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A hulking behemoth, BMW's X6 is living proof that the days of the 4x4 are over, says Martin Love

BMW X6

£41,490
Miles per gallon: 34.4
CO2 per km: 217 grams
Good for: Muddy tracks
Bad for: Laughter tracks

In the name of fair-mindedness I am going to list the positives that BMW has managed to bury in a blizzard of negatives on its new X6 - the world's first, and surely last, Sports Activity Coupe. There's the... erm... oh... and... the... Actually, I can't think of any. Usually, in the course of a week's test drive, even the most unprepossessing of vehicles manage to show some glimmer of hope; reveal some crumb of charm that makes the venture worthwhile. It may not be until the last day that you discover the boot light that doubles as a nifty torch, or that there's a self-raising sun-screen hidden in the parcel shelf. But each time I sat behind the wheel of the X6 there was just more disappointment. You could say it was my own stupid fault. Just look at it for heaven's sake. It's a giant bloater on wheels, a dull-eyed leviathan that seems washed up before its taken its maiden voyage. Even Peter Stringfellow in his beach thong looks more respectable. But, and here's the catch, people still want to buy them - this year's production was sold out before many prospective customers had even had the chance to sit in one. However, just because somebody wants an X6 is no reason to give them one. Sometimes customers need to be protected from their baser urges.

The X6 picks up where the excellent X5 left off. In fact, the X6 looks like a trodden-on X5 - and you can still buy a standard X5 that offers similar performance, economy and emissions for less money. And you'll be able to sit more people in more comfort in an X5. The sloping roofline of the X6, which must have had BMW's over-excited designers whooping and high-fiving in delight when they got it past their gangmasters, has the twin effect of making the car ugly from the outside and uncomfortable in the inside. Even children hunched over their Nintendos don't like sitting in cramped seats with no headroom and small windows. Even worse, there are only two seats in the back so it's clearly intended for adults... Oh dear. Moving on, we can't worry about that because we're busy doing battle up front. The X6 has been blessed with BMW's counterintuitive iDrive - a multi-purpose knob that controls everything from the in-car entertainment to navigation and climate. It's a source of endless frustration. The simple act of turning on the radio is enough to bring you to tears. Then there are the baffling parking sensors which have a mind of their own. The electronic handbrake is certainly clever, but it works in the opposite way to what you'd expect. Visibility is worse than the rear stalls at the Lyceum and even getting out of the car is an obstacle course - a rubber-pimpled running board means that the backs of your legs get covered in grime every time you manage to escape this beast's clutches.

To drive, the X6 feels monstrously heavy, a lumbering slab of pumped-up muscle. They say there are two types of rugby player - those who play the piano and those who move them. The same could be said for 4x4s, and the X6 is definitely in the latter category.

martin.love@observer.co.uk

Car Broker Motoring News Editorial, motoring, Observer, Technology, The Observer

After 35 years, VW's breathtaking sport coupe is back. And it's been worth the wait, says Martin Love

Volkswagen Scirocco

£19,104
Miles per gallon: 55.4
CO2 per km: 138 GRAMS
Good for: Blue moods
Bad for: Red alerts

The car pictured here is Volkswagen's latest take on its iconic sport coupe, the Scirocco. The fact that it's blue - "Rising Blue Metallic with Anthracite 'Vienna' leather upholstery" to be precise - means two things. One, it joins the ranks of the most popular colour choice for cars in the UK - more than 7m blue cars are currently registered in Britain. And two, according to imotormag, an online motoring magazine, it will be 15 per cent less likely to break down than that most cursed of car colours, grey. In fact, the only car colour found to be more reliable than blue is red. But how can a car's colour affect whether it is more or less likely to break down? Various theories are put forward by imotormag, ranging from the psychological profile of drivers who opt for red, to the more prosaic idea that grey cars are usually destined for the rental/fleet market. Either way, next time you shake your head dismissively when some poor sap describes his car as "a nice red one" remember that they clearly know more than you ...

