New BMW iX3 Is Top Gear’s 2026 Car Of The Year

BMW hasn’t even began deliveries of the 2026 iX3, and the electrical crossover is already successful awards. To be truthful, journalists typically have early entry to unreleased autos, permitting them to judge merchandise effectively earlier than they attain the market. Working example, High Gear has already sampled the “NA5” forward of subsequent spring, when shipments to prospects in Europe start.

The famend British journal praises the second-generation iX3 for the way it seems to be: “After years of mucking about, BMW’s stylists have now bought it proper.” The publication additionally preferred the minimalist inside: “furnishings is fantastically tranquil.” Maybe most significantly, they discovered it thrilling to drive regardless of being a big and heavy electrical luxobarge: “It drives like a BMW should. Not like a cumbersome EV crossover, or soulless digital first zombiemobile.”

“What issues to BMW issues to the remainder of us as a result of its automobiles have at all times been on the tip of mainstream excellence. Simply as effectively the iX3 completely, as the children say, smashes it, and snaffles the most important prize of all of them.”

The iX3 will get the ball rolling for about 40 new or up to date fashions, with all arriving by late 2027. Not all of them will likely be EVs, as combustion-engine automobiles may even be a part of the Neue Klasse household. Autos with gasoline and diesel engines are about to undertake the brand new design language. Inside, the iDrive X with Panoramic Imaginative and prescient is coming to all automobiles.

Even future CLAR-based electrical autos are anticipated to characteristic BMW’s new spherical battery cells that debuted within the iX3. Subsequent 12 months’s iX5 is probably going to make use of the sixth-generation battery tech, as will the iX7 in 2027. Equally, the iX6 arriving in 2028 will profit from Neue Klasse know-how. Wanting forward, it’s solely a matter of time earlier than MINI incorporates a few of the expertise pioneered by the revamped iX3. The identical could be mentioned about Rolls-Royce and the newest member of the BