Don't know about the US but over here in Germany, the X5 just "blends in" much better. Showing off is kind of dangerous over here, there isn't really the risk of somebody burning your car like it happened (very rare incidents) in Hamburg or Berlin.
The problem with luxury SUVs in Germany is public perception as gas guzzlers and enviroment "destroyers". Another problem is that we have lots of small cars over here and a lot of people feel threatened by big SUVs. Why they don't feel threatened by the many buses and trucks over here, I have no clue. :loco:
So most of the time, if you own a luxury SUV, expect to get your car keyed, scratched or even painted on with ice cream (happened to my wife in our Cayenne) or other less tasty substances like spit.
The problem started with Greenpeace and one large german car magazine and the Porsche Cayenne. They declared the Cayenne Turbo to be the most "dirtiest" (environmentally speaking) car on this planet. Which of course isn't quite true, take a 10 year old Volkswagen Golf and this car, still driving around Germany in the thousands, is dirtier. Does somebody scratch these cars ? I doubt it.
Which brings me to the next and last popular belief: SUVs are responsible for rising oil (and therefore fuel) prices. Not rising demand from China and India, not the speculative prices from the Middle East and/or large oil producers but SUVs are to blame for rising oil prices.
The Porsche Cayenne is "public enemy" number one in Germany when it comes to SUVs. My wife got verbally (thanks god not physically) attacked by so called "environmentalists", even while waiting with the kids in the car at a McDonald's drive-in counter. Luckily, one of the McDonald's employees came out and threatened the person, a 50+ year old male, to call the police. Do you think somebody around her, there were at least 20 people in and outside cars next to her, tried to help ?!
Envy is another problem with large luxury SUVs, the public prejudice of "rich and bored soccer moms driving around their off-spring" is still very very common over here.
Another story which says much about mentality over here when it comes to luxury SUVs: my wife, she is a physician, visited patients in a elderly home for emergencies. She even put her special sign from german traffic control under the windshield which identifies her as a doctor on an emergency, so she can park whereever she wants or to identify her towards the police if she needs to drive faster.
Well: somebody punctured her right rear tire twice while on such emergency visits. Now comes the best part: the police station in the neighborhood sent a stealth patrol (no police car but with police men in it) to look out for her car because they really seemed to care about it. They caught the guy who did it, a young man of russian decent but this never went to trial and my wife never saw the money for the destroyed tires back. Why ? Well, the young man was from a poor family, he had no job...and so on. When my wife asked the police man on the phone what she should do with the bills for over 600 EUR for the punctured tires, the police man told her in a very calm way: "How about changing your car ?". My wife was speechless.
Long story short: the BMW X5 (not the X6, the X6 has similar problems like the Cayenne over here, even if not on that extreme level) has been accepted by the general population as some sort of "regular" SUV, together with other SUVs like the Mercedes ML and the VW Tiguan for example. Same applies to the BMW X3 and those small SUVs made by Nissan, Honda or Toyota.
The X5 M is actually the perfect "understatement" car over here and I think this is why it actually sells that well. It was impossible for my dealer to get me a BMW dealer stock car and BMW in Munich has many different X5 available in stock for dealers, just not the X5 M.
Another interesting fact: most Germans seem not to have a clue that the X5 is actually manufactured in the USA.
Sorry for the long post, I just thought this would be an interesting "insight" into German society and SUVs.
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