the big 80 was for MPH! LOL, it's that smooth, quiet and effortless... honestly don't think you will miss the extra 2 cylinders and I can totally see how they put the same engine even in a 5 series. All I can say so far in terms of performance (after 150 Km of freeway) is that I can tell already this is a good handling car and that it cruises very _very_ smoothly at 150 km/h.

And yes, that's the max speed for the first 1200 miles of break-in, at the factory after they put the fluids in the car within 5 minutes they are already taking that brand new engine to 150 or so km/h, faster than most US bound cars are likely to ever go in their life... yeah it's a different world out there.

Oh, and 3/4 of a tank of gas costs more than $100 (!) over here. Good thing that engine only needs 89 octane and is promising such good gas mileage!
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