I am right in the middle of BMW X1’s demographic. BMW addicted, married and blessed with a wonderful ten year old daughter. We ski. We bike. We travel. Then this winter, my daughter got tall enough to ride in the front seat of our 2007 BMW X3 3.0si and she discovered to joy of a heated leather seat. Next has ensued much bartering with her over who gets the front seat when we travel as a family in the winter, and I so I’ve promised our next BMW would have heated rear seats. Remarkably BMW’s added heated rear seats as an option on the F30 3 Series but as I discovered not in the X1.

We love our X3 and it’s been problem free but had been intrigued by the X1. So it was a selfish trip I took to the BMW online configuration on BMWUSA.com where I sadly learned the contents of the Cold Weather package wont meet my particular families needs. In addition, I found it a rather confounding build your own BMW experience.

BMW has three lines for the X1, in similar manner to F30 3 Series’ lines. The major caveat with the X1 configurator is that you cannot not pick a line to add to your base price. Like the double negative?

I was reading Autoblog app on my iPhone early one morning before work while sipping coffee at a local bagel store and I stumbled across this. Autoblog has a write up on how confusing BMW’s configurator for the X1 model in particular is. It’s an interesting read and definitely mirrored my own experience. “It might appear that the starting price is $31,545 then, but strangely, you must order one of the trim lines and that adds another $1,900 for the X and Sport Lines, or $2,500 for the M Sport Line on the sDrive28i and xDrive28i, and $3,000 on the xDrive35i.”

I did figure a way to get the configurator to the base price but it took a while and at first I couldn’t replicate it. To truly get to the base price on BMWUSA.com’s X1 configurator, you select Le Man’s blue metallic which adds the M Sport line, then follow this by selecting black and choosing yes you do indeed want to drop the M sport line. Then all is removed.

Simple, n’est pas? I am sure they’ll clean it up after all, it just went live and the X1 isn’t even for sale in the U.S. yet.