Hideous Hartge BMW X3 is One SUV Crossover We’d Like to Forget
This tuned crossover reminds us that the 2000s were a dark time before the dawn of BMW M Series SUVs.
The commonly accepted narrative around sporty SUVs is that Porsche introduced the Cayenne in 2002, made a boatload of money, and inspired other upmarket automakers to follow suit. But that overlooks the fact that BMW jumped into the sporty, upmarket SUV game in 1999 with the X5. By 2003, the Cayenne’s second year in production, it introduced the X3, a smaller crossover based on the 3 Series platform. For nearly 20 years, BMW has been betting big on SUVs and crossovers. And whatever your feelings are about them, they’re paying off handsomely.
Thanks to a recent Jalopnik post titled “What The Hell Happened, Hartge BMW X3?” we’ve been reintroduced to this oddball tuner model. We’re just not sure we wanted to be.
Sure, an early X3 or X5 couldn’t keep up with a contemporary romper-stomper Porsche – remember, this is before BMW introduced M models of either SUV. But that’s what tuners like Hartge are for. Since 1971, it’s been making BMWs faster and bolder. In the early 2000s, they tried their hand at the then-new X3. The results, unfortunately, weren’t so great.
There is some good stuff here. According to Hartge’s website, an engine tune will transform the 286 horsepower 3.0-liter diesel engine into a more formidable 328 horsepower mill pushing out 498 pound-feet of torque. Unfortunately, they only offer go-fast parts for the diesel-powered (read: Europe-only) models, and they seem to have stopped working on them in September 2014.
But that probably isn’t a bad thing, because to put it mildly, the Hartge X3 is ugly. Monstrously ugly. Hartge has a history of controversial styling (See: Hartge E63 M6), but the Chris Bangle-era designs really don’t work with Hartge’s over-the-top body kits. On the X3, the rockers look like square tubing pressed into thin sheet metal. The wheels look better off left behind in the early 2000s. And that front end is just baffling. Kidney grilles below the kidney grilles? No thanks.
Luckily, we doubt we’ll be seeing many of these on the road. And for what it’s worth, the Hartge X3 is an interesting artifact from a specific time and place. We’re just glad that it’s something of an evolutionary dead end.
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