Whatever colour it comes in, the Scirocco is a highly emotive marque among car fanciers. The original two-door, four-seat pulling machine first pounded our streets way back in 1974. And for anyone who came of age in that heady decade, it was a byword for speed. I can still picture the yellow two-tone model a friend bought in Munich and drove over to England. (Yellow, the least popular colour for cars, also fares poorly in the reliability stakes). But boyhood memory is an unreliable witness. I Googled an image of that lusted-after 1974 model and couldn't believe how boxy, ungainly and awkward it looked. What were we all so excited about? Still, 35 years is a long time in a boy's life, and the new Scirocco has as little in common with that car as we do with short trousers and tuck boxes.

The new 'Roc gives VW the chance to prove it has a fun side after all. It's built for driving and is centred - to the detriment of your fellow passengers - on the driver. At the wheel you sit, legs and arms outstretched, in a position which echoes the car's flowing design - you feel low, direct and involved. But those in the back get little more than a view of your dandruff and a slot window so narrow it'd struggle to be re-employed as a letterbox. Who cares? This is a car for the people up front.

From the outside, there's a sense of the Golf about it, a slightly squashed one. The Scirocco is 10cm lower and looks much wider due to the full-width grille. But both cars share the same chassis and engine. However, the Scirocco gives the impression of greater speed. The driver can also choose from three adaptive chassis-control settings: "comfort" for motorways, "sport" for speed and "normal" for, well, normal. The ACC adjusts the throttle map for better response, the steering for a sharper feel and, most importantly, the damping of the suspension for better control.

So, if you're tempted, and you've every reason to want to become one of the 9,000 drivers who'll take delivery of a Scirocco this year, just be sure to get it in lipstick red.

martin.love@observer.co.uk

Car Broker Motoring News Editorial, motoring, Observer, Technology, The Observer

Jaguar's latest sports saloon has an unmistakable aura of superiority about it, finds Martin Love

Jaguar XF

£33,150
Miles per gallon: 37.6
CO2 per km: 199 grams
Good for: high flyers
Bad for: nose divers

Nicolas, my 12-year-old neighbour, wants to be a car designer when he grows up. He spends his time drawing wedge-shaped cars. Their oval wheels spinning like Road Runner's puny legs; pencil lines streaking from every corner. I imagine this is how Ian Callum might have started out. A likeable Scot, Callum submitted his first design to Jaguar in 1968, at the age of 13, in the hope of landing a job. Forty years later, by way of a few other postings, he's the great marque's design director and his blurred pen lines have given shape to some of the most beautiful cars of recent years: Aston Martin's DB7, Nissan's R390, Jaguar's XK and now the XF.

I once asked Callum what it felt like to create something that would become the treasured possession of thousands of chamoix-wielding men around the world. Ian made the expected noises and then said that one night he'd driven into a petrol station in a brand-new XK and pulled up alongside an immaculate DB7. "I asked the driver how he liked the Aston," Ian recalls, "and then, unusually for me, mentioned that I happened to be the car's designer and that, in fact, I'd also designed the car I was driving. The guy just looked at me incredulously, shook his head wearily and walked off..."

Callum will be struggling to keep his modesty under wraps with his new XF. It's the sort of car that makes an immediate impression. Big, bold and lavish, it's a sports saloon that has the unmistakable aura of self-importance about it. Its hand-stitched leather seats expecting nothing more than the soft crush of cashmere from you. However it's this or the XF's award-winning diesel or sure-footed handling that'll have you signing on the salesman's dotted line, it's the fact that it is crammed full of what the industry likes to call "surprise and delight" features.

