Nice to see it being slated on Top Gear - the program obviously does something right. I particularly liked watching it getting stuck on a small hill a field then sliding backwards despite the handbrake being on and the gearbox being in Park!
Every time I see one of those useless hunks of sh!t I wonder what sort of [s]jerk[/s] person looked at the brochure and thought 'hey, that's a great car' 😕
Good point, well made. Just thinking about the damn things has put me in a bad mood. An utterly pointless vehicle.
Stevie Wonder maybe????
Most useless pointless car ever made and not because it's a BMW as I've got 330Ci M Sport - a proper car.
I dont like them and totally dont see the point, but any car that gets the carpet/lentil munchers as agitated as those hippos do cant be all bad
good point iamsporticus but a range rover would do that job just as well and be not as shit.
I always think they're bought by someone with more money than a sense of style or common sense buying the X6 and the Porsche Cayenne - utter crap and ugly
Oh I dunno, neighbour has a reasonably new one and it's in the garage every week getting fixed as something else fails.
Mate loves it to death (and should do at the price he paid for it second hand from the garage), wife loathes it as it's had so many problems...it looks good, sounds good but has spent more time in the garage or on the back of a truck than being driven by them...
So not sure if it would be any better...
Someone I work with has just bought a new X6. He's a complete tosser. He couldn't have bought a more appropriate car.
my boss has got one - they're even worse looking in the flesh
My brother in law has an X5 (The same as the x6 model) with a 4.8 v8 eco friendly motor, with "Carlos Fandango wheels" plus a brand new 2010 RR Sport with another humongous V8 petrol in it. They live down a country lane and he got them both stuck in a very small amount of snow because they are useless and pointless vehicles, that suit a certain type of "must be seen in one of those" people. I know if I had spent best part of 100k on two cars, I would be pretty unimpressed.
And yes before you say it, I havent the money myself to buy one, let alone two, but for that money you could have bought something a bit better.
They look like 3series on a shed loads of steroids!
So it's a Heavy long travel DH bike with road tyres and without the travel.
Good commentary by Clarkson "it's a car built for a world that no longer exists" and I reckon only ever existed in the crazed egos of idiots with more money than sense or taste.
It costs at least £42k. With that sort of money I would have a quiver in my garage: triumph scrambler, BMW 5 estate, surly big dummy and a vw camper. Plus a load more bikes.
The beauty of the x6 is that for other road users it is a surefire way of spotting a tw*t.
a brand new 2010 RR Sport with another humongous V8 petrol in it. They live down a country lane and he got them both stuck in a very small amount of snow
You're lying. Whatever people might think about the Range Rover Sport's image etc, it's a VERY capable off-roader and wouldn't get stuck that easily. If it was stuck, it was somewhere that nothing else would have got out of either.
You're lying. Whatever people might think about the Range Rover Sport's image etc, it's a VERY capable off-roader and wouldn't get stuck that easily. If it was stuck, it was somewhere that nothing else would have got out of either.
I agree, but I bet this example has got oversized chrome alloys, practically slick rubber bands for tyres, and endless body extensions.
I agree, but I bet this example has got oversized chrome alloys, practically slick rubber bands for tyres, and endless body extensions.
Which is exactly what it looks like. He has taken "a very capable off roader" and made it into a purely "lets go around corners quickly" vehicle. Not exactly what the manufacturers designed it for.
Actually a mates got a Cayenne and it's very capable off road, still ugly though.
I'd never buy one but I think the X6 (or at least the M6) actually looks OK, agreed it's pretty pointless though :p For an off-roader it would have to be a Bowler for me.
[i]You're lying. Whatever people might think about the Range Rover Sport's image etc, it's a VERY capable off-roader and wouldn't get stuck that easily. If it was stuck, it was somewhere that nothing else would have got out of either. [/i]
A sport yesterday 🙂
[img] 
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And that one has standard rims and tyres.
Thank you Ian, that pic has made firing up the PC worthwhile. I had to drive a landy for work and it was quite the worst vehicle I've ever used on snowy roads. 4X4 doesn't improve braking a jot, and the combination of stiff suspension and unsuitable tyres made it a liability.
My son calls my bro in laws RR Sport a Land Rover, much to his disgust. The innocence of kids eh?
