2023 BMW X1: A BMW for every bunny

HOWEVER the Year Of The Rabbit is going for you so far, chances are the thought of paying six figures for a Certificate of Entitlement (COE) has you hopping mad. If so, BMW has a new car for you.

It’s the X1, which is sold here in sDrive16i form. That means it comes with a burbling 1.5-litre engine that puts only 122 horsepower through the front wheels, so it qualifies for a Category A COE. In case you’ve freshly emerged from a rabbit hole, that was last auctioned for S$19,459 less than the Category B certificate.

The X1 is something of a BMW for every bunny, in the sense that if you’ve done what rabbits do and now have a brood to drive around, it was made for you. Despite the elevated ride height and the rugged stance that makes it look built for bounding across muddy fields, it’s really a family car first and Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) second.

It makes sense, then, that it has size on its side. The new model is longer, wider and taller than its predecessor, which wasn’t exactly a sardine tin to begin with.

More to the point, it’s bigger than rivals such as the Audi Q3 and Mercedes-Benz GLA (though a longer wheelbase for the latter means it’s just as roomy inside).

At 540 litres, its boot is also bigger than most, which makes the X1 perfectly able to schlep all the things that young parents have to carry around with them. As before, it’s a versatile mule, because you can slide and tilt the back seats, all in the name of adjusting how you want to divvy up room between the people in the back and the stuff behind them.

Collapse the rear seats altogether, and you can apparently haul 1,600 litres of cargo around, which is pretty impressive – it actually equals the amount you can carry in BMW’s own X3, a car 21 cm longer.

Numbers aren’t everything, of course. The X1 loses marks because the boot, though large, doesn’t come with the extra little touches that help to make a car a pleasure to live with. There are no cargo hooks, for instance, which are useful for keeping your groceries from trying to escape. To fold the rear seats you have to fiddle with them through the rear passenger doors, instead of pulling a latch from within the boot itself.

Still, most people will want an X1 not because they want a workhorse, but because they fancy owning a BMW.

In that sense, the X1 is a mixed bag, too. It doesn’t feel like a posh car inside, because the cabin materials reveal that BMW was trying to keep costs as low as possible.

Yet, the user interface is as contemporary BMW as it gets, from the way the physical controls are all minimised to the entertainment set-up’s operating system, to the way the digital instruments look. What you see here is what you get in the BMWs that cost nearly three times as much.

Then there’s the way it drives. Most times, you’re apt to find the engine vocal, and unless you slip it into Sport mode the gearbox can feel lazy. And with such a modest amount of power, the X1 doesn’t exactly serve up hare-raising acceleration.

Yet, the handling is sharp enough to make up for it. Dicing through corners feels better in this than in its immediate rivals, and with some bravado you can have quite a bit of fun behind the wheel.

The trade-off is a firm ride, though most SUVs tend to fidget over roads that aren’t perfectly smooth, anyway.

When it comes down to it, though, the X1’s strengths have less to do with how it carries itself, and more to do with how much it can carry.

The roomy interior and versatile boot are the main plus points here, while the engine’s lack of power only adds to this BMW’s competitiveness.

That might seem perverse, but many strong sellers for premium brands have come from the Category A market. To BMW, the X1’s suitably small and feeble engine is worth its weight in 24-carrot gold.

BMW X1 sDrive16i xLine

Engine 1,499cc, in-line three, turbocharged

Power 122 hp at 4, 400 to 6,500 rpm

Torque 230 Nm at 1,500 to 4,000 rpm

Gearbox 7-speed dual-clutch

0-100 km/h 10.5 seconds

Top speed 200 km/h

Fuel efficiency 6.8 L/100 km

Agent Eurokars Auto or Performance Motors

Price S$241,888 with COE

Available Now