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Originally Posted by mkoesel
^^^ Fair points. The peculiar thing about the next X6 though - where is it? With the F16 set to end production in just 18 months, it is somewhat unprecedented to not have seen even one spy shot of the replacement at this stage. You'd at least agree this is a bit suspicious, no?
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I mean, given the current market trend, BMW does seem to have a solid business case for adding a more stylish sibling to the boxy and practical X7, yet retaining the latter's level of comfort and luxury so as to undoubtedly set it apart above the X6, which would keep battling against the GLE Coupé and forthcoming Q8.
Replacing the X6 with a more upmarket and expensive X8 would, I think, certainly bring new customers but would also turn away current/potential X6/GLE Coupé/Q8 segment customers, so it would probably end up being a zero-sum game instead of keeping current customers + adding new ones. If I'm not wrong, the X6 has been exceeding its sales goals and buyers are certainly expecting it to retain its X5 coupé formula.
As regards the lack of spyshots, perhaps the X5 prototypes have already been testing pretty much every underpinning and the X6 will only be tested briefly, already in final stages of camouflage? It is true though that the size difference between X6 and X8 would be quite minimal if we make an assumption based upon the X7 Concept, which turned out to be surprisingly short (5.02m) compared to its main rivals GLS and QX80 and compared to the current X5 (4.89m). Let's hope they manage to keep the X6 and add in the X8 as indeed a coupé version of an SUV version of the 7 Series
There surely is room for an X8 at least dimension-wise, given the growing number of 5 meter+ sport/luxury SUV market offerings (Levante, Urus unashamedly almost as long as the Bentayga...).