It’s tempting to view the BMW X6 M through the same lens that you would view the Cadillac Escalade EXT — you know
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00:00 (banging)
00:00 Hi there.
00:01 This is the BMW X6 M.
00:04 In fact, this is the second generation BMW X6 M,
00:08 which means the first one was so successful,
00:10 they built another one.
00:11 And now, it has 567 horsepower.
00:15 Every time somebody says,
00:17 but that thing doesn't make any sense,
00:18 there's some madman in Bavaria who goes,
00:20 yeah, but it can outperform the Porsche 911.
00:24 This is the Mercedes AMG GLE 63 Coupe S.
00:30 And it has 577 horsepower.
00:33 To quote Woody Allen, be original, don't steal.
00:37 But if you do steal, steal from the best.
00:40 Now, which one of these two is in fact the best?
00:43 That's what we're gonna find out
00:46 on this Hunchbacks of the Nürburgring episode
00:48 of Head to Head.
00:49 (dramatic music)
00:52 (engine revving)
00:57 (laughing)
00:59 This is the manliest thing I've ever done in my life.
01:03 (explosion)
01:05 Yes, I'm interrupting my own video,
01:09 but there's a very good reason why.
01:11 We are launching something very cool.
01:14 This rivalry, BMW versus Mercedes-Benz,
01:16 has been going on a long time.
01:18 In fact, a much thinner Jason Camisa
01:20 once did a Head to Head on the origin of it.
01:23 It was the E30 M3 versus the Mercedes 190 2.3 16.
01:28 But this rivalry is still going on today on racetracks.
01:33 But what if you wanted to watch it?
01:35 Meet Motor Trend on Demand.
01:37 Think of it as Netflix for car nuts.
01:39 And in fact, if you go there right now,
01:41 you could watch Mercedes battling it out with BMW
01:44 in series such as the Pirelli World Challenge and DTM.
01:48 But of course, please finish watching
01:49 our Head to Head first.
01:51 I know what you're thinking.
01:53 You're looking at this saying,
01:54 "But, but, it's an SUV and they removed all the utility."
01:58 Wrong.
02:00 This car is a flaming middle finger.
02:03 My problem with it is that BMW didn't light it on fire.
02:07 They didn't go far enough.
02:08 Five seats, four doors, no.
02:12 This should be a single seater with center steering.
02:15 And instead of doors, it should be a roof hatch.
02:18 And instead of this goofy tailgate,
02:20 weld that (beep) shut.
02:21 What's the difference?
02:23 As far as why Mercedes decided to break out
02:26 the tracing paper and so slavishly copy the X6,
02:30 I can give you 1.5 billion reasons why.
02:34 Specifically, if you look at the base price of a BMW X6,
02:37 it's about $6,000 higher than the X5.
02:42 They sold 250,000 of the first generation X6.
02:46 That's $1.5 billion in profit from a car
02:50 that rolls off the same assembly line as the X5.
02:53 Mercedes would be crazy not to try to get in that game.
02:58 And now is the time in which we determine
03:00 which one of these two is better.
03:02 (upbeat music)
03:04 (car engine revving)
03:07 Here I am in the GLE 63 Coupe S,
03:25 and the first thing I wanna point out
03:27 is that I'm five foot 11.
03:29 There is no headroom in this car whatsoever.
03:32 The second thing you notice is the steering.
03:36 This is electric power steering,
03:37 and it has come such a long way.
03:40 You almost get feedback, not that a 5,400 pound thing
03:45 is gonna give you feedback, but it almost does.
03:47 In fact, Camisa won't shut up about the fact
03:50 that this is currently the best
03:51 electric power steering on the market.
03:53 Like any good AMG, when you get right down to it,
03:59 the GLE 63 is all about the engine,
04:01 and what an engine, the M157.
04:04 5.5 liters, two turbos, 577 horsepower,
04:09 and it's terrific.
04:11 In fact, an advantage that this car has
04:14 over the X6M is the engine noise.
04:16 (car engine revving)
04:20 Listen to that.
04:23 It's just awesome.
04:25 This is exactly how you want your
04:28 ATTACK Armadillo to sound.
04:30 Why not?
04:31 (car engine revving)
04:32 Disturbing the neighbors, yes please!
