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Back in 2007, BMW revealed a high-riding vehicle that would end up changing the SUV market segment forever: the X6. It was presented as a sportier and more aggressive looking version of the practical X5 luxury family hauler. As it turns out, it was about as close to an instant hit if I’ve ever seen such a thing in recent times in the automotive industry, taking buyers by storm, and completely shifting their perspective on what an SUV or crossover can look like.
It threw the familiar two-box design straight out the window and in its place BMW designers imagined a dramatic, sloping rear end design reminiscent of what we might call a fastback design on a lower, non-SUV car. Not everybody liked it to begin with, and many people still find the shape a bit contrived (the author of this article included). I have to admit I wasn’t over the Moon ecstatic when BMW announced it was going to make an X4 (which is nearly identical to the X6, but slightly smaller).
Then, after allowing BMW to have the newly created coupe SUV niche all to itself since 2008, Mercedes launched its own model to go head to head with the X6. By that time, however, the X6 was already in its second generation, and The Three-Pointed Star didn’t really present an innovative looking vehicle, but rather its interpretation of the X6 style grafted onto its GLE (which up until that point was known as the M-Class). Then Mercedes added a smaller version of the GLE, dubbed GLC Coupe, to go head to head with the X4, completely copying what its Bavarian rival did.
However, while nowadays even Renault is preparing a model with a similar shape and the new Geely-owned manufacturer Lynk & Co has one in the works, there are manufacturers out there who have not gone down the same design path when creating their sporty, rakish, coupe-like SUVs. This article focuses on those models whose underlying idea is the same (create a sporty SUV with a coupe twist) but whose execution is different and more original.
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