The current BMW X3 turns six next summer, so it’s no surprise that BMW’s engineers are hard at work perfecting its replacement. We expect the fourth-generation X3 to arrive during 2023 or early 2024 as a 2024MY car.
The development cars pictured here at the Nürburgring – a regular X3 and a hot X3M – might be covered in BMW’s usual squiggly camouflage wrap, but we can still make out plenty of details that give us an idea of what’s in store for us down the line.
We can easily make out, for instance, the new flush-fit door handles, the rising window line familiar from the new XM, and the shape of the headlights. Those lamp units are traditional one-piece items, BMW reserving its new split-lamp arrangements for its luxury line of cars like the 7-Series and X7.
It’s also possible to see the shape of the kidney grille, which is much bigger than it first appears. The disguise on the bumper makes it look like the grille segments are wide and short, a bit like they are on the 2-Series coupe, but looking closer we can see cooling holes drilled into the disguise revealing that the kidneys are actually much taller than that.
Related: 2024 BMW X3 Plug-In Hybrid Spied As Model Embraces Electrification
All of this points to the finished X3 looking incredibly similar to the new X1 revealed earlier this year, with a little of the XM flagship thrown into the mix, most obviously in the profile view, and at the rear, where the license plate is moved closer to the floor. The X3’s interior is also likely to look similar to the X1’s and feature BMW’s new one-piece digital dashboard that incorporates a digital gauge pack and multimedia touchscreen and is powered by the latest iDrive 8 infotainment system for improved connectivity.
We’re still waiting to learn more about exactly what BMW will drop under the hood of the X3 for its 20th-anniversary refresh, but we assume that combustion and hybrid powertrains will make it to the menu, plus an electric iX3 that will look almost identical, but be built around BMW’s Neue Klasse platform, not the older CLAR architecture the other X3s will stick with.
At the performance end of the range, we’ll find the X3M model. Power is expected to come from the M3’s turbocharged straight-six engine. Earlier this year we reported on rumors that BMW might not replace the fastback X4, preferring to put its efforts into the iX4 EV instead.
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