Static electricity with plenty of zap The X5 feels a little top heavy, but can still be pushed if you're game enough. The cabin features plenty of leather, and is more refined and comfortable than the previous model. WHEN you read a lot of press material about cars, the same phrases crop up over and over again. After a while they are like old friends, and any press kit without them has something missing. One of my favourites concerns design. It has fallen from favour a little, but the phrase "It looks like it's moving when it's standing still" was once a staple. The more mundane the car, the higher up it appeared. The reasons for wanting that effect in the first place didn't bear scrutiny, of course. We wouldn't be able to cross roads waiting for parked cars to go by. One word that never falls out of fashion is "sporty." It's sprinkled liberally through all car material and the more absurd the claim, the more often it appears. Any road car, even a sportscar, has little in common with racers actually built for motorsport. Outside the minds of a marketing department, that is. This habit reaches its zenith in the phrase we use for the vehicle-formerly-known-as-a-four-wheel-drive: SUV. The sports utility vehicle is more appropriate to drive to a sports event than participate in it, so perhaps that's what it really means: you use this car to carry your mountain bike or surfboard. Then you get out of it and the sport begins. With the BMW X5, launched recently in its third generation, this trend united with the "We got there first" phenomenon. When you cannot actually claim precedence, invent a category all your own - then you are guaranteed to be first. BMW did this with the X5 because the Mercedes M-Class pre-dated it by a couple of years. So the X5 is a "sports activity vehicle" - an SAV, not an SUV. The fact that no one else has followed deters it not a jot. "When it was first released in 1999, the BMW X5 created the Sports Activity Vehicle (SAV) segment and shaped a whole new movement among premium vehicle manufacturers," says the third-generation press kit. Having done that, it can also claim to be the bestseller - in a class of one. The closest an X5 normally gets to sports activity is ferrying children to tennis and soccer. And, in this case, reclassifying the car is utterly self-defeating. In Australia, the X5 regularly tops the charts. It overtook the M-Class in 2002 and - while it has been pipped to first by the smaller Audi Q5 recently - has been our most popular luxury SUV regardless of size or price ever since. There are about 35,000 on our roads. The third generation refines the recipe without going anywhere new. Its dimensions are almost identical to the outgoing car and the wheelbase is the same, which gives away the fact that BMW started with the same basic ingredients. Where it differs is in better engine performance, more equipment and improved comfort. It's worthwhile evolution without changing the species. BMW has given the X5 a better chance of retaining its bestseller status by reorganising the range and mirroring a trend that began among cheaper SUVs, namely offering a version without all-wheel-drive. For the first time, the line-up starts with a two-wheel-drive model, the s25d, for $82,900. In the increasingly convoluted BMW nomenclature, its complete badge is X5 sDrive25d, where the tiny "s" is the sign that it lacks a mechanical link between the engine and front wheels. If there's a small "x" then it has all-wheel-drive. So another $5000 buys the x25d or, as BMW calls it, xDrive25d. The redundant word Drive is now a feature of BMW's entire naming strategy. Why it's there is a mystery to everyone but BMW. With five diesel models, but only two petrols, the line-up reflects the tendency for luxury SUV buyers to aim for reduced running costs. After the four-cylinder 25d models, six-cylinders start with a 3.0-litre diesel at a whisker under $100,000. The range-topper is the triple-turbocharged diesel M50d at $147,900. It has hero status thanks to the M badge of BMW's performance division, although here it denotes a car that has been lightly warmed through rather than deep-fried. Petrols start with a turbocharged 3.0-litre straight-six at $106,900 while the full-strength petrol M5 will arrive later. In the meantime, there's the V8 petrol x50i tested here. This employs a revised version of the previous 4.4-litre turbocharged V8, with 30kW more power and an incredible 175Nm more torque. No surprise, then, that it's quicker off the mark - at 5.0 seconds to 100km/h - than before as well as quicker than the more expensive M50d. It's also 16 per cent more efficient than the previous car and better than some V8 sedans, although with consumption of 10.5 litres per 100km/h it will drain your wallet much faster than any of the diesels. This is a likable engine and very driveable thanks to all that extra torque, even though it's now 60kg heavier. It retains a bit of V8 growl while keeping vibration to a minimum, and you have to listen hard for giveaway turbo whistles. There's some turbo lag - the delay between pressing the throttle and engine response - but on the move it's excellent and it spins all the way to 7000rpm. The X5 has always had commendably high dynamic limits, although it cannot avoid the feeling that you are perched high. There's a bit of tippy body roll and evidence of its 2.2-tonne weight, although if you're game enough it can be pushed quite a long way. It doesn't pitch and squat as much as you'd expect under acceleration and braking, either. It also steers well, although without any sense of how the rubber is coping with the road surface. If you can wear the fuel bills, it crosses the line from functionality to be an appealing drive. For passengers, it's more refined and comfortable, while the ride quality has improved. Inside, there's more feel-good than before, with plenty of leather in the x50i, while fit and finish are good. Seats and dials are up to BMW's usual high standards and its switchgear is now among the best. There are vestiges of the ergonomic nightmare of the Bangle design era in window switches that slope away from the driver, but in other respects it's better than some BMW sedans, with properly located door handles, large door pockets and a few places to put other stuff. Not much is absent in terms of equipment at this level and one pleasing touch is ambient lighting with a range of colours you can change at will. The main cabin flaw, and one I found especially annoying, was dreadful Bluetooth audio streaming, too often resulting in a staccato nonsense of sound. The exterior is likely to offend no one in the market for a luxury SUV and is unmistakably an X5. More than before, this X5 pitches to a buyer who wants a high-riding limo. It has moved on, even though at first sight it is standing still. ENGINE 4.4-litre turbocharged V8 petrol OUTPUTS 330kW at 5500rpm and 650Nm at 1200rpm TRANSMISSION Eight-speed automatic, all-wheel drive PRICE $133,900 plus on-road costs