Dearest BMW, Don't Design Garbage and Call Them Niche Cars Will Ya? a.k.a. The BMW X6

I was driving peacefully along the SPRINT highway somewhere in Petaling Jaya when I was passed by the monstrous BMW X6 3.0. This car was recently launched in this country and the driver must have been feeling proud driving that hideous monster up and down the roads of Petaling Jaya and Kuala Lumpur. I seriously cannot understand how BMW came up with such a design brief and issued a go ahead to build this car in the first place. The design brief must have read:

Dear Mr Bangle (then Head of Design, BMW)

This is the Board of Directors writing to you. Hope you are fine. We need you and your 'brilliant' degsign team to come up with a Sports Utility Vehicle that has a sloping tailgate (like a hatchback), 4 doors, square jawed David Coulthard front end, funny lines here, there and everywhere, BMW front grill that is as flaired as nostrils from an angry gorilla and sitting on 20 inch tires.

The reason for this is that recently Mercedes has come up with the CLS and it concerns us. The CLS seems to be taking sales from our M5 and M3. We think the reason for that is that it looks pretty good. We now think that with this new SUV cum Sports Hatchback Coupe we can recover some of the ground lost to the CLS. We reckon that with a car that is a 'niche within a niche' BMW will be able to profit as this is what our customers want. They do not want a CLS i.e a coupe with 4 doors, but they, the ultimate driving customers want an SUV that is sporty.

Yours sincerely
The Board

What is heck's name were thay thinking? It makes no sense. The X6, according to a guy whom I know who rides a bike to work thinks it is a bulldog on wheels. I myself think 'why?'.

What makes BMW think that "I think our X5 customers want a coupe, but still want an SUV at the same time". So to kill a lot of birds with one ugly stone, BMW comes up with a 4 door hatchback that is slightly shorter than an x5 but as high as a Toyota Harrier.

Yes, BMW engineers can make it corner like a hot hatch, because basically it IS one, only ten times the size of one. What's the actual point? If you want to drive fast, buy an M3, buy an M5, buy a Mercedes CLS or buy a Megane R26R (IF YOU REALLY WANT A FAST HATCHBACK). Don't buy a stupid looking, pointless, idiotic, niche car that thinks it can do everything. Furthermore, as an SUV, it cannot even wade though mud. It can't tow a trailer. It can't do most things people buy SUVs for.

BMW hardly makes sense. Ah, Mercedes has tapped into a niche market with the CLS. We'll tap into ANOTHER niche market, they said. Yes, no one has thought of a 4 door coupe on stilts. So they built it.

By then, the X6 passed me by, leaving me with bitter thoughts about the pointlessness of its existence. Then a Proton Gen2 passed by. It then occured to me that the BMW X6 is actually a Gen2 that has been photoshopped with a different grill and lights and its size increased by 1.5times, running on 20inch rims instead of 15in rims and tires. BMW should give royalty to Proton. I'm right, trust me. Look at the pics below and tell me truthfully whether they're the same car or not?













Left: The Proton Gen2 Right: The BMW X6 (or was it the other way round?)

Then again, I may have started a new trend here. We're used to seeing Proton Wiras modded to have tall tires like palm oil estate rally cars, soon we'll see X6 replicas running around Kuala Lumpur. Why buy the X6 if you can make one for yourself cheaply?