Teased sporadically since April, with the most recent being a now deleted official image leaked on social media earlier this month, BMW , in the early hours of Wednesday morning (19 June), officially debuted the all-new X3 as the first to incorporate its newest styling language.
SignificantKnown internally as the G45 whereas the now seven-year old previous generation carried the G01 moniker, the fourth generation X3 will again be assembled at the Rosslyn Plant outside Pretoria for the local and export markets following a record R4.2-billion investment last year.
Set to co-exist with the Vision Neue Klasse SUV that will take over the role of electric model from the iX3, the X3 follows the recently launched new 1 Series as the second BMW to drop the i suffix on all petrol variants that denoted fuel injection.
At the same time, the M40i bows-out as the range-topping M Performance model replaced by the M50. For now, a full-on X3 M hasnt received approval.
FundamentalsDebuting an appearance seemingly based on the 2 Series , but otherwise completely different in execution from any other BMW model, the X3 continues to ride on the CLAR platform, albeit heavily updated in order to accommodate the 48-volt mild-hybrid system all models feature as standard.