Hi Edukator, thanks, but I can't take credit as it came from here -
[url] http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/the-peaks-a-few-snaps [/url]
Anyone else think the x6 looks like an x5 which has been rolled in a crash? that slope on the back doesn't work at all.
While I do dislike the 'sport' 4x4's, but mainly due to who it seems to buy them I think that the X6 looks a bit like the streamlined Paris-Dakar 4x4's from a few years ago?
We had a test in a RR Sport a few years ago, and really liked it. So I said to the salesman that I would wait for my bonus and then come back. A few weeks later I was out with my son (who was 9) at a bike dealer, and a couple came out arguing from a nearby shop - real fat chavs with fat kids - they got into a blinged-up RR Sport and drove off. My son turned to me and said, we can't get one of those!
Those 4X4s may well have 4 wheel drive but the still have 2 wheel steer and 4 wheel brake the same as everything else. Drivers could do well to remember that.
4X4 doesn't improve braking a jot
Use the brakes alone! Use the gearbox instead.
Those 4X4s may well have 4 wheel drive but the still have 2 wheel steer and 4 wheel brake the same as everything else. Drivers could do well to remember that.
Well said ^
4WD might well get you going, but these things are no better equipped to stop & steer than anything else.
Combine that with them being heavier, and the 'sport' variety having stupidly unsuitable tyres - they are a (dangerous) joke.
The sort of drivers (sweeping generalisation shocker) who drive these things are generally pretty poorly equipped in the brain department too, so gently engine breaking - where they might still have a small advantage - is beyond them.
How would the gearbox help? The best way of stopping on soft snow is to lock all the wheels and if there's enough space put the vehicle sideways. Even ABS is a handicap (but pulling a lead off any of the sensors has disabled it on the cars I've owned).
The best way of stopping on soft snow is to lock all the wheels
True, up to a point.
The best way of stopping in the weather we have just now is to do everything gently. By using engine braking, gently, you can reduce speed safely whilst retaining some amount of steering.
In deep snow on a firm base, you can lock the wheels to stop - using the 'snow ramp' technique to create wedges in front of the wheels. I disagree that putting the vehicle sideways if you have the space is really a more effective way to stop (Fun, yes - sensible, no)
However this isn't so effective on snow over hard ice, and doesn't work at all on bare ice. The only way to stop in really slippy conditions is to keep the wheels turning fractionally slower than you are moving. 4WD engine braking is the way to do this, but it is a skill thet needs to be learned, and almost always you won't be able to stop in the space you have available anyway. Especially in a 2-ton monster
would not swap my disco right now for a huge choice of vehicles given the conditions in this area. It still has to be driven with care (and consideration), 4x4 is not the "be all" in snow and ice but it helps a lot when not used with stupid road tyres. It's spent time picking up and taking colleagues home, just what it's for.
Different vehicle altogether though the Disco, made with off road in mind. That's why you are having the success you are.
How would the gearbox help?
I despair.
The best way of stopping on soft snow is to lock all the wheels and if there's enough space put the vehicle sideways.
I really do.
Even ABS is a handicap (but pulling a lead off any of the sensors has disabled it on the cars I've owned).
Certainly is, but locking the wheels and trying to dig down to something solid is the last resort, not the norm.
Some people talk a load of twaddle, I would be happy setting of any where up hil or down dale in my car, even in todays weather.
Its a 4x4 a Disco.
Its reet fun to drive power sliding it around corners and a nice handful descending steep hills 😀
Leaving ABS on and TCS
[i]The only way to stop in really slippy conditions is to keep the wheels turning fractionally slower than you are moving[/i]
On mud maybe but on ice your best options are locked or limit of adhesion with the brakes. Once you've got any kind of slip angle at all you have much the same resitance as locked so wehlls moving at slightly less than road speed won't do better than locked. Unless you have 3 x LSDs what happens is some of the wheels turn at road speed whilst others spin uselessly at varying speeds - you have the braking force of the wheel with the least grip rather than the wheel with the most grip. LSDs improve matter but you're still better off dosing the foot brake. You can feel for the limit of adhesion with the brakes but you can't with engine braking.
Some friends of mine were out in lake Louise a few years back and were amazed to watch a Chevy Dayvan being drifted around a corner and park neatly outside a restaurant.. then were nearly floored by the sight of a pensioner trying to get out of it! She could barely walk properly but had lived nowhere else so was well used to driving in ice and snow.
