SPY PICS: New BMW X3 breaks cover
Munich's compact softroader grows up to make way for the X1These are the first decent photos of BMW's new baby softroader, the X3. Except it's not a baby any more, not since the X1 hatched.
The X3 is growing up -- and out -- and is likely to get a price rise to match when it arrives about a year from now. The new model is due almost seven years to the day after the original X3 went on sale.
As these photos show, BMW designers still have a taste for psychedelic camouflage graphics. But times must be tough at the Munich carmaker because they didn't have enough tape to go all the way around, giving us a good glimpse of what to expect.
Unfortunately, because this X3 was snapped in a remote part of North America with a relatively bare background and no other cars in view, these photos don't show how much the X3 has grown. But, thanks to some well placed BMW insiders, the Carsales Network can happily report that the new X3 has grown in every dimension and is almost as big as the original X5.
Indeed, the new generation X3 will stay close to the X5 in dimensions -- at until the next (third) generation X5 arrives in gigantic, almost Audi Q7-like seven-seat proportions.
This whole merry-ground might possibly be the world's most drawn out model reshuffle, but BMW will get there eventually.
BMW model cycles typically run for seven years (you can almost set your watch by them) so the next X5 isn't due until 2014; the current model went on sale in 2007.
Given that X models account for one-in-three of all BMW sales locally, Australia will no doubt be at the front of the queue for the new model.
To date, little technical detail has been confirmed about the new X3, but you can expect every model to be more powerful yet more fuel efficient than the model it replaces -- and a BMW speech to mention "Efficient Dynamics" at least once.
Apparently we'll see a twin turbo 2.0-litre diesel and a twin-turbo 3.0-litre petrol as the headline performance engines, but there's no word yet on whether BMW will squeeze a V8 into the X3 for the first time.
A hybrid version is also under consideration.
-- with Carparazzi
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