04:34 Waking the dead, yes please!
04:37 Oh my god, 100 miles an hour never felt so bouncy.
04:41 If there's a real weak spot,
04:46 and I don't mean it's like an Achilles heel,
04:48 but something I wish they could improve,
04:50 it's the transmission, which works pretty good right now,
04:54 but for instance, if you're on the freeway
04:56 cruising at 80 miles an hour,
04:58 because of the gearing, you're at 2400 RPMs,
05:01 which is really getting into the meat of the torque curve,
05:04 and this thing is straining against its reins,
05:06 and it's just not a comfortable cruising vehicle,
05:09 even though it should be,
05:10 'cause you have this wonderful, luxurious interior,
05:12 it's got that great Mercedes-Benz on-center steering feel,
05:16 but it's kind of a (imitates engine revving)
05:18 like a buzzing ride,
05:20 whereas the X6M, with its eight-speed ZF transmission
05:23 at 80 miles an hour, the engine's barely at 2000 RPM,
05:27 and it's a great long-distance machine.
05:29 (engine revving)
05:32 As far as looks go, there's no polite way to put this,
05:42 but they're both kind of terrible looking.
05:45 In fact, both of them look like you took a Toyota Prius,
05:48 and started shoving steroids down its throat,
05:51 and then pumping it up with a bike pump,
05:52 it's just these big, kind of grotesque hatchbacks,
05:56 although the X6M, and maybe it's just that paint,
05:58 Long Beach Blue, but every once in a while,
06:01 I find myself looking at it,
06:02 and there's a certain angle where I go,
06:04 "Hmm, it's not so bad,"
06:05 but the GLE, it's kind of bad from every single angle,
06:09 and by kind of bad, I mean it's bad every angle.
06:12 So you're high up,
06:17 you got relatively small rear-view mirrors,
06:20 you've got this sloping C and D pillar,
06:22 where you can't see anything,
06:24 my rear glass is this big,
06:26 how do you park these things?
06:28 Right, so here we are in a parking lot,
06:38 and we are going to see which one of these two
06:41 has the superior backup camera system.
06:44 Starting off in the AMG,
06:46 and as you can see, it's got a cool surround-view camera,
06:50 it's actually one of the better ones,
06:52 just the definition, I mean I can see the cracks
06:54 in the asphalt, it's incredible,
06:56 and now I can change all this,
06:57 I can go from the 360-degree view that I'm currently in,
07:01 to a 180-degree view,
07:03 which gives me kind of a wide angle backing up.
07:06 I think for right now, what I'm gonna do is,
07:08 I'm just gonna use the 360-degree view,
07:09 'cause I like that better,
07:10 and let's see how this thing parks.
07:13 I mean, it's so simple.
07:17 And this is what's great about
07:18 modern parking systems like this,
07:20 is even if you have this car,
07:22 which is effectively a bunker,
07:24 with almost no rear visibility,
07:26 look at this, I can still put the car
07:27 exactly where I want it.
07:29 Man, I would call this a picture-perfect AMG parking job.
07:35 I mean, look at that, plenty of room on either side,
07:40 not bothering anybody, brilliant.
07:42 Well now, if you see how the BMW does, yeah?
07:46 (upbeat music)
07:49 Oh, hi, sorry.
07:54 Okay, and now we're in the X6M,
07:56 and we're gonna see how this thing
07:57 deals with backing up and parking.
07:59 And like the AMG,
08:01 you have a couple different ways you can do it.
08:03 One quick difference between the two
08:04 is that this is a much wider screen,
08:07 equally high-def, but you can just see more information
08:09 on the BMW screen than on the Mercedes.
08:11 Right now, I've got the rear-view camera on,
08:13 but on a little side window,
08:15 I have this cool kind of digital parking sensor thing,
08:18 which tells me how close I am to various objects,
08:20 which is great.
08:21 If I leave it in this mode,
08:22 I also get tracer lines, which show me where I'm going,
08:24 and I get something that they call obstacle marking,
08:27 which like, there's an infinity to my left and behind me,
08:30 and I see like a little yellow box,
08:32 it lets me know that, you know, don't hit that,
08:34 and if I get closer to it, that yellow turns red,
08:36 so it's pretty cool.