First up there's the stop/start button which pulses with a tempting red light. When you push it, the 2.7-litre engine burbles into life and the lacquered covers of the dashboard's air vents all roll slowly open. Touch the button again and they close, like the opening and closing of a shark's gills. You can entertain yourself without going anywhere. After a while the excitement wears off - it's time to move on. But there's nothing so boring as a gear stick here, instead there's a self-levitating rotary "drive selector" which you twist to choose the correct gear. Release the hand brake, another button on the polished console, and the show gets on the road. And the delights continue: the glove box has a touch-sensitive opener; the overhead lights are dimmed by waving your hand in front of them; the door handles and footwells are all illuminated with a pale mauve glow; there's an automatic rear blind; flashing blind-spot indicators; a satnav, aircon and stereo system all controlled by a touch screen. And everything has a classy, rubberised feel to it. It's calm and minimal, a refreshing departure from the cluttered, claustrophobic feel of so many of today's upmarket motors. So no more false modesty please, Mr Callum.

martin.love@observer.co.uk

Car Broker Motoring News Editorial, motoring, Observer, Technology, The Observer

This 2-tonne tourer is one of Bentley's smallest cars. Martin Love gives the chauffeur a day off

Bentley Continental GT

£132,500
Miles per gallon: 20
CO2 per km: 16.5 grams
Good for: gamblers
Bad for: grumblers

Errol, a relentlessly upbeat man who spends his days rounding up supermarket trolleys, grins at me: "The boss away is he?" I look blank. He nods at the gleaming Bentley I've clambered out of and I suddenly see what he means - Sunday morning, scruffy bloke, family shop, £132,500 6-litre convertible. It doesn't add up. "Yes," I say, and then bafflingly, "even we chauffeurs have to shop." And I hurry inside.

To be fair, if you were a back-seat CEO who relished the crunch of a leather brogue on a gravel drive and a white-gloved hand on the steering wheel, then the Continental GT would not be the car for you. It is a four-seater, but the back row is aimed at a brace of size-00 trophy mistresses. In fact, the "Conti GT" is a bit of a trophy mistress itself. It's the smallest Bentley - and the cheapest. Incredibly, this 2-tonne tourer is referred to as the "Baby Bentley". And compared to its siblings, the Arnage, the Azure and the £230,000 Brooklands, the Conti, which starts at £117,500, is very much the runt of the litter. And is very much aimed at bleary 43-year-old family men in ill-fitting tracksuit bottoms...

The muscular two-door coupé was launched in 2006, four years after the legendary marque was bought by Volkswagen for £430m - and has had a few nips and tucks since to keep it looking fresh. But the tweaks are nothing compared to the bling-tastic body makeovers the car has had at the whim of some of America's more exuberant entrepreneurs who snapped up 40% of the 10,014 cars sold last year. Over here, Wayne Rooney bought a baby blue one for Coleen - apparently picking it up while wearing only socks. But while grey-haired men in Pringle jumpers will see the Continental as an unwelcome dilution of the exclusivity of the brand, Mr Walter O Bentley, a twentysomething engineer obsessed with performance who started the company in 1919, would have been thrilled. The 20s were known as the marque's golden decade, thanks mostly to "a group of wealthy British automobile aficionados" known as the Bentley Boys (which, allowing for cultural inflation, can be read as "a bunch of lairy speed louts") who pulled off stunts such as racing a train from Cannes to London.

So what do you get in an entry-level Bentley? In a word, everything. It's blunt looks grew on me over the week, though there was never any arguing over its presence, even in gun-metal grey. Inside, the car is a paean to luxury. The vast seats are the size of dentists' chairs and can be moved in as many ways. The dashboard is highly polished walnut, the fittings are heavy-duty chrome, with the ancient (the organ-stop air-vent controls) in total harmony with the modern (the music/navigation/aircon screen). And everywhere there are surprise-and-delight features: the finger-touch boot opener, the Breitling clock, the tiny B logos on the wheels' hubcaps... But nothing surprises or delights more than its performance. The 6-litre, W12 engine will take you from zero to 62mph in an astonishing 4.8 seconds and will do 195mph, yet the car feels composed and unruffled at all times. As my neighbour observed after a spin round the block: "There's nothing wrong with this car." But then, he didn't have to fill it up.

martin.love@observer.co.uk

Car Broker Motoring News Editorial, motoring, Observer, Technology, The Observer