BMW's SUV Lineup Will Be Thoroughly Revamped And Expanded By Early 2019

Timothy Cain
by Timothy Cain

Little more than 18 months from now, BMW’s utility vehicle lineup will be dramatically altered, primed to absorb rising SUV demand in an increasingly anti-car market.

According to Australia’s Motoring, BMW will expand its entry-level utility vehicle lineup — BMW calls them SAVs — in early 2018 and the top end of the brand’s SAV lineup by late 2018.

The production BMW X2, due early next year, was previewed by the Concept X2 at 2016’s Paris auto show. BMW’s long-awaited Mercedes-Benz GLS challenger, the BMW X7, is a late-2018 arrival.

But the expansion of the BMW SAV lineup is only part of the story, as new versions of the SAVs currently sitting at the heart of BMW’s lineup will arrive in short order, as well.

Specific to the U.S. market, BMW’s largely South Carolina-built SAVs have proven to be vital components in difficult times for BMW. Through 2017’s first five months, BMW’s passenger car sales are down 15 percent, a loss of more than 11,000 sales. During the same period, however, the BMW X1, X3, X4, X5, and X6 have combined for 6,790 additional sales, a 14-percent year-over-year improvement.

BMW jumped into the SUV game with its first SAV, the X5, in 2000. The first BMW X3 arrived a little more than three years later.

According to Motoring, the third-generation BMW X3 will be unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show three months from now. The fourth-generation BMW X5 — the current iteration is now in its fourth model year — is due to arrive in early 2019, following the launch of the first BMW X7.

Motoring believes the X7, in some form, will also be revealed in Frankfurt later this year.

As the core elements of BMW’s SAV lineup, the X3 and X5 currently produce more than 70 percent of the brand’s U.S. SAV sales and one-third of total BMW USA sales.

Through the first five months of 2017, BMW has earned 12 percent market share in America’s luxury brand SUV/crossover market with five SAVs in the brand’s lineup. Among premium brands, only Lexus and Mercedes-Benz, both of which have seen their year-over-year SUV/crossover volume decline slightly in early 2017, sell more utility vehicles in America than BMW.

Mercedes-Benz currently has five nameplates in its SUV/crossover lineup, though the GLC and GLE have spawned one extra bodystyle each, for a total of seven Benz utility vehicles. Across two brands, Jaguar-Land Rover will also soon feature seven utility vehicle nameplates.

BMW’s CLAR platform, already the foundation for the 5 Series and 7 Series, will underpin the next generations of the X3, X4, X5, and X6, along with the first-generation BMW X7.

[Images: BMW Group]

Timothy Cain is a contributing analyst at The Truth About Cars and Autofocus.ca and the founder and former editor of GoodCarBadCar.net. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars.

Timothy Cain
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  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
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