08:37 Anyways, I'm gonna leave it in this mode,
08:39 we're gonna back this thing up, okay.
08:41 My box just turned red, but I did not hit the infinity.
08:44 These tracer lines are very, very helpful.
08:48 Look at that.
08:49 In fact, I would call this the dictionary definition
08:54 of a picture-perfect BMW parking job.
08:57 Cool.
08:58 And now, let's get back to the road.
09:00 Now see, I says the thing, see?
09:06 Hang on.
09:07 (upbeat music)
09:11 (engine revving)
09:14 And now, we're cruising in the Long Beach Blue BMW X6 M.
09:26 First thing you notice from behind the wheel
09:28 is that it feels a little bit smaller in here,
09:30 even though I do have more headroom,
09:31 it just feels like a smaller, more compact vehicle.
09:35 It's not, but it feels that way.
09:36 (engine revving)
09:40 The other thing is, it's noisy in here,
09:43 and right now, I'm just kind of running around
09:44 in normal mode, but I set this button, the M1 button,
09:48 if I just press it twice to confirm,
09:51 it hops the car up into cycle mode,
09:53 I get this great full-color head-up display,
09:56 and oh, dude, how does it handle like this?
10:00 It's absolutely insane.
10:05 This is one of the most manic vehicles ever built.
10:09 You gotta admire BMW's cojones,
10:11 because they really, with a straight face,
10:13 will say things like,
10:14 "They must protect the integrity of the M badge,
10:17 "therefore, if you will never do an M7,
10:19 "we hope you enjoy the X6 M."
10:21 (laughs)
10:23 I mean, this car is mad.
10:25 It's simply crazy.
10:26 (engine revving)
10:29 It's just like, really?
10:32 Really?
10:33 You're selling this to people?
10:34 Is it legal?
10:37 This engine is miraculous.
10:40 4.4 liters, two turbos, 567 horsepower,
10:45 yeah, it's less than the Mercedes,
10:46 but it's also lugging around 200 less pounds.
10:49 550 pound-feet of torque.
10:51 This is the ZF transmission
10:53 that all sorts of other vehicles use,
10:55 but it's just tuned so perfectly here.
10:58 Up shifts, down shifts, doesn't matter,
11:00 all the shifts are just crisp, rapid-fire, perfect.
11:04 Oh, you would not believe how this thing drives.
11:08 I don't believe how this thing drives,
11:09 and I'm driving it.
11:10 How you doing back there?
11:17 Yes, yes, it doesn't sound as good as the Mercedes,
11:22 nor is it as solid.
11:23 There's a lot more squeaks and creaks,
11:25 and there's way less sound insulation,
11:28 but, god, the performance,
11:30 the fun factor, the smile factor,
11:33 the craziness, the reason why you would buy a car like this
11:37 is just so amped up in the X6M.
11:40 So the AMG makes 10 more horsepower than the BMW V8,
11:46 and it makes about 25 more pound-feet of torque,
11:49 but the GLE is about 200 pounds heavier than the X6M.
11:54 I wonder which one's actually faster in a drag race,
11:59 and I wonder how they would do
12:00 against a regular sports car.
12:03 (dramatic music)
12:05 They're going down!
12:20 (upbeat music)
12:22 (engine revving)
12:26 (engine revving)
12:54 Are you kidding me?
12:55 What the (beep) is (beep)
13:22 (upbeat music)
13:26 This next part, I know it sounds ridiculous,
13:28 but I did call these two
13:29 the hunchbacks of the Nurburgring.
13:31 So, for the sake of entertainment and nothing else,
13:36 let's hand these two to Randy Popes
13:38 and see how they do on a racetrack.
13:40 (engine revving)
13:43 (upbeat music)
13:49 We've got the brand new Mercedes-Benz AMG GLE 63S,
13:54 a very high-performance SUV.
13:58 Right away, the impressions I'm feeling are soft,
14:02 even in Sport Plus,
14:04 but it does have a little rotation into a corner,
14:06 which is amazing for an SUV, let me tell you.
14:09 The shifts are terrific.
14:12 These late-model Mercedes
14:13 have had some really good, sporty transmissions.
14:16 It's a torque converter automatic,
14:18 but it's snapping off those shifts.
14:21 We've got a fair amount of understeer
14:23 through the middle of the corner.
