Today I went to the BMW SAV Ride and Drive event at Puerto Rico.
It was very big event with a lounge, class room, aaaaaaaaaaaaand 2 autocross tracks.
One of the tracks was for the New X5's (and Lexux RX-350's for comparison).
Here a video from inside the X5 with one of the instructors driving.
before taking you on a track the gave you some lessons at a classroom they had set up. It was pretty cool, although kinda useless, because almost everything they said was about the new features in the cars. Although they did explain understeer and oversteer...
This track had a simulated obstacle avoidance maneuver, a highspeed left turn and chicane befre it started all over again. Here you would get to do 2 laps in the X5 and two in the RX. This was Really fun, i went to the event with intentions of pushing the SUV's to the limit short of rolling them over. (and i tried) It was trully amazing how hard I was able to push these amazing cars. I have never felt so secure in an SUV before, the Lexus didn't even compare, it was skidding all over the track and had massive amounts of body roll.
The X5's were amazing cars.
The other track had a fleet of four X3's 3.0 (260 HP). This is where it really got fun! Ok so this track was much much narrower than the first. It started with a small straightaway then another emergency obstacle avoidance maneuver, then it had a high speed left turn followed by another straightaway , a hairpin turn, slalom and then one final left turn.
The different thing about this track was that it had a timing mechanism.
Ok, before we did anything serious with the X3's, the instructors divided everyone into 2 groups. They got us on the track to do a few practice laps and after everyone was done. they told us that we would have a face off between the two teams. Each team would start off with one driver, record their lap time, stop, quickly change drivers, then do it again with the next driver until all the people in that team had gone. (2 second penalty for knocking down a cone)
At the end they would compare the total time of each team and choose a winner (my team won :rocks: )
They also had an off-road course for the new X5 with a 45 degree incline and a hill to demonstrate the hill descent control.
ohh, and they also had the Street driving event which had one car out of every series in the BMW lineup.
I got to drive the Z4 3.0si and the 530i (which i noticed was really slow, slower than my 328i, but it was Very nice inside). This was also very fun, when i got to drive the Z4, they just gave it to me with a map of the route, which was very large, took about 15 min, mostly on the freeway, so i was really able to spank the hell out of it. It was nice driving around with the top down with one of my buddies in the z4.
Overall i had a great experience and loads of fun. BMW seems to be the only car manufacturer that does this sort of *cool* thing.
the pics aren't too great because i was preoccupied with having fun and not taking pictures. Sorry
