BHPian Wanderers recently shared this with other enthusiasts: My BMW X3 M40i completed one year in May-25. Have driven close to 10,000 kms in a year. This is first year update and ownership experience. How I ended was with this car, well you all are responsible. Please read this thread for more details. Once again, I thank all BHPians for their advice and reason for being here and writing this to inspire another. “M’ of its own kind. It has been a year of “sheer driving pleasure” with one instance of not-so-good experience. I bought the car in May-24 and here are a few things worth mentioning. My previous car was a Ford Endeavour 3.2 4X4 and I must say it was a wise decision to go for this car. I do not miss my Endeavour except on really bad roads, where I have to baby around my X3.Likes360 BHP and 500 Nm at your service 24X7 period.Low sitting SUV but still you can see 80% of the bonnet and judge corners.360 degree cameras and sensors are well executed.Sports mode is fun but driving in sports plus is like taming a wild horse trying to run out of the ranch.Excuse to jump onto NE4 (Delhi-Mumbai Expressway) which starts quite close to my house in Gurgaon.Better than expected fuel efficiency, get 8-9 km/l on city roads in comfort mode and 10-11 km/l on Highways which includes 10-20% of Sports mode. My Endeavour gave only 8-9 km/l in most conditions.Overtaking on undivided roads is a breeze, expect other cars to wait for you to take the lead in overtaking while trailing in a queue behind a slow truck.DislikesVery stiff ride. Not only a stiff ride, car also seems like an earth mover machinery while driving around the colony on concrete or paver blocks. Well, I have got used to it now. The difference is felt when you drive a better car. e.g. when I drove the Kodiaq during the Team-BHP drive, I realized what had been missing in my car.Low profile tyres 20″ in runflat avatar are a real pain. So far, only one instance of a tyre burst but that has changed my driving style and timings. Night driving is strictly no unless it’s a known destination.BMW auto high beam is hit or miss and we end up using manual high beam. Also, light is not adequate during rains or on dark coal tarred roads. Otherwise, on a new kind of road surface it lights up well (light absorption vs reflection issue, I guess)Poor air conditioning, you keep looking for the right setting. Also, I don’t trust BMW automatic recirculation mode and the manual select recirculation to avoid dust. I may be wrong but I feel BMW sensors may not be tuned to our conditions.The first long drive in this car was to the hills in Uttarakhand. Car had barely completed ~300 km and I was eager to complete the run-in period and hated the waiting game. Also was curious to see how it drives on a hilly road. It was great fun and while I was cautious of the run-in period, could not stop myself from testing its potential while overtaking on undivided roads. The immediate pushback in the seat was a great feeling. Next I, took this car to Alwar during the rainy season, although the tiger reserve is closed during the rainy season, one gets a chance to drive inside the reserve for visiting the ancient Hanuman Temple on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Mumbai Expressway was another reason to go for this drive. Probably one of the best located McDonald’s in India. Destination for Team-BHP NCR Meet. Somewhere between Alwar and Sariska Tiger reserve. Parked near Hanuman Temple, Pandupole inside Sariska Tiger Reserve. Ujjain DriveIn the month of August, we decided to drive to Ujjain for Mahakaleshwar darshan. The drive to Ujjain was great. We were 4 people with a good amount of luggage and this was truly the first long distance drive with a good load of people and stuff covering close to 1000 km each side. We drove on all kinds of terrain, including the jump on the bouncy Delhi Mumbai expressway which was the talk of the town and reason for major repair between Jaipur- Sawai Madhopur stretch. It was really bad and not expected on the newly built National Expressway. In this regard, I must say that Mumbai-Pune and Yamuna Expressway are the best-built expressways in our country and others are far behind. Tyre Burst IncidentEverything was fine till Ujjain. However, we decided to also visit Omkareshwar temple, which is ~150 km from Ujjain. The Indore-Omkareshwar usual route is under expansion and was in pretty bad condition. Since we did not plan in advance did not expect this; otherwise, we now know that there is an alternate route. The situation became worse as it was raining now and then. Omkareshwar darshan was fine and was completed by 8 PM but it started raining heavily thereafter. We were in two minds, whether to stay in Omkareshwar or in Indore. We finally decided on Indore and even booked the hotel in Indore. It rained all the way from Omkareshwar to Indore in varying intensity. We had dinner around 11 PM midway at a dhaba and continued driving while it was still raining. Perhaps it was fatigue and/or the heavy dinner, I started paying less attention to water-filled pot holes and I do remember being casual on a few of the speed-breakers. Around 15 km from Indore AB road, the car hit a major pothole and immediately the idrive warning popped up about loss of tyre pressure in the front right tyre and asking to dial BMW roadside. We were going uphill and decided to drive to a safe location and