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Judging from the PCP deals BMW have offered and the deposit contributions, the only way to shift them is to almost give them away. 

BMW, without much publicity, has introduced a new backbox for the M340i. It sounds lush, at least in America, where they don't have particulate filters. I fear yet again, the single turbo B58 is going to sound much nicer than the twin-turbo S58. BMW got the sound of the N54 absolutely right, but the S55 just sounded horrific. S58 looks to be the same. 

Does the big performance SUV work for the customer? Given the popularity of SUV's, it seems like a silly question. But I can't remember the last time I saw an X5M for example, I've seen plenty M5's. 

So true.

The pricing sounds utterly comedic, but I guess that is before the 6 gazillion support BMW throw at you to induce you to get one. I love this sentence from the article - "...if it didn’t ride like a Victorian ox-cart being slowly towed over a furrowed field in mid-summer." 

I think that manufacturers and buyers need to reach some sort of workable compromise. In this blinger world, looks are important and therefore more people like the sporty "M" look than the unsporty "SE" look. I'm as guilty of that as the next person. But 99% of the time, they don't need the power or the handling (or in many cases just overly stiff suspension) that these cars have. So if you still buy the power as you might like it to be there, at least the manufacturers could sort out the bloody awful ride that seems to come with it in too many cases.    

I think I am maybe the opposite. I would take an RS4/RS6/E63 estate over any of the M SUV's but having had an X4 and an X5 30D, I think they fit the bill perfectly and the diesel suits the larger heavy format of an SUV much better than petrol. The X4 averages 34mpg with plenty of short trips and will do an easy 40mpg on the motorway. I know an estate would do the same job but (at the moment) my wife enjoys her higher driving position and at 5.6s to 60 she is seldom short of grunt.

The biggest issue I have with SUVs is that they squander vertical space because of the pretence of being able to "off-road".
MPVs were much better as the lower floorpan gave a much more voluminous interior, but somehow very few of us desired MPVs and they have all but died out. Even the Scenic was restyled/re-engineered to look like an SUV, robbing it of a lot of practicality

A byproduct of trying to cram a product into every possible niche or creating niches that weren't there before then hurriedly cramming something into it.

At a party on Friday night, I ran into a friend of mine who currently drives a V8 Cayenne. He confided to me that he'd recently tested the Stelvio Quadrifoglio as a potential replacement for the Porker and that he had found it absolutely epic. Sounds like he's going to get one - you can pick them up used now for not much over £50k.

He's Italian...

Not that cheap. It looks remarkably cheap:

www.carwow.co.uk/alfa-romeo/stelvio-quadrifoglio/deals

£385/month is eye-catching. But then you realise there is no mention of the deposit amount and, reverse-engineering the maths, to get to £385, you need a deposit of slightly over £17k (!!) to get the monthlies down as low as £385. 

Not so cheap after all. When you tot up the deposit and monthlies, effectively that's £31k over 3 years, or slightly over 10k per year.

Plus then a balloon payment of nigh-on £40k, which looks ambitious given year old examples are already yours for not much over £55k.

It's very cheap when you consider how that LR would sting you about the same for a moderately specced Velar P300 HSE, which has half the cylinder count and 2/3rds the power.

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Minimum 11% discount, which is £8k and they’ll offer £4,500 without being asked.

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