German Car Zone

Wow...33K? Is it just me or does that sound a little too steep?

In Sweden the price is about the same as a 3-series.

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Sadly, the exterior grandiloquence is not mimicked in the cabin: the X1 possibly has the poorest quality interior of the maker's entire range. It's about on a par with the 1 Series, but the car's size and cost raise expectations so it feels disappointingly built down to a price. The lower level plastics, and even the instrument binnacle cowl, are all hollow, scratchy and relatively low rent. While the cabin is all arranged with BMW familiarity, familiar BMW tactility is missing.

Just as I thought!!!
I saw this for myself on previous pic's and hoped I was wrong!
Those NASTY plastics of the lower dash.....BMW..WHAT THE Fken Hell is wrong with you???

Now it's time for Scott / EnI to explain how a premium car maker can justify using these materials and WHY they did hard cheap plastics anyway??? Come on BMW - people are not stupid! NOR cheap!

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I am totally fed-up of MY brand BMW for thinking they could get away with this 'cheapness'! Did you not learn from critisism on the 1er YEARS ago??? You rectified the problem with the facelift and stupidity and/or ignorance from BMW did it again on the X1? HUH?? I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION! Drop the price by 25% and put a Mini badge ont the X1....that would justify your hard, scratchy plastics, NOT ON A BMW!!!

I gather the excessive use of exclamation and question marks serves to lend legitimacy to your opinion? How? By making it more visible? Does BMW listen harder based on the number of punctuation marks?

One or three will do. This is overdoing it.

This is very true. I usually ignore posts which appear to be written by an adolescent.

However, I was at the Frankfurt motor show on saturday, and one of the cars I was looking forward to the most was the X1. Mainly because I liked the look of the exterior and wanted to see if all the hyperbole eminating from the direction of BMW CM about the high quality interior of the X1 was true.

It's not.

Don't get me wrong, I can understand where BMW would need to cut costs. This is no 50K X5 after all. But the hype gave me unrealistic expectations which were never going to be met. Now my underlying memory of the X1 is that it's "cheap" as opposed to "nice car".

Sorry Martin but you have to understand or rather BMW has to understand my disappointment, I mean come on BMW!

It's all good Human. Just got to keep up the standards that's all...

That article from Inside Line must be one of the most positive reviews ever written, on any subject...

Here's the thing: I am of the understanding that the turn-of-the-century halcyon days of pervasive application of soft-touch plastics in mass-market cars is over and that nowadays every car's interior is specified to a price (and is relative to the expected volumes of that car.)

Soft-touch polyurethane and PVC coatings of the plastic surfaces in a mass-produced car is at odds with enviro-friendly initiatives. Automotive manufacturers are compelled to reduce the amount of plastic material that goes into car interiors as well as to ensure that the plastics that do go in are a) to some extent made from recycled material, b) to every extent recyclable.

Combinations of different types of plastics is expensive and more difficult to recycle. Auto makers now pursue a more "cost-effective process to more fully recycle end-of-life vehicles, specifically shredder residue." Shredder residue is a mix of many different materials that may include plastics, rubber, polyurethane foams, glass and metals. Consider the cost vs. benefit of layering a hard structural interior plastic with a soft-touch polyurethane coating - it's perhaps necessary for imparting a subjective impression of interior quality but has little legitimate benefit to the consumer, environment or bottom line.

We got spoilt as consumers, we got used to a certain standard of soft-touch tactility. Now, every automaker has shown an intent to reduce the subjective quality feel of the interior of current and forthcoming mass-market cars relative to that of their forebears. The more mass-market the car, the greater the decontenting of superfluous soft-touch materials, hence the harder, scratchier plastics in the (typically) lower half of the dashboard and centre consoles. The B8, E90, and W202 all saw a decontenting of soft-touch materials in such a manner.

As plastic technology and recycling methods improve, I'm sure that we'll see a return of tactile quality in premium, but mass-market cars. But for now, the trend is clear and we consumers have to deal with it.