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Miami, Florida -- BMW has a problem: the swanky South Beach clientele who love their impractical $80,000 four-seat trucks (you know, the ones with the 400-hp twin-turbo V-8) may one day start caring about fuel economy. They might have a diesel-powered X5 in their polished marble driveway if practicality weren’t so gosh-darned unappealing.inline_mediumwraptextright31238343/green/reviews/0911_2010_bmw_activehybrid_x6P90050186.jpgTrue

Room for one more
Honda seems to have the crossover market pretty well covered with the compact CR-V and the eight-seat Pilot, yet the company sees room for one more. The Honda Accord Crosstour looks to slot in between the two in terms of functionality, yet will stand at the top from a pricing perspective. By packaging, pricing, and marketing this vehicle on the high-end of the five-passenger crossover segment, Honda is targeting both empty nesters and young couples moving from either a smaller or larger vehicle into this growing segment. Competitors for the Crosstour include the Ford Edge, Nissan Murano, and Toyota Venza.

As Lufthansa flight 4532 skimmed the hills of Lisbon on its landing approach, we reflected on the five-year journey that had brought us to Portugal to drive the newest BMW, the 5-series GT. It was back in the March 2004 issue that our European bureau chief, Georg Kacher, provided the scoop: BMW was planning an unusual new type of vehicle, one that was known within the company as the “space-functional concept” or RFK (for, in German, Raum-funktionales Konzept). Two models, one based on 3-series components and the other drawing from the 5-series, would differ substantially from BMW’s existing wagons and SUVs and provide seating arrangements akin to - don’t say it - a minivan’s. By our June 2008 issue, we were able to report that this not-quite-a-sedan, not-quite-an-SUV, not-quite-a-wagon concept, which had become known as the V-series, had evolved into a four- or five-seat hatchback sedan called the V5. (BMW’s second-generation, seven-passenger X5 apparently met the company’s needs for a people mover.) We were wrong about the name but right about everything else, and we observed that, like the X6, the new vehicle would attempt to “tap into a niche that you didn’t even know existed.” Fast forward to September 2009: As we arrived in Lisbon, the 5-series Gran Turismo still seemed to us as unlikely a vehicle to wear a BMW badge as it did back when our man Kacher first reported its conception.inline_mediumwraptextright31059330/reviews/driven/0912_2010_bmw_535i_gran_turismo0912_10_z+2010_bMW_535i_gran_turismo+front_three_quarter_view.jpgTrue