Munich gave the M Division total largesse … and it went totally large. Too much? (photos: Callum Crawley).

Price: $345,000

Powertrain: 4.4-litre petrol V8 with electric motor, maximum power 550kW, maximum torque 1000Nm; eight-speed auto, all-wheel-drive.

How big? 5110mm long, 2005mm wide, 1755mm high, 3105mm wheelbase.

We like: Giant-sized wallop; a technical titan; plush furnishings.

Not so much: Flinty ride; controversial styling; Kardashian excess.

THIS car in a single sentence summary? 

It’s an automotive armadillo whose owners will need to be as equally thick-skinned.

‘Utterly ugly’, ‘a monster machine with a monster price that exists for no sensible reason'; ‘a massive exercise in ego’.

Those are actually some are the nicer things others said about the BMW XM as tested here, in the top-flight Label Red format. This is the car that makes Top Gear’s video team retch.

All around the world, the second bespoke M car in 50 years has been getting a lukewarm reception; media are of course being picky, but perhaps more alarming to Munich is that a lot of M buyers are also not showing a lot of love, either. Tough crowd.

To be fair, you only need look at it to see why. Created as a birthday present to itself in celebrating 50 years of the M division, it’s not easy to picture exactly how this hulking sports utility fits in as spiritual adjunct to this operation’s many classics.

Abject brutalism goes beyond the look. From the wheel,  regardless it is the most powerful M car ever, and perhaps because it is also the most expensive BMW you can buy, the Label Red is also hard to get your head around, for all sorts of reasons.

Is it a waste when, in our restricted environment, everyday lawful driving uses perhaps one percent of its talent and reveals very little of its pedigree? The usual safe place for really powerful cars of this pedigree is a race circuit, but would you really? I’d say approach with caution. All performance SUVs are hampered by weight and size in that environment. As much as it has all the kapow and a lot of the right kit - save for carbon ceramic brakes, which disconcertingly are not even an option - the XM is still a massive attack. Consequence of misjudgement would be huge. 

So you’d buy in because ….? All the obvious reasons of having the wherewithal and desire for something that’s, for better or worse, a true standout whose special status is flavoured by assurance only 500 exist globally in this uber format. 

As is always the case with low-count models, the brand’s drum beat implicit is that the version for which are specifically reserved the striking red kidneys, a numbered plaque inside and special ‘Frozen Carbon Black’ exterior paint and red interior has potential of being a future, appreciating classic. You never know, it could happen … all those Bangle BMWs we derided back in the day look pretty decent now, so … 

It’s single greatest asset is the powertrain. Although that 4.4-litre V8 is well known, the marriage with plug-in hybrid is a fresh angle that elevates the technical fascination. Beyond that, the total outputs represent as a life-changing force.

That is not hyperbole. As much as the car, as a whole, reeks of being a ballistic bombast, the drivetrain it itself is nonetheless without question an incredibly impressive offering. Not just its outright explosiveness, but how it creates that big, big bang.

At time of delivery, the XM Label Red alone could offer this engine in its highest pedigree, but now we know that the impending M5 will have the exact same thing, in exact same tune. 

Logically, anyone of sound M-mindedness would await that sedan, because it will be a better placement. As would the wagon, which has yet to be signed off for local consumption (but, again, would fulfil more coherently in a daily duty than this SUV).

Those who want to be first off the block then ultimately decide to simply complete the set and have both will be in for a fascinating time, that’s for sure.

Like it or no, this is a core example yet of BMW moving with the times.

Electrifying fossil fuel powertrains is a happening thing that has come about through utter necessity, and while it  this being the first M with plug-in hybrid - and, thus, the first to draw Road User Charge - is in itself a huge matter of moment, it is also but a reasonably fleeting transition. A stepping stone to technologies beyond.

For all that, what is being delivered in this case is a real eye-opener to what can be accomplished when engineering talent is unleashed with understanding that money - both that spent during development, and that asked on purchase - is no particular impediment.

