With more than 600,000 units sold, the X5 E53 will go down in history as one of BMW’s most successful products. If you’re old enough to remember, we first saw the luxobarge at the Detroit Auto Show on January 4, 1999. However, the original Bimmer SUV was initially supposed to come out a year earlier. However, BMW suffered from a severe case of cold feet, delaying the model’s launch at a time when SUVs were gaining traction.

Chris Chapman, responsible for the vehicle’s exterior design, spoke with Autoblog about how the first X5 was put on the back burner for a whole year. He recalls BMW being concerned the E53 would eat into Range Rover sales. For context, BMW had bought the Rover Group on January 31, 1994. It subsequently sold Land Rover to Ford in 2000, a year after the X5 came out.

“They said, ‘Well, look, you know, BMW isn’t known for SUVs.’ And so they killed it, and it went into the cellar for a whole year. So the car actually would have come out in 1998.”

BMW then had a change of heart after drawing analogies between the X5 and the Motorrad division’s GS adventure motorcycle. The X5 became an “on-road, off-road kind of thing, but in a vehicle form, not just in a sports sedan.” Once that happened, the SUV was back on the agenda, but this setback caused a one-year delay.

Would it have been even more successful had it been released in 1998? We’ll never know. Chapman did convince the Munich higher-ups to make the X5 a large SUV. The initial plan was to develop a compact crossover about the size of a Kia Sportage. It goes without saying that Chris Bangle and Frank Stephenson also greatly influenced the final design. However, Bangle told Autoblog that BMW credits Chris Chapman with the X5’s production-ready exterior.

Fast-forward a quarter of a century, and the X5 is still a cash cow for BMW. The fourth generation is going strong despite entering its later years. The next-gen model, codenamed G65, is expected to arrive near the end of 2026. For the first time, a fully electric iX5 is planned, likely as an indirect replacement for the oddly styled iX.

Source: Autoblog