Comments by "earthstick" (@earthstick) on "" video.

I sat in the back of the XE recently. I'm 170cm tall rather than 6ft but I can say with experience that the XE is far more comfortable than a BMW 3 series and I could travel for a few hours comfortably in the XE. The 3 series back seat is too upright, there is very little space for feet and crucially the back seat is shaped like a very wide bucket. This means when one sits behind the front seat, one slides down the curve of the seat towards the centre. One has to brace oneself against this and after 20 minutes it is very uncomfortable. It might work better if one sat in the centre of the seat but the drive tunnel makes this almost impossible. The XE is a compact sized car so I could not expect a cavernous rear compartment but for a person of my stature it was actually perfectly adequate and more importantly the ergonomics were perfect.
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18:50 When I had a look a the interior of an XE on show it did feel a bit under par compared with BMW. There was more plastic, I think the door bins for instance and of course the binnacle. I wonder why they didn't integrate the binnacle with the dash as one solid piece then cover the whole item in leather/pleather? The guy demonstrating it said it was a preproduction version and the finish would improve for production. The hatch on the centre console cubby did feel like it could be stronger. But I recently tried a 3 series and I was surprised that the button was not really any better. There was no night and day difference at all. When opening the cubby in the 3 series it felt like there was slightly more resistance in the movement which can give the impression of something heavier and stronger but it was only a very slight and still underwhelming. It still felt like a plastic hatch on plastic hinges.
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