The BMW servicing experience… Oh yeah, the BMW X1

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ABOVE: BMW X1 loan car for service

The X1

For a loan car, I was provided a BMW X1 sDrive18i for the day (what a mouthful). It has a 2.0L 4-cylinder and is front-wheel drive. Yeah look, it’s not bad, but also for $65,000, it’s frankly not worth the badge name, but it is made in Germany. Once the car is moving, it drives okay, brakes work well, and the engine has “enough” grunt to get you moving, but with the start-stop, it’s not going to get your tits moving, especially coming from my M340i where moving is effortless.

In my opinion, frankly, the start-stop system on this car paired with auto-hold is terrible. As someone who routinely disables start-stop in my car every drive, it really drives down the driving experience. It goes from ‘the ultimate driving machine’ to the ultimate, “Oh, shit, is the car going to turn on in time for me to turn in front of this car?” When you slow down to around 3km/h, the engine will stop, but if you tap the accelerator to move forward in traffic, the whole car will jutter and shake as the engine starts to move forward.

Once you actually come to a stop, auto-hold will engage and hold you. Then, when you want to go again, there’s a delay of around a second from pushing the accelerator to the car actually moving. This is not a premium experience. Without digging through the infotainment, I wasn’t able to find a physical control to turn this off 😠. I think driving this without auto-hold would be marginally better;  it would still shake each time from a stop.

It’s a modern BMW, the styling still follows the older style front grill with modern led lights. The rear has the typical BMW automatic boot opener which can be operated remotely with the key. It’s smooth and convenient.

The looks of the car are okay, kind of just looks like every other small SUV, a slightly chamfered brick with wheels and fancy lights. When walking near the car in a darker area (like a car park), it’s DRLs and the tail lights will come in to help you find it. It also has walk-away locking, which is nice to have.

The standard driver assists are available, with the decent BMW distance and lane control coming in clutch for highway (and even suburban driving). Compared to my car, it’s lacking information on what the car is seeing when using the distance control+. I couldn’t see any information on what the car saw in front of me, or what distance the cruise is set to. On the road, the car is quiet; road noise isn’t super high, unlike some recently Korean cars I’ve driven.

The seats and high-touch areas are comfortable but not plush. All the main controls are black plastic. The leather-wrapped wheel is nice

and feels durable. The wheel has a good control layout with just enough buttons. Media and driver screen controls are on the right, and the driver assistance controls are on the left. The media controls are intuitive to use, with volume and skip available, plus calling and driver screen configuration.

This one has the basic BMW interior lighting package, lighting up doors, floors, and the centre console area. The colours can be configured in the infotainment.

The infotainment is responsive and has wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. All of the climate controls are on the screen, and are hidden when smartphone mirroring is enabled. It has basic driver profiles: personal, sport, and economic; they’re fine. The basic car speakers are fine; they won’t blow you out of the water, but they’re adequate. Music sounds okay, and there isn’t an abundance of bass or treble. 

I really like the wireless charging area, for the first time a manufacturer has added a holder for your phone when put in the charging area. The little bar moves super easily and holds your phone steady while charging wirelessly (not that I would do that).

Coming around to the centre armrest (I can’t reasonably call it a console), there’s a button to open it. Inside, you’ll find enough room to put your pack of tallyhoes and loose tobacco. BMW went for the old ‘let’s store stuff under in an open cubby’ approach instead of making a real enclosed centre console. 

Interesting to note, the way this car was spec’d had rear model badges removed. This feels like a big “I want to blend in with more expensive models without the cost,” a classic “let’s pretend to be more expensive” look.

I understand comparing a 1 Series base model to a 3 Series “premium” car isn’t really fair, but there’s a midcycle refresh and around six years between them.

Overall, it’s not a bad car, but it’s nothing to really write home about. It’s nice, quiet, and is a good appliance, getting you from A to B in comfort.

Ya boi, Ryan 🫡

BMW X1 sDrive18i (Comparison to M340i)

Stop start

• No easy way to turn off
• Delay between pressing the pedal and actually moving 
• Extremely invasive and juttery 

The rest

• Slight premium feel, high cost
• Nice pano roof
• Speakers dog water
• Classic auto tailgate
• Made in 🇩🇪 💪
• Not exciting to drive
• Unintuitive physical controls
• Especially around climate when in CarPlay
• Useless centre console – what am I going to put in here? My ciggies 

BMW servicing experience 

• They call to book the 3 series
• Offering cool come-to-you pickup/drop-off loan car service free of charge
• Day comes and they can’t service it because the computer says no

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