Here it starts, with what we like to call the ‘silly season’ of leaks before March’s Geneva Motor Show. One can never understand how ‘official’ photos, such as these of the new BMW 3 Series GT, are always so carelessly leaked by BMW employees before a major international motor show. Unless it happens courtesy of someone’s directive to generate publicity for a product they clearly don’t think will gain much traction with media and show goers.
In the case of the BMW 3 Series GT, they may have a point. It’s quite difficult to understand why BMW persist with this GT-cum-hatchback-cum-touring-station-wagon idea, when the 5 Series GT was not only such a stylistic failure, but an abysmal failure when it came to sales as well. Nevertheless, here are the first ‘official’ leaked photos of the BMW 3 Series Gran Turismo (GT).
Of course, the images here are of an M-Sport bodied model, but you’ll get the 3 Series GT in a baseline variant, a Modern Line and a Luxury Line as well. The 3 Series GT is likely to have a longer wheelbase than the regular 3 Series sedan and this will probably feed well into the longer-wheelbase loving market that is China.
The new model will adopt a slightly raised seating position than that of the accomplished 3 Series sedan, it will have pillarless doors and will include the heavy, and complicated, ‘two-tier’ mechanism for the tall hatch, just like that of the 5 Series GT. The extra gill on the quarter panels of the car is an unexpected design flourish from BMW.
There is no word on technical specifications and accompanying powertrains, but it is unlikely to move faraway from what’s available on the F30 sedan, except that the smaller 3 Series GT will most likely be available with both rear-wheel drive and xDrive AWD systems. Maybe by the time the 3 Sries GT arrives we’ll have worked out what its purpose really is and who might need one over the brilliant F30 3 Series sedan.
