Xtra large Beemer with a key to match

THIS week I am more than usually worried about the contents of my trousers.

It is bad enough carting around a very expensive smartphone in your Levis, but I’ve also got the key to this BMW X4 20d in another pocket.

It is no ordinary key, not even a fancy ‘plipper’. It’s a complicated device with a screen, just a bit smaller than a fag packet, through which you can program all sorts of the car’s functions.

You can, while on safari in Africa, check your car is safely locked in the long-term car park at Gatwick. This clever device is extremely dear to replace if you drop it. Apparently, my friends at Top Gear magazine have already dropped a couple of them.

But this new X4 is some machine, even without its impressive key. My neighbour Mike has totally fallen in love with it.

He drives a new X3 but when he saw the coupe-shaped SUV he didn’t realise the two cars are intimately related.

BMW only introduced the X4 four years ago, but since it shares the same mechanicals as the more conventional X3, creating a new

generation of the X3 model meant the X4 would follow suit. And because the X3 has grown in size, so too has the X4. Its length has increased by 81mm to 4,752mm, the width by 37mm to 1,918mm and the wheelbase is longer by

54mm. Only one dimension is smaller – the overall height. That’s because the ground clearance has been reduced.

It must be the shape, but next to Mike’s X3 the 4 looks like a size above even though it isn’t. He’s