F26 X4: CGIs and spy shots

[LeMansX5]

Bad chop


We kick off the week with my rendering of the future BMW kid-SAC (Sports Activity Coupe), the X4. BMW gave away their intentions to build this thing back in 2001, when they served us the first dish cooked with their new flame surfacing baking technique. Chief Chef Chris Bangle's concept blended concave and convex aluminum surfaces in an "interesting" asymmetrical design.

The hottest feature of the car: access to the back seats via the reverse opening “hayon”. (Un)fortunately we won’t be seeing such a fancy/expensive/cool-but-unpractical solution on a production car soon– just as we didn’t get to see the dual wing doors from the Z9 Granturismo on any of the 6 Series models. However, some of the design elements of the X Coupe were really nice and able to survive the marketing/production battle. Anyway, I envision the X4 as an X Coupe with a slightly larger passenger compartment, less sharp edges (concave-convex shape blending accidents), some plastic (scratch-proof) elements in the lower part and an X6 gene transplant– just so we can be sure that the newcomer is a member of BMW's ever-burgeoning family of niche products. In fact, one wonders what else they could possibly have in store.