BMW 320d xDrive Auto road test

Are you one of the many company car drivers who got stranded in snow last winter? If so, you may want to have a good look at the BMW 320d Sport xDrive.

Effectively, it combines all of the attributes which make the 320d one of the best company cars with a four-wheel drive system for bags of extra grip. The thing is, you do have to pay for it. In fact, not only is the two-wheel drive version a whopping £3,000 cheaper, it’s also cheaper to run and emits less CO2 so is cheaper to tax too.

Let’s find out how much, then. Emitting 125g/km of CO2, the xDrive model qualifies for 19 percent Benefit-in-Kind taxation. With a P11d value of £32,435 that means a monthly tax bill of £108 for a 20 percent tax payer and up to double that for 40 percent tax payers.

The two-wheel drive Sport, however, sits two percent lower than the xDrive and will cost £93 per month at 20 percent. Which means over 12 months you’ll save £180 in tax alone.

Of course, it’s highly unlikely you’ll actually pay that amount each month since you’ll probably want some optional extras. Our car came with nearly £10,000 of extra equipment, which pushes the monthly tax bill up to £129 per month on the 20 percent pay scale.

We’re not quite sure we’d pick all of the options on our car, though. We’d certainly splash out on the Professional media package – it’s intuitive and slick to use with the rotary controller next to the gear lever. The system features real-time traffic information for the built-in sat-nav, along with Bluetooth handsfree and even access to the internet.

If you’re an enthusiastic driver then the adaptive suspension system is worth a punt too. You can adjust the stiffness of the suspension depending on whether you’d like a softer, more comfortable ride or a sportier and bumpier experience. This is controlled using the switch on the driver’s side of the gear lever.

So, on the open road the 320d is impressive. It has that rare cocktail of excellent handling and decent ride quality. The steering is a little vague, especially around the straight ahead, but it is incredibly well-weighted so it offers drivers enough accuracy.  This weighting can be changed as per the setting you put the car in, be it Comfort, Sport or Sport+.

You may be wondering whether the four-wheel drive system actually has any effect on the way the 320d drives. Of course, there’s a lot more grip available, but you also lose a tiny bit of engagement in the process. It’s down to the fact that the front wheels are doing steering and driving together, which dilutes the excellent purity you can feel in the regular 3 Series chassis and its rear-wheel drive configuration.

The somewhat noisy diesel engine will get the xDrive from 0-62mph in the same time as the normal 320d - 7.4 seconds - while its top speed is 142mph, which is a 1mph reduction.

In terms of range the xDrive suffers once again. BMW claims an official fuel economy figure of 58.9mpg for the four-wheel drive car and 62.8mpg for the two-wheel drive one. That means you’ll get an extra 50 miles per tank of diesel by choosing the two-wheel drive car. The range itself is up to 777 miles for the xDrive, although we’d expect closer to 550 when driving at normal speeds.

Our car is in Sport trim, which means you get features such as 17-inch alloys, gloss black interior trim, red stitching on the seats and steering wheel, and an aggressive look for the grille on the front bumper. It’s designed to look sporty, and it does.

So, this is a car you should be looking at if you’re after BMW quality but with the extra levels of grip afforded by four-wheel drive. Just be wary that you’ll have to pay for the privilege.

You can read our full review of the BMW 3 Series by clicking here.