The BMW X6 coupe-ute is already a plenty weird thing. The X6 M is weirder still, adding incomprehensible performance capability to this plenty weird thing (to say nothing of pissing off so-called M purists).
But the 2010 BMW ActiveHybrid X6 is nothing short of utterly fantastic. And we mean "fantastic" in all of its shades of meaning offered by the Encarta dictionary in the right column of our screen as we write this.
Stop Making Sense
Because there is no conventional frame of reference in the automotive realm that will make the 2010 BMW ActiveHybrid X6 make sense, we will from this point forward, avoid trying to make some sense of this vehicle.
After all, what are we to make of a $90K sport-ute with little utility, almost as much sport as the standard and much cheaper X6, but without the big fuel-economy gains that you'd hope would come with 420 pounds of increased complexity?
The ActiveHybrid X6 (which we will refer to from this moment forward as simply the X6 hybrid) is the result of BMW's participation in a consortium of automakers including General Motors and (then) DaimlerChrysler that's since been disbanded. The consortium has to show for its work and money several technically impressive but practically vexing trucks such as the unpopular Chevy Tahoe hybrid and GMC Yukon hybrid, the Silverado and Sierra pickup truck versions, the guilt-assuaging Cadillac Escalade hybrid and, soon, a Dodge Ram hybrid, the BMW X6 hybrid and the Mercedes-Benz ML450 hybrid.
BMW is understandably not eager to talk about the consortium's other offspring, preferring instead to play up the fact that it has built the BMW of full hybrids. In other words, the 2010 BMW X6 Hybrid is meant to maintain as its guiding principle the traditional BMW ideal of performance driving.
The Ultimate Driving Hybrid?
So all right, we'll take that bait. BMW claims that the X6 hybrid does zero to 60 mph in 5.4 seconds. That is indeed high-performance. And that it's done by a vehicle weighing in at a flab-tastic 5,688 pounds is really very, very impressive. Such performance is but a tenth of a second slower than the standard V8-powered X6 and about a second quicker than the six-cylinder X6. And in what surely must be a first, BMW says the X6 hybrid's hypercomplex electronics incorporate a launch control function (although we were unable to make it work on our test car despite repeated tries and guidance from the X6 hybrid's head powertrain engineer).
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