Lately, BMW has been investing more time and energy than ever into penetrating and even creating new niches in the automotive industry. From Gran Tourers to Active Tourers and Gran Coupes, we’ve seen just about everything coming out of Munich, but suspiciously enough we’ve never seen the Bavarians launch a soft off-roader to rival the likes of the Audi Allroad or the Mercedes-Benz E-Class All Terrain.
The obvious choice to convert into a high-riding family carrier would be the BMW 5 Series Touring, of course. The business athlete, as BMW calls it, in Touring guise, offers plenty of room and has a wide enough range of engines to choose from, to make sure you don’t get stuck while traveling on a less than perfectly beaten track.
And yet, mum’s the word in Munich when it comes to such ‘outlandish’ creations, even though rivals from Germany have been offering such contraptions for quite some time now. Audi has been selling Allroad models based on the A6 Avant models since 1999 and that’s almost 20 years now.
The reason why BMW didn’t show any interest in this particular niche probably lies with the low number of sales it could post. In the end, the BMW Group is supposed to bring in a profit for its shareholders and if the business case for it isn’t there, you can rest assured nobody will fight for this car in Board meetings.
Even so, at first, it seems like a rather easy car to put together. Just lift the suspension a couple of inches, add a front skid plate, throw some plastic covers around the fenders and make sure all cars come as standard with xDrive and you’re set, right? Well, maybe it’s not that easy but you get the point: the car wouldn’t have to be developed from the ground up.
Keeping all that in mind, X-Tomi Design wasted no more time and just conjured up a rendering of what the G31 5 Series Touring would look like in what he calls the BMW 5 Series Cross Touring. This could very well be a high-ground clearance alternative that would give prospective SUV buyers something to think about, but would it be able to change their minds?
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