BMW X1 Prototype First Drive

If initially we reported that the BMW X1 will only be available for the European market, at the NYC Auto Show, a BMW representative misterously spoke of BMW’s plans to indeed include the X1 in the U.S. line-up as well. So, apparently, BMW has always had plans for the U.S. market and for those of you looking for a smaller SAV model, the X1 might satfisfy your needs.

We arrived with enthusiasm for a drive of a prototype of the BMW X1 sport activity wagon (or SAW — after the cult series of scare-your-date films??), but then we immediately had the stuffing knocked out of us. Because although the BMW X1 starts deliveries in most of the world in October of this year, it won’t come to North America until the middle of 2011. So we’re driving the 2012 BMW X1.

Of course there are reasons for that, of which more later.

After picking ourselves up, dusting off and starting all over again, we stopped our whining long enough to discover in the still-camouflaged BMW X1 a really solid, car-based people/stuff carrier. Over all kinds of milder terrain and on spectacular curvaceous roads on the mostly German- and British- colonized Spanish island of Mallorca, the 2012 BMW X1 actually rips it up pretty darn well for being a new BMW that we don’t remember anyone anywhere asking for.

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