stop. We stopped soon and called roadside assistance, which offered help in terms of putting spare wheel or transporting the car to the Indore service center. They got me connected to the Infinity Indore service manager (Mr Nigel Creado) and he turned out to be a real help all the way. He suggested opting for roadside assistance flat bed, avoiding driving on runflat or taking pain in changing to donut and suggested asking for a taxi and hotel accommodation from the roadside assistance team. One thing to noteis that while the alloys are covered under BMW secure but fine print is that alloy damage at the time of tyre damage is only covered. So if you drive on a runflat, insurance is likely to reject the same, saying alloy damage did not happen at the time of tyre damage. They also ask for key data which gives the kilometer reading at the time of loss of pressure (tyre damage), including date and time. So if the odometer reading during inspection is much more than the key recorded reading and you claim alloy damage, it’s likely to be rejected. This was the main reason for us opting for roadside assistance and triggering BMW secure from the location itself. At the spot, we believed that even the alloy had been damaged, although not visible. Later, we checked personally in the workshop and there were no marks, let alone any dent. Service center ruled it out as well. The flat bed arrived in an hour but the taxi/car Brezza driven by roadside assistance guy himself came much earlier. I personally drove the car onto the flatbed and both the flatbed and the Brezza left for Indore. All this took a little over an hour. The Brezza dropped us off at the same hotel which we had booked. I was asked to submit a reimbursement claim later to Allianz. The limit is a maximum of 3 nights, Rs 10,000/ night and yes, you can have 2 rooms each night as long as it’s within Rs 10,000. The Ramada Indore just fitted the bill and we could also use my booking (already paid). We later extended the stay by a day as the tyre came from Infinity Mumbai and we did make use of the time to complete our Indore visit, which was always on cards but maybe we could have left by afternoon instead of staying another day. The roadside assistance guy informed us that last evening it rained heavily and half of Indore was submerged under water. Next day, we saw many BMW and Mercedes cars at the service center due to breakdown/hydrostatic lock (both service centers are next to each other). The hotel was very close to the Infinity Indore service center and after breakfast we visited the service center but it was just for our comfort as Nigel had done everything on the phone. We had scanned the claim form and sent it to him from the hotel itself. He had already arranged the Allianz Inspection (which was managed to be self inspection and completed on the same day). Nigel was very clear from the night itself that this size tyre would not be in stock and he would take a day to arrange. While waiting for the flatbed, I inspected all tyres and found a small bulge in the rear right tyre and Nigel suggested replacement for the same as well. All the while Nigel was on the phone and he kept checking till we reached the hotel and sent him the claim forms along with the car papers. We were aware that he was getting both tyres from Infinity Mumbai by bus and would arrive the next day afternoon, their tried and tested transportation method but we wanted more comfort, so we got on a conference with his Mumbai office who confirmed that tyres are leaving Mumbai in next couple of hours and bus is the fastest way to reach Indore. We used the rest of the day to enjoy Indore foods and shopping for ladies. The waiting game started the next day, which was actually Sunday. We got late checked out at 2 PM as Nigel confirmed that tyres are reaching anytime and his person is waiting at the bus stop. He advised us to come to the dealership and was sorry that he did not have any driver to pick us up as it was a holiday at the service center. He was the only one at the service center in the afternoon. He had got the car washed in the morning and we already knew that they use an external agency for tyre services and they were also waiting. The tyres arrived only by 4 PM (bus was late due to jam because of rain-damaged road) but directly at the tyre service center, where my car was already waiting. Nigel had driven the car to Tyre service center as he feared them closing as well. We finally got the car ready by 5 PM. We could have stayed another day but decided to drive slowly back to Delhi as after a time we felt eager to be back on the roads and also the weather seemed ok, although we did find drizzles on the way. We drove the whole night and reached Delhi the next day 10 AM. We took multiple breaks and there were two of us driving. We also took the rear right tyre as it looked alright and can be used, I guess, in an emergency. The bulge would definitely resurface once under pressure but anyway, it was not very evident. Although the insurance approval has not come, we were aware of the tentative amount. Expected reimbursement on rear tyres was 100% as the tread depth was average 6.5 mm and 75% on front as the average depth was under 6.5 mm but above 5 mm. One has to be careful here as even a new tyre would also be barely be 6.5-7 mm. I made sure that we take a correct sample photo with the tyre tread gauge. Being