A sport yesterday
You see, they are capable of going off road! Most other cars wouldn't have been able to make it all the way through that deep snow between the tarmac to the wall.
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Can you name the truck with four wheel drive,
Smells like a steak, and seats thirty five?
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Well, it goes real slow with the hammer down,
It's the country-fried truck endorsed by a clown,
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Hey, hey!
Twelve yards long, two lanes wide,
Sixty five tons of American pride!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Top of the line in utility sports,
Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
She blinds everybody with her super high beams,
She's a squirrel-squasher, deer-smackin' drivin' machine,
Canyonero! Canyonero! Canyonero!
Whoa, Canyonero! Whoooooaaaa!
On the sideways point: Just putting the vehicle slightly out of line gets you four wheels attacking fresh snow rather than two rears following on snow compacted by the front wheels. Sidewalls offer a squarer edge which ploughs snow better and offers more resistance when really sideways.
"Clutch down and steer" are words to remember when you think all is lost.
4wd's are great [u]IF[/u] 4WD is actually needed and if they are in the right hands.
Unfortunately most are owned by "poof poser cocks" who have little, or no driving ability. These people are stupid enough to put their vanity in front of the profligacy of consuming four times as much fossil fuel as is neccessary, just so they can mince round our urban streets. The little people who insist on rubbing everyone's noses in it. BTW I'm not a supporter of the idea that we are messing up our environment by burning too much CO2, but don't deny that the climate is changing. I just can't see the point in needlessly wasting a finite precious resource! Owning a gas guzzling car purely for vanity reasons is the height of selfishness and social irresponsibility!
These oversized vehicles are also a threat to everyone else's safety considering their size and because they are driven by incompetent safety unconcious self-deluded egomaniacs!
I say introduce a new law requiring prospective owners to produce unrefutable proof that such a vehicle is essential to them. Successful applicants would then have to take a test to prove that they can handle such a big car, that they fully understand the implications of driving at speed in a very heavy vehicle with such a high centre of gravity and that they can perform simple tasks like parking the damn thing.
See my wife commuting in hers, and I'm sure most would comment how she doesn't need it. But then watch her pulling her horsebox (and horses) across a muddy paddock or me last week taking my mum's friends to their hospital appointments or their ability to swallow a vans worth of stuff or just the ability to use them as an 'uplift' vehicle...
They can do a job, and can do it well for not much more than the cost of an equivilent engined car.
But if we didn't have horses, nor dogs, nor MTB'd, nor had folks in deepest Wales and Scotland then maybe we wouldn't need one - but we have, so we do - and also as she is a contractor, doesn't get paid if she isn't in work...
But surely a Rangie is a much nicer machine for the money?
[i]Spongebob - Member
4wd's are great IF 4WD is actually needed and if they are in the right hands.
Unfortunately most are owned by "poof poser cocks" who have little, or no driving ability. [/i]
Yep wished I'd stopped this morning and taken a photo of the 4x4 (audi?) on it's roof in a ditch on my commute for this thread (though I hope they escaped safetly).
Really put off my TG's X6 review, I actually like the look of them... 😳
Funny that, had someone try to get up the slipway into the carpark at Llandegla (the morning we shut) in an A3 Quattro and got stuck, turned out it was a fwd auto diesel! His mates in a Hi-Lux and Navarra had no such issues 😆
Spongebob, you have obviously met my bro in law. He fits your description to an absolute T.
He took my two sons out in his RR Sport whilst I was working just before Xmas. My eldest said to me when I got home, "he kept forcing everyone over from the outside lane by getting really close", it was really scary. He wont be taking them out again!!
My son calls my bro in laws RR Sport a Land Rover, much to his disgust. The innocence of kids eh?
He's spot on, it's just a chopped Disco 3 underneath
Really put off my TG's X6 review, I actually like the look of them...
😯
Scary. My main issue is how anybody can look at such a big car that only has 4 seats and think it's 'right'. If it had 7 seats it might be another matter, but 4 seats??? FFS.
4x4 is for getting you out of the poo that you get into in 2wd.
Using 4wd all the time means you can get really stuck unless you have a winch and know how to use it.
