Brought home my BMW X3 30d modded to 350 hp & 700 nm: 5 pros & 5 cons

I was stunned to read the trip computer when the car was handed over to me. It read an astounding 11.5 kmpl.

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2014 BMW X3 xDrive30d (F25) - The Ultimate "Urban" Driving Machine.

What I like:

• BMW's first real crack at the compact luxury SUV segment after the ugly duckling-esque first generation. They made an effort, and it shows. The fit-finish & quality of the materials inside is excellent—soft-touch plastics everywhere.
• The car looks great outside; she has excellent proportions, and her size is just right for the urban jungle.
• Fantastic GC, commanding driving position, surprisingly practical interior with loads of stowage spaces and big door pockets. Very unlike the BMWs I have had in the past (116i, 530d M).
• The car rewrites the rule book for compact luxury SUVs regarding chassis and powertrain. Stonking performance, sorted ride & handling, capable of soft roading—she does it all.
• This 350 bhp / 760 Nm diesel machine returns 10 kmpl on my highway-city (50-50) cycle. It brings all the petrolhead thrills and feels yet doesn't break the bank.

What I don't like (mostly nitpicks):

• The ride has a stiff edge. You can sometimes feel the suspension, having to work harder at low speeds around town. Especially on the bumpy roads.
• The 10-speaker BMW HiFi Sound System would do the job for most people, but it leaves the audiophile in me wanting more.
• Compared to the LCI model that BMW introduced in 2015, it misses out on some goodies. These include the Harmon Kardon music system, Head-up display, bigger 10.2'' iDrive display (vs 8.8'' in my car), LED Headlamps, Sports seats at the front and an M-sport body kit on the outside.
• BMW run-flat tings = No spare tyre/space saver in the boot.
• The BMW telephone cradle in the centre armrest has aged horrendously and is eating into storage space in the area.

If having your cake and eating it too was a car. It has got to be the 2014 BMW F25 X3 30dX. Matt Watson from Carwow seems to think it's the Swiss army knife of the car world, and rightly so. It's comfortable, fast, practical, and capable of light off-roading. This is quite a rare car; only a few were sold in the 30d guise, to begin with. They are very hard to come by in the used market, which is awash with only 20d's all over the place. The one I ended up with is even more special.

This particular X3 has been turned up to eleven in the following areas:

• Performance & Power
• Ride & Handling
• Convenience & Aesthetics
• Fuel Economy

The first two were given, the third ones are lovely little extras, but the fourth one has been quite the revelation for me.

In context, I have spent much time around F-series BMWs. This car replaces my beloved F20 116i and now shares garage space with the legendary F10 530d LCI M-Sport.

As brilliant as they are, both cars have one fatal flaw, especially for our Indian driving conditions: the ground clearance.

I am at an age where my back would happily trade off some driving dynamics in favour of easy ingress and egress. It also feels nice to have your bottom remain unclenched whenever you even look at a speed breaker or pothole.

But see, that's the thing. There is hardly a perceptible or tangible compromise. This thing corners F-L-A-T for an SUV. Or shall I say, SAV.

BMW's xDrive system was developed with its core values in mind. Dynamics, driver involvement, and feel are top priorities. The same cannot be said about modern BMWs (barring the M cars). Their approach to power distribution is much different from that of their competitors, with their quattro and 4Matic systems. It is a rear-biased system. 'Nuff said.

As a result, BMW made much noise about how this is a sports activity vehicle. I also prefer using this term to describe the car, as SUV is now used willy-nilly to describe every other tall boy hatchback out there.

The marketing departments of all car brands in India are having a field day. These days, everything is an SUV or CSUV. Call it that; you are more likely to have a winning product.

1. Power & Performance upgrades:

• Hybrid Turbocharger from Turbo Dynamics UK:

A hybrid turbocharger looks like a stock one on the outside. However, its interior is crammed full of redesigned internals using exotic materials to increase flow at a given rotor speed.

Tuning culture will have you believe that "boost" is everything. Crank it up; you get more power. Sure, but in doing this, you are making the standard turbo work harder to create extra pressure outside of its components' tested tolerances.

To overcome this, Turbo Dynamics UK has a special sauce for the turbo in the N57N engine designed to handle outputs up to ~400 bhp.

How do they do this?