14:25 See the wheel?
14:27 I can turn it and not get the response.
14:29 Actually turns in pretty well,
14:31 and then goes into a strong understeer.
14:34 There's a lot of body motion in the AMG,
14:37 both body roll, nosedive, and squat under acceleration.
14:42 I can actually feel the car sit back on its haunches
14:45 when I get into that power, and it has a lot of power.
14:48 Brake pedal's kind of soft.
14:52 A lot of travel, and as I drive, I'm sensing a little fade.
14:55 The big car is powerful.
14:58 It's actually enjoyable.
14:59 On the downside, wow, the stability controls are so invasive,
15:04 even though we have everything turned off.
15:08 Wow, right here, holy cow.
15:10 I lost the throttle, I lost the braking,
15:13 and the seatbelt tightened up on me.
15:15 I think the whole system went into panic mode,
15:18 sensing a crash.
15:20 There is no race mode,
15:22 and I have to say that in some ways that makes sense,
15:26 but it is so frustrating on the racetrack.
15:30 We've swapped over to the BMW X6 M.
15:33 We're good V8 engine sounds.
15:35 Wow, this car is just right from the get-go.
15:43 It's a tighter package.
15:44 It feels more like a sports car, a sports sedan anyway.
15:49 Right off the bat,
15:50 I don't notice a huge difference in the power.
15:52 They both are bloody powerful.
15:55 The BMW has a much sportier feel than the AMG.
16:00 This X6 M is, wow, it feels like a sports sedan.
16:05 I gotta say, a little tall, but understeers way less,
16:12 way less body roll, almost imperceptible brake dive,
16:17 no squat on power, a much sportier package,
16:21 and you don't need to be me to be able to tell that.
16:24 It's just obvious right from the get-go.
16:26 Brakes are far more comfortable on the racetrack.
16:30 Where the AMG had a soft pedal with a fair amount of travel,
16:33 this BMW has got a firm, short travel pedal, quick response.
16:39 You know what else I'm really loving about the X6 M?
16:42 It just hit me, no stability control intervention.
16:45 I'm actually driving this car.
16:47 BMW M is letting me drive the car, what a relief.
16:52 I'm really quite shocked at the cornering speeds.
16:57 This car is fast, not only on the straights,
17:02 but in the corners, it's a handler.
17:04 It's gonna be fascinating to see what the lap time's like.
17:08 Let's get these big, powerful super SUVs on the watch
17:13 and find out.
17:14 (laughs)
17:21 (car engine roaring)
17:24 (car engine roaring)
17:27 (car engine roaring)
17:31 (car engine roaring)
17:34 (car engine roaring)
17:43 (car engine roaring)
17:59 (car engine roaring)
18:02 (car engine roaring)
18:09 (car engine roaring)
18:20 (car engine roaring)
18:23 (car engine roaring)
18:38 (car engine roaring)
18:48 (car engine roaring)
18:51 Look, I really dig that AMG, it's awesome.
19:09 But it's kinda like a grizzly bear, you know what I mean?
19:12 Yes, it's the most powerful thing in the forest
19:15 and it can knock your head off
19:16 with a single swipe of its paw.
19:18 But in reality, it would kinda rather sit around
19:21 and lick a pot of honey all day and then hibernate.
19:24 (laughs)
19:25 Whereas the X6M, it's just, it's simply bad.
19:29 It just defies all sense, logic, convention.
19:33 Look, the best way I can put it is,
19:35 if you're gonna enter the Concorde this stupid,
19:38 there's a lot of advantages
19:40 to being the dumbest guy in the room.
19:42 And for that reason, and the size of the grin on my face,
19:47 the winner of this head-to-head is the BMW X6M.
19:52 (car engine roaring)
19:55 It's insane.
19:56 Oh my God, I love this car.
19:59 (car engine roaring)
20:02 (car engine roaring)
20:07 (car engine roaring)
20:10 - What you doing there, Johnny?
20:26 (Johnny laughing)
20:27 Gardening?
20:28 SUVs always (beep) all over nature.
20:32 (Johnny screaming)
20:35 - Slower, like, like laugh?
20:37 No, Jesus.
20:38 (beep)
20:39 (Johnny laughing)
20:42 (laughing)
20:44 *coughing*