I have a wench and know how to use it
RangeRover has got to be the sensible buy.
The father-in-law has the Vouge which beats any Greman luxury 4X4.
He sold his X5 after 6 months once he drove his mates new Rangie (Which is a sport).
Well if your father-in-law identifies with [url= http://www.vogue.fr/ ]Vogue[/url] and thinks women look goood in the shoes on that page then I suppose he would consider a Range Rover a sensible buy. People that don't rely on magazines for their taste will probably disagree.
the X6 was a slight guilty pleasure of mine this summer. seemingly every drug dealer/politician in tajikistan owns one.
they razz around dushanbe every evening, and they did sound rather lovely... i assume they were tuned or something... and with fat alloys etc, there was something about them.
but yes, they're bloody awful cars really, you'd have to be a proper twerp to actually go and buy one.
Been dealing with an RTC this evening (car into a wall on a pretty steep hill). Couldn't get the police car anywhere near it, ambulance couldn't get near it, fire engine got closest and they cut the car in half, but it was the breakdown guy in his Discovery who got to it without any trouble, folded the seats down and transported the driver/stretcher to hospital for the paramedics, then came back up and towed the car out of the wall and away. Very impressed with that LR now.
thegreatape - I was out with an instructor for the Land Rover Experience over Christmas - driving behind him up a steep road covered in sheet ice. He cleared it first time in a bog standard 8 year old Discovery with decent tyres - they are very capable vehicles if driven by someone who knows what they are doing.
happy new year all!
surely it's the driver not the car that gets stuck? and the whole "4x4 's are bad" gets a bit boring. gas guzzlers of any kind, 4x4, 2 seat sports car or whatever, are essentially selfish.
agree that the X6 is a munter though!
m
I was in the 3 valleys last week on a ski holiday and saw many tourists that had driven over in their x6's,x5's,audi Q7's, cayennes etc wheelspinning their semi slick tyres into oblivion as the locals sped past in their battered clio's. It all comes down to having the right tyres and snow chains when necessary, even lorrys managed to get up a particularly nasty hill, that most failed at, with chains on. Saying that I did spot a Hummer (the original one not the new H2) and it didn't seam to have any problems maybe the schoolrun set should look into getting this.
Iain
Wizzed past a brand new 4.4 v8 x5 this morning, stuck at the bottom of my road, spinning away like mad.
Gave him a very smug smile as I went past in my 5 grand x-trail with no bother at all.
Got Grabber AT2's all round, blasted through 9 inches of snow this morning with impunity!
Double post!
Triple post!
I've got a Q7 and it goes fine in this weather. Stopping is a bit of a different matter though. Maybe if I had more suitable tyres it'd be different. That said I'd muich rather be in that than the other car in the family. A rwd BMW really is exciting. I couldn't get it out of the drive this morning.
Amen spongebob!
I don't doubt there are many 4x4 owners out there who actually need them, but I'd bet the majority buy them for the status, the imposing driving position the 'safety' and the 'space'. They have only slightly more load carrying space than an estate for the rare occassions when that space is needed (if you need it all the time, perhaps you should own a van).
They're not really safer in reality - as we've seen they're not invincible in bad conditions, but many of their drivers seem to believe otherwise and their size and power seems to encourage bad driving. Admittedly they might protect the driver and their precious cargo in a crash with a normal size car as their high CofG ploughs over the safety cell of the car they've just collided with, but often they perform pretty poorly in NCAP tests. Then they dazzle anyone coming the other way in a normal car because the headlights are mounted so high and inevitably have the xenon lamp upgrade....
Sorry, but (a lot of) 4x4's are a bit of a pet hate of mine 😆
their size and power seems to encourage bad driving
Speaking personally I'd say the opposite is true. I am acutely aware of the size of my beloved old XC90 and drive accordingly ie with manners. And in weather like this with decent tread tyres it is the perfect family car thank you very much.
my 110 is 19 years young, it might or might not dazzle everyone else with its Mot'd, 'E' marked headlights, it has more carrying space than any estate I've ever owned, and to finally finish this planet off Im driving it to Capetown and no doubt killing everyone on the way. I'd love to do it in a disposable Jap/Eurobox or a heavy metal unrecylable battery powered fart box but I need the crash protection from any stray donkeys that might wander in my way.