In hindsight, could the XM really been seen as a trial by disguise for the M5? In as much as the products are wildly different, BMW obviously needed to blood this engine in the public environment to prove it was on the right path in committing it to the famous car.

After all, Munich has made clear there was a point in time when it wondered if this was a prudent powertrain. 

In briefing for the M5, M boss Franciscus van Meel admitted a multitude of options were considered - including smaller engines with less cylinders and a non-plug-in hybrid system - before concluding that the V8 was integral to the appeal of the car and that a useful electric range was desirable in Europe especially. 

The challenge was then to make the hybrid system powerful enough, and the chassis of the M5 competent enough, to overcome the significant weight gain of a plug-in hybrid system - some 500kg.

That process logically required a test bed. The XM effectively is that car, if in bigger and - ahem - bulkier scale; as SUV’s go, it is extra fat.

Still, the additional phat more than compensates. That the twin-turbocharged 4.4-litre V8 petrol engine using twin-scroll turbos is a familiar device should not diminish the extent of accomplishment. It has, of course, been meted all possible  mechanical highlights, including high-pressure direct fuel injection, Valvetronic variable valve timing and Double-Vanos variable camshaft timing. On its own, this unit makes up to 436kW at 5600-6500rpm and a whopping 750Nm of torque from just 1800rpm up to 5400rpm. That’s a massive 70kW and 100Nm more raw combustion than the already muscled standard XM packs.

But there’s more. Those figures are boosted by BMW M’s first ever plug-in hybrid system which combines a permanently excited synchronous e-motor inside the ZF eight-speed auto with a 25.7kWh battery. The electric motor is rated at 145kW and 280Nm. Maximum power and torque figures produced when the engine and motor work together are 542kW and 1000Nm. Meaty. You wonder how the everyday XM gets by with 480kW/800Nm, right?

A 19.2-kWh battery stores enough electrons to allow it to coast along in silence for almost 90 kilometres (according to WLTP scale, more like 60 max according to my utterly unscientific approach), but with a light foot. Boot it and you can see it run to a top speed of 140kmh as a pure EV. But not for long.

Integrated braking attempts mechanical-to-regenerative transitions, but realistically you will have to plug it in to replenish, which is about the car’s slowest aspect as the battery can only accept an AC charge rate of 7.4kWh. So 4.5 hours on the plug.

As much as the electric pure aspect makes for a marketing feel-good, the real reason it’s here is to elevate the petrol-fed fury. 

Even when the battery is depleted, the Label Red is astonishingly grunty. When all systems are at optimal though … it’s doubly stunning. Ability to accomplish 100kmh from a standing start in 3.7 seconds is 0.4s quicker than the standard XM and lineball with some of the fastest pure electric performance cars. This from a beast that weighs a mighty 2710kg.

You can sense the power no matter how easily it’s driven - and hear it as well, in form of a menacing growl emerging from little more than walking pace - and though argument that it has too much for general operation doesn’t stick, thanks to the quality of the tyres and the traction controls, you’d be silly to poke the bear without careful exploration of what the limits are. Woe betide anyone silly enough to wholly disable those assists; the idea is you can use the driving calibrations to settle into settings that suit your style; these can be saved on the M1 and M2 buttons. On public roads, it can give more than you need without broaching 2000rpm.

So it’s a weapon. But in terms of what kind? Everything thereafter reflects on how BMW has formatted it. 

As much as it does seem amazing for the second pure M car to a complete anthesis of the first, that elegant and iconic M1 supercar of the 1970s,  we shouldn’t really be surprised it is an obscenely powerful massive SUV. Because, love or loathe ‘em, SUVs are all the rage. 

But does it need to be such a design outrage? Apparently, yes. Notwithstanding that this having come after the iX might cement the view that BMW is getting pretty good at banging out stylistically divisive SUVs, there’s also insistence the XM takes the conceptual baseline beyond anything found in the main BMW model range. Accept that or not, either way it is clearly deliberately incendiary.

