{"id":2080054,"date":"2026-08-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2080054"},"modified":"2026-08-06T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T21:00:00","slug":"bmw-ix3-50-xdrive-m-sport-long-term-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2080054","title":{"rendered":"BMW iX3 50 xDrive M Sport – long-term review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The iX3 makes a terrible first impression.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Take driving it. If you lift off the throttle at any point near a corner, in a corner or on a roundabout, the iX3 immediately applies the brakes. I might be having a slight lift, or maybe I am about to brake, but the BMW decides it is definitely braking. And it does so immediately, so as to give you no chance to move your own right foot to the adjacent pedal, and it does it clumsily, like you\u2019re a 17-year-old learner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It also likes braking for you when you indicate off a main road, or as you approach a junction to join a main road. Only it won\u2019t slow you down enough to make the turn. And while it will come to a stop behind another car in traffic, if you\u2019re coming up to a T-junction and there\u2019s nothing in front, it won\u2019t stop, meaning you carry on out into any oncoming traffic\u2026<\/p>\n

Turn it off you say? There are two shortcut keys on the right-hand side of the infotainment screen (both are hidden by my own hand when holding the wheel, given it\u2019s angled towards the driver) but one turns off the speed limit warning \u2013 which is so unobtrusive I don\u2019t ever bother \u2013 and the other controls the lane keeping assist \u2013 which suffers none of the jitters most VW Group systems do on country roads, so again I leave it be.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s got nothing to do with the plethora of mandated ADAS warnings either. You can ditch the acoustic noise for speed limits, the lane-keeping assist, the attentiveness assistant, and a bunch of other steering and braking interventions, but that elicits no change.<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s the \u2018Route and junction assistant\u2019 that you want \u2013 and then control of your own car is (mostly) restored. It\u2019s a terrible default setting that made my family think I\u2019d lost the ability to drive, but at least once it\u2019s off, it stays off and doesn\u2019t need toggling for each journey.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Alas that know-it-all approach is present elsewhere in the iX3 too. Such as when I get out of the car and walk round to open the door for my daughter. At this point the iX3 decides I\u2019m off and locks itself, the retractable door handles nipping your fingertips just as you reach out.<\/p>\n

Or there\u2019s when I walk back past the car, push open the charging flap and retrieve the cable for our home charger \u2013 at which point I always turn to find the door handles retracting and the electric charging cover closing. Why iX3, if I\u2019ve just opened the charging flap and am just a few metres away, have you decided I\u2019m done with you?<\/p>\n

For all it\u2019s supposed new-generation Neue Klasse smarts, sometimes the iX3\u2019s pretty dumb.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The iX3 makes a terrible first impression.\u00a0 Take driving it. If you lift off the throttle at any point near a corner, in a corner or on a roundabout, the iX3 immediately applies the brakes. I might be having a slight lift, or maybe I am about to brake, but the BMW decides it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-2080054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2080054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2080054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2080054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2080054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}