BMW X3

BMW reaches for mini-iX design appeal and lots of digital interior tech in renewing its best-selling model

Premium car brands can’t afford to hang around when it comes to reinventing their big-selling models. BMW certainly hasn’t. Three years ago, it introduced the electric BMW iX luxury SUV, which boldly leapt into a new era for both exterior and interior design language, and now the fourth-generation BMW X3 is following suit.These days, BMW is a brand defined as much by its SUVs – or actually, in BMW-speak, its sports activity vehicles – as much as its saloons. The previous X3 was its best-seller last year, with around 1000 sold each day, so the new one has quite the act to follow.With typically Germanic efficiency of precise seven-year model cycles, the Mk4 X3 has arrived to offer fresh challenges to premium SUV rivals such as the Audi Q5 (which has just entered a new, hybrid-only generation), Porsche Macan et al.The most significant change for this new X3 is what’s missing: an electric version. While the new model retains the same multi-powertrain CLAR platform as its predecessor, the successor to the iX3 will arrive next year as the production version of the Neue Klasse X concept, the first in a line of radically restyled EVs using a bespoke platform.

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