• Cutback or 'Clipped' turbine blades.
• CNC machined compressor covers with "Ported Shroud" technology.
• CNC Machined 360 Degree Thrust bearing assemblies.
• Hi-Temperature and 'Total Seal' piston rings seal.
• Up-rated wastegate poppet valves and bushes.
• Wagner Tuning UK Catless Downpipe & EGR Swril Flap Delete

Ø70mm in diameter, manufactured from high-quality SS304 stainless steel for maximum durability and longevity. 100% custom fit, replacing Original BMW Part No. 18308511143

The optimized design reduces the turbochargers' thermal stress and back pressure.

The swirl flap delete kit lets you remove the problematic swirl flaps known to degrade and eventually disintegrate. This then ends up being sucked into the engine, most of the time with dire consequences.

After removing the swirl flaps, a CNC Machined Billet Aluminium plug is designed to fill the blank hole left in the inlet manifold. The factory swirl flap motor housing is then refitted to hold the plug in place.

• xHP Stage 3 Transmission Tune

The xHP tune removes the transmission's internal torque limiters. It also ensures shorter shift times across all modes, lightning-fast reaction times, race-style auto-shifting in Sport+, stronger blips, and reconfigured Launch Control parameters.

Also, you get a neat Gear Display in the dash D1..D8.

• Quantum Tuning Custom ECU Remap Stage 2 +

A more conservative custom tune has been chosen for better reliability. Figures are approximately around 350 bhp / 760 Nm. Thanks to all the hardware/tuning upgrades, there's a healthy 36% increase in BHP & torque over the stock figures. There is more power that can be made in this setup. Given that the turbo is built, a bump to Stage 3 will only require an uprated front-mount intercooler and bigger injectors (perhaps from the M50d).

This is a street build rather than one for competition. The main focus was a solid and reliable machine capable of munching endless miles while occasionally putting a smile on your face now and then when you put your foot down.

I would love to put her on a dyno, but Mumbai still needs a 4WD dyno.

2. Ride & Handling:

• Koni Frequency Selective Damping Suspension

In a standard shock absorber, the main damping characteristic is defined by the oil flow going through the piston assembly.

With KONI FSD technology, the standard damping characteristic is maintained, but an FSD valve is added to control a parallel oil flow next to the flow going through the piston.

This parallel oil flow is closed by a feature in the FSD valve, causing a rise in damping forces almost linear to the time the piston moves in one direction.

Conventional dampers cannot offer both solutions because they have different frequency areas. FSD technology can change the damping level through mechanical valve control in relation to the frequency of movement, solving the conflict of achieving both comfort and handling in one damper.

The suspension is pliant on bumpy roads, yet it's taut and planted with minimal body roll on smooth roads. Thanks to this suspension upgrade, the car is much more confident in putting down and scrapping off (braking) all that extra power. I had my maiden drive on the Atal Setu a few days ago. Triple digits came up quickly; she was relentless in acceleration until the double ton. The ride and handling at high speed are faultless. BMW's chassis design and Koni's FSD trickery make rumble strips and expansion joints nonexistent. The car glides over them and holds silly speeds in absolute composure. This thing is built to cruise on the autobahn all day, every day. That said, at low speeds in town, it is stiff. Liveable stiff, definitely not bone jarringly so.

FSD technology has caught on in a big way. Cars coming fresh out of the factory lines nowadays also use this technology. The newly launched, refreshed Tesla Model 3 uses FSD Technology. The all-new BMW X2 M35i is equipped with the M Adaptive Suspension, which for this platform uses FSD technology as opposed to their older adaptive system.

3. Convenience & Aesthetics:

• New Shape M-sport Steering wheel w/ Paddle Shifters:

Akshay already covered this upgrade in his last update post. This wheel has a much more contemporary design and looks miles better than the ones BMW fitted as standard to the F25 X3 LCI M-sport.

• 6WB Full Digital Instrument Cluster Upgrade:

This is a retrofit from models that were sold outside of India. If I remember correctly, the Indian F25 X3 LCI M-sport version gets the semi-digital cluster. The 6WB was found in the LCI 530d M-sport. Again, It is a more modern-looking instrument binnacle that changes its look as you toggle through Eco Pro, Comfort & Sport Modes. A few coding mods have also been made that enable a digital readout on the Speedo and a cheeky little M550d badge on the Tacho. In sport mode, a power bar under the Tacho maxes out at 400bhp (as opposed to the stock readout that maxes out at 320bhp).

