It’s not hard to notice how many carmakers now sell overlanding-themed SUVs that didn’t use to. What you might’ve missed, though, are the few holdouts. Audi and BMW in particular haven’t yet embraced the trend, though reports and rumors indicate that’s due to change in the next five years.
Audi has been tipped to rely upon the electric-first platform that Volkswagen stablemate Scout has developed for its upcoming Traveler SUV, which will be built in South Carolina. Meanwhile, BMW’s prospective off-road flagship is purportedly chasing the likes of the Mercedes G-Wagen and Land Rover Defender, and will be built on the X5’s architecture. Don’t expect to see either German luxo-tank before 2029, Automobile News reports.
In many ways, it’s a redux of the initial SUV boom of the ’90s, a bandwagon that the German luxury makes took their time before joining late that decade into the early part of the 2000s. Sure, Mercedes had the G-Wagen dating all the way back to 1979, but it developed the M-Class to modernize the recipe and pull in more buyers; that landed in showrooms in 1997. BMW followed in short order with the X5 in 1999, and then came Volkswagen and Porsche with the Touareg and Cayenne in 2002. They shared a platform, which Audi also leaned on to deliver the Q7 three years later.
Many of those vehicles quickly found success for their brands; it’s often said that there wouldn’t still be a Porsche today without the Cayenne, after all. Yet, as the intervening decades have passed, SUVs have evolved in purpose and image. The Germans have more or less held to what we define today as crossovers, while others seized the burgeoning market for rough-and-tumble SUVs that wear their off-road aspirations proudly. You could say the Ford Bronco and Land Rover Defender really kick-started the trend.
Now, there’s no shortage of ’em. You have Toyota with the reborn (and repriced) Land Cruiser; Honda with the Passport, Hyundai and Kia doing up rugged versions of the Palisade and Telluride; not to mention all those Wilderness-badged Subarus. The Jeep Recon is still happening, incredibly, and, oh yeah—so is Scout.
Are they all body-on-frame? Nope. Do they all occupy roughly equivalent levels of trailworthiness? Not at all. But they do convey an impression that off-road ideals inspired their design and engineering—whether or not that’s actually true—and those are the kinds of SUVs that Audi and BMW don’t have. Yet. The real question is, by 2030, will they be arriving at a party that’s still picking up, or one that’s starting to die down?
Got a tip? Send it to tips@thedrive.com
Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site’s slate of daily stories.
