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By Jonathan Crouch

Ten Second Review word count: 63

BMW's more boldly styled fourth generation X3 is a premium upper-mid-sized SUV that's a smarter and more sophisticated choice than the car it replaces, stacking up impressively against prestigiously-badged alternatives from Audi, Mercedes, Jaguar and Volvo in this sector. Like its rivals, dynamically targeted almost exclusively towards on-road use, it's another example of just how car-like a model of this kind can be.

Background word count: 180

After years of evolution, this fourth generation BMW X3 gets a dose of revolution - on the more boldly-styled surface anyway. Underneath, things are rather different, this G45-era model continuing with the CLAR WE architecture of its predecessor and a familiar-looking range of combustion engines. Only combustion engines as it happens: the now-departed old Chinese-built electric iX3 will be reborn as a separately-platformed model based around the even more radical Neue Klasse X concept design. The X3 is a hugely important car for BMW to get right, the previous three generations having amassed over 3.5 million global sales. The first two designs, the E83 of 2003 and the F25 of 2010, occupied market territory for more compact family SUVs now covered by the X1. The third generation G01 model of 2017 shifted up-market, a car that (like its predecessor and this MK4 model) is mainly assembled in the US at Spartanburg, South Carolina; only the MK1 X3 was European-built (in Graz, Austria). In this G45 range, only the PHEV version hails from a different factory - Rosslyn in South Africa.