• LCI Climate Control Panel Retrofit & Carbon Fibre finish inserts:

This one is a straightforward retrofit from the LCI model. These mods give the interior a fresh lease of life. The new Climate control panel looks more modern. Instead of the wood veneers, the carbon finish looks sporty and aligns with the car's overall character.

• Exterior:

Akshay has blacked out everything, including window sills, roof rails, grills, and wheels—murdered out and debaged—except, of course, for the BMW logo. I'm not too fond of the blacked-out version of the BMW logo, as seen on other tuned BMWs.

4. Fuel Economy:

I was stunned to read the trip computer when the car was handed over to me. It read an astounding 11.5 kmpl. The N57N is quite a frugal block with a light foot, as I have also experienced first-hand with our 530d. But in this case, that frugal DNA is further enhanced by the efficiencies created by the hybrid turbo and the eagerness to shift in the nature of the gearbox courtesy of the TCU tune (in Comfort).

I took a little road trip from Mumbai to Deolali this past weekend. It averaged an astounding 12.2 kmpl on the round trip, and this was not me hyper-milling by any stretch of the imagination.

With these FE numbers, A full tank of diesel gives me a range of 750-800 Km.

My daily commute to work and back home is around 75 Km. I'm making significant savings in both time spent at the pumps and overall money spent on fuel. One can be a petrolhead and be sensible at the same time. Revelation, really!

Driving Impressions:

Cold starts in the car, and the engine comes to life with an angry and roarty bark. The sound is more akin to a V8 engine, unlike the diesel inline-6 that it is. This is all thanks to that beautifully designed Wagner downpipe. What also helps the sound is that the stock exhaust plumbing post-downpipe is basically a straight pipe.

The car creeps away from a standstill effortlessly, and with a light foot, the gearbox will upshift rapidly to the highest gear. Under 2.5k rpm, the exhaust is civilized; the car can go about doing its commuter miles and go unnoticed like the sleeper it is.

Put your foot down; it drops gears (multiple if needed) again rather rapidly, and the exhaust comes on the song; the mammoth torque pushes you back in your seat while the xDrive system puts it all down effortlessly. The TCU tune on the ZF 8-speed makes it shift as fast as some DCTs out there. It's something else. Triple digits come up in under 5 seconds (using launch control). With enough space, Akshay has told me she will hit the limiter at 250 kmph quite easily. I haven't found the cojones to do something like that. The speed, sound and being so high off the ground throws you off. The car can do it without breaking a sweat, me as a driver? Maybe not.

The B57 engine (as reviewed by Moderator Karan for the BMW X7) is the successor to the N57N engine found in this car. After all the mods, the power and torque numbers are nearly identical. It only makes me wonder what numbers a fully done-up B57 can make. I don't even know if the ECUs for these new cars have been unlocked.

All this performance is wrapped up in all the practicality of the SAV body style and the diesel economy. I can't wrap my head around the fact that I upgraded from my 116i to a car with +120 Bhp & +430 Nm that runs on cheaper fuel and is SO much more economical than the 116i could ever be. This truly is all the car for all people.

All credits, where credits are due, bravo, Akshay & Team Redline Autohaus, for building this cracker of a car. I look forward to many exciting adventures in the coming years.

Build Vision/Outlook:

This car feels very modern underneath with all the performance mods. The driving dynamics and ride quality are very well sorted. Easily at par with most of the modern equivalent luxury SUVs out there that cost two, maybe 3x the price of this car pre-owned. A brand new buy for the same money, I would have ended up with a top-end Hyundai Creta N-Line or Kia Seltos. Tech aside, these cars have got nothing on this particular X3.

I took her out with some non-enthusiast friends. To their untrained eyes, their best guess of the age of this very car was "not more than 3-4 years." This got me thinking as to which direction I would like to take this build forward.

I want to arrest this car's ageing process further. I aim to make it look modern and ready for another full decade.

I already have my next few upgrades planned. It won't be performance modifications, just things that modernize the car's exterior & interior. The idea is to make it look fresh and relevant even today, almost ten years after she rolled off the dealership floor.

Expect updates on the same in due course. What does the BHP-ian community think? Would you buy a car like this over a Kia Seltos, Hyundai Creta, or MG Hector?

Read BHPian comments for more insights and information.