Top Gear’s guilty pleasures: the BMW X5 (E53)

Try this on for size. Upon its launch at the London Motor Show in 1999, BMW UK proudly trumpeted the fact that its new 4x4 was shorter than its then 5 Series (the E39). And consider that the E39 is a fraction off a current 3 Series saloon, and you get some idea of how small this big car really was.

And it was a big car. It was BMW’s first ever SUV at a time when only the Mercedes-Benz ML and Range Rover ruled the high roads. Then this swaggering, steroidal 5er came along and literally changed the game. Changed the name, too, because BMW wanted to make sure you didn’t confuse it with anything that had come before.

“This is not, in American parlance, a Sports Utility Vehicle but rather a Sports Activity Vehicle or SAV,” BMW UK's press release said upon the car’s 1999 launch. “BMW has made this distinction in terminology to distinguish X5 from the wide variety of 4x4 vehicles available on the UK market today.”

Indeed, a cursory glance through that initial press release is revealing, for it’s a moment in history when people weren’t really used to these kinds of monsters on the roads. “Its high seating position provides the commanding road view so valued by 4x4 drivers,” BMW said, “yet its styling is more like that of a car.”

Handled like a car, too, which was the point. “It has the driving dynamics of a BMW car," and early road tests proved what witchcraft Munich had conjured to make something weighing two tonnes handle like a lithe sports saloon. Today that’s expected and the bar to entry high, but in 1999? Unheard of.

So unheard of, early spy shots hilariously saw BMW hammering around the Nürburgring in a prototype X5 ahead of the car’s reveal, upon which the company announced it had put a time on the board. The 4.4i X5 managed 9m 30s, which BMW UK said at the time was 30 seconds slower than the-then current M3 (which would have been the E36). Thirty seconds is a long time of course, but the fact it had even managed anything this side of 10m was seriously impressive.

The 0-62mph sprint was similarly impressive (for the time) – 7.5s in that launch V8, an engine shared across BMW’s flagship 5 and 7 saloon cars, which had 286bhp and 324lb ft of torque, while the top speed was 129mph.

At the time it was a quite a sight to see a BMW sit so high and wide on the road, but now that nearly everything that comes out of Munich has an ‘X’ in its name and can leap tall buildings in a single bound, this first-generation car looks almost… compact. Neat. Tightly focused and fresh. A certain Mr Frank Stephenson was the person in charge of sketching out the original X5.

So yes, burnish it with whatever stereotypes you like – including a police SWAT team’s vehicle of choice – but to our eyes (OK, my eyes), the E53 X5 is a fabulous car. Before I see myself out, one final flourish: soon after the car’s launch, BMW unveiled a Super Heavyweight SAV in the shape of the X5 LM. Under the auspices of one Albert Biermann – then boss of M, now boss of Hyundai N – engineers shoved the 6.1-litre V12 from BMW's Le Mans-winning prototype under the nose of the E53 and set its 700 horsepowers free to do outrageous bidding. Try that on for size.