present in the service center helped. Also, Nigel was supportive here. We paid a slightly higher amount personally to Nigel. After the final approval and final billing, he returned the excess, a couple of days later. We did not wait for anything. Good service all around. The hotel claim took about a month to get paid and required mild escalation to BMW. We did not bother much but except for a couple of emails to BMW. Somewhere before Omkareshwar. We had stopped for American sweetcorn and had examined all the tyres, there was no bulge or cut. Car after the front right tyre burst while hitting a deep pothole, speed 60-70 km/hr. One of the worst roads I have driven in equally worse conditions- rains and thunderstorms in dark, scary night. Waiting for a flatbed. It was still raining but the intensity had reduced. The taxi Brezza had already arrived. Gujarat driveCame winters and we forgot all the pains of the last drive and decided to head to Gujarat. We knew that Gujarat roads are generally in very good shape and moreover, it was long after monsoons and expected roads to be back in shape in case of any rain damage. This was a 3500 km drive covering Delhi-Ahmedabad-Dwarka-Somnath-Vadodara and back to Delhi. This was otherwise an uneventful drive and car’s potential was put to the real test with all kinds of good roads (Expressways, two laned, four laned, city roads, coastal road, concrete road-Jamnagar-Dwarka). By this time, we were used to stiff suspension and no one complained about it (good roads were the real reason, probably). One incident worth mentioning is about a new X7 xDrive 40i on a temporary number which joined in front of us from somewhere near Jamnager. The driver was a young lad with his friends, probably, and was driving the car at normal speed. After trailing him for some time, I decided to overtake him but he immediately took a kind of offence, X3 against X7 and thus increased his speed to move ahead of me. I decided to trail him for some more time but he did not like kind of me trailing him and tried all sorts of behavior on the road trying to show his car ability. After some distance, the concrete road started and I had plenty of space to overtake him and did so in a flash and he was left stunned. He did not realize I have the same engine, probably in a different tune and in a much smaller car. Beautiful location before Bijolia, while going towards Chittorgarh. Near Seashore, Dwarka Gujarat. On return from Vadodara, we drove mostly on the Mumbai Delhi Expressway. Gujarat-Rajasthan stretch looked deserted, with just one partially opened rest area or hotel. The drive was great but boring and ~230 kms were gone in no time. This stretch, once habituated, would be another destination for Team-BHP meet with great locations with windmills on hills, tunnels, forest areas (Mukundra reserve) and low-rise rest areas spread over acres. I took Delhi Mumbai expressway during the Ujjain drive as well. Within a span of 4 months, I could see plenty of new food joints and stay options on NH filling the gaps wherein the Expressway is incomplete. Kota Mukundra stretch has turned lively from a once deserted drive. I got some really good food options this time, specially Rajasthani food. Sadly, it may not last long once this portion of the expressway is completed. I truly believe that we should allow these local food joints and shops to open in rest areas along the expressways. They should be part of the growth and progress of the country. Both modern options as well as old school options can coexist. NH44 Delhi-Amritsar highway is the best example of both worlds.Service updateThe car completed one year in May, although the odometer had only ~9900 km and showed another 3500 km before service due in 052025. Decided to get the service done from my dealer Bird Automotive, Gurgaon, although I prefer Deutsche Motoren Faridabad workshop which I must say is one of the biggest and best ones in India. Their facility and service (dry wash, alloy wash by nitrogen) are unmatched. Also, you are more likely to get spares, tyres etc. readily available with them. The service included engine oil and filter replacement along with cleaning of air and cabin filters, although they did suggest changing all filters, which I politely declined, as I found them acceptable after cleaning. I did ask them if they would have suggested the filter change had the car been in BSI plus and they had no answer. The only complaint I had was about a rattle sound coming from the front left. We took multiple test drives with their experts and they almost emptied a silicon lubricant spray bottle covering multiple points but as a matter of fact, the sound still remains. They finally suggest changing the lower arms and other members as it may be required. However, we had examined the same multiple times by lifting the car and I did not want them to make my car a guinea pig. Most probably this sound is coming from the front right door and I am happy to live with the same than to allow them to open my car. I believe the car is well built (a CBU from BMW US plant) and not willing to experiment unless absolutely necessary. Photograph from the service center. Bird Automotive Gurgaon Air and cabin filters before cleaning. Car after service, around Gurgaon. Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.
Source link
What I learnt about my BMW X3 M40i in a year: Ownership, service update
