German premium brands go SUV crazy: 10 new 4x4s coming

By Tim Pollard

Motor Industry

04 August 2014 11:15

Here’s a new trend among the German premium manufacturers that appears to be reaching boiling point: the insatiable rise of SUVs and crossovers.

It’s been happening for a while, of course, but CAR can reveal that no fewer than 10 - ten! - new 4x4s are on the drawing boards at Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

These are incremental, new models, not merely replacing like-for-like ranges such as X5s, Q3s or MLs. Premium car showrooms had better get building new extension wings to accommodate all the new metal coming…

The European automotive landscape has changed quite a bit during the past 12 months. Small cars? Still going strong but losing momentum. Compact cars? Stagnating demand marks this most popular segment. MPVs and sports cars? Sales are still sliding - and there is no end in sight.

The clear winners in a slowly recovering marketplace are SUVs and crossovers. In Germany, the high-roof 4wd offerings currently hold a market share of 18% - with growth rates exceeding 30% in the first half of 2014.

No surprise then that more and more premium brands are boosting their crossover efforts.

Audi, BMW and Mercedes are therefore loading up their new model blunderbusses. These are the new premium SUVs, 4x4s and crossovers we know are in the pipeline:

Audi Q1, TTQ, A2Q, Q6, Q8
BMW X2, X4, X7
Mercedes MLC, GLC

Stay tuned to CAR for more news on these new German SUVs once we get the latest news on them.

By Tim Pollard