Since the announcement that BMW M would make its own standalone performance car, not based on an existing BMW product, fans have been incredibly excited. That excitement tempered a bit, when they found out the standalone M car would be an SUV, but it’s still exciting to see what the M Division can do from scratch. In some new spy photos, we get yet another glimpse at the upcoming BMW XM, the first-ever solely M Division product. (We don’t own the spy photos but they can be seen here)
There’s honestly not much we can see from these spy photos that we haven’t already seen but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few points of interest. For starters, we can see that this is the hybrid version. There will be a couple of versions of the XM, one of which will be a hybrid, the car in these photos. According to our sources, the powertrain is going to be a 4.4 liter twin-turbo V8 paired with an electric motor to make around 750 horsepower. That would make it the most powerful BMW product in history.
Additionally, we can see that this new BMW XM will have an entirely unique exhaust pipe arrangement. Rather than the old-school side-by-side quad circular exhausts of almost all M cars in the past, the BMW XM will get stacked quad exhausts, with an oddly hexagonal design. It’s a by try-hard but many fans will probably love it.
Up front, it looks like BMW’s upcoming split headlight design is making its way to the XM, as you can sort of see where two sections of headlight will go through the camouflage. However, the elephant in the room is the kidney grille. It looks like BMW is back on its big grille B.S., because each of those kidney grilles looks better than all of the headlights combined. While the BMW XM doesn’t quite look like Nosferatu on testosterone boosters, like the BMW M4, but its grille is still too big.
Funky looks aside, we can’t wait for the BMW XM. It’s going to be a monstrously powerful hybrid SUV that will give us a taste of what BMW M can do without any existing blueprints from BMW. Stay tuned.
[Source: Car Magazine]