BMW expects China to be a prime sales ground; there’s no M history there and lots of wealthy young entrepreneurs with taste for the provocative. But for M’s traditional audience? 

I feel the emotional potency goes too far. Bangle BMWs were harshly criticised, but at least they were divisive (and some, ahem, seem utterly fantastic now - sorry Chris). XM didn’t even manage to split opinion. All of those who got up close to this tester  universally recoiled. Some expressed outright revulsion. 

In fairness, for some, it was purely the matt black paint with a big red stripe - well, executed yet a reminder, nonetheless, of  when in childhood I hand-painted my Matchbox toys (you can get worse: The standard car can come with gold highlights)

However, beyond its hue the bevelled-block proportions just don’t really capture positively. A colleague’s suggestion it’s a total bastardisation of M’s customary strong suit of turning out cars that have a forceful, muscular elegance to them seems on the money. I don’t mind tough looking performance fare, but here you get thuggish brutalism. The exceptional build quality tends to be missed because you find yourself focussing on naff elements, none greater than the grille surround being LED-lit. Just in case you missed picking up how awful it already looks in daylight.

So there’s that. The other issue with it being such a large vehicle is that, for all the effort BMW put into prioritising the driving dynamics, they’ve still ended up with a machine that handles and steers well … but perhaps only for a SUV. In the pantheon of M greats, it is hard to say it stands as the tallest.

It’s more than just the substance and weight; it’s also the fact that, as hunkered as it is, and as much as it delivers a stunning decent low-slung driving position, it still hasn’t an especially road-hugging feel. 

It’s not that BMW hasn’t lavished with kit that should lend an edge. It has standard adaptive M Suspension Professional, active anti-roll control, M Sport differential torque vectoring, and rear steering. And it’s not that it lacks precision and control. When you smash it along, there’s all the grip (more than I imagined, given the tyres were in haggard state) in the world and it has good balance and steering feel, while the brakes are fantastic. Yet as is soften the case with performance Euros, the ride being anything from very firm to crushingly brutal depending on how you set things up is . challenging; NZ surfaces are rarely up to allowing it to properly flow and, coarse chip and worse, it has tendency to be is as hard as maximum security lifer. 

The extent to which it dominates a lane also comes into how you drive it; ostensibly, it’s between an X5 and an X7, but often you’d swear it was wider. When in company of those products, it’d be interesting to spot the sharing, because for all that it portrays as a bespoke project, that’s not quite the case. 

The body and the drivetrain are utterly dedicated, yes, but even though the platform has noble lines - being also used by Rolls-Royce - it is also a Frankensteined version of BMW’s well-utilised CLAR architecture. 

The XM also has the X5M’s rear differential and suspension; the high voltage battery is from the X5 plug-in hybrid. The mirror caps? Also X5. It ruffled some to discover panels they imagined would SURELY be rendered in some exotic race car material are ‘just’ steel.

The manner is which the XM carries itself has repercussion of passenger comfort, which is a pity because the cabin is enticing in how much room it lends. Though there’s no obvious additional kit content here than is found in a lot of other performance SUVs with significant price advantage, you can see the total prestige in the quality of the materials. The quilted Merino leather surfaces make regular hide premium seem quite ordinary. Of the thousands of cars I’ve tested, it’s the first to have a set of throw pillows for the back seats.

But would you enjoy it if the occupant of the command position - also brilliant BTW, not only because the seat is fantastic but the quality of presentation from the BMW Curved Screen, that subtly biases toward the driver, is just stunning - was prone to press on? 

And that’s perhaps the core issue with the concept. As limo-like is feel as it is in ambience and trim, the XM Label Red is clearly aimed more at the driver than passengers. Yet it also arguably not enough of a driving machine for NZ conditions to satisfy those here who have enjoyed some famous past M cars.  All of which have been exactly that: Cars.

And there’s the thing. All high-performance sports utilities are an enigma. Considered with pure pragmatism, do any really pay off?  Merit of being the first stomper with a plug only goes so far and hardly warrants the ludicrous expense, not least when an X5 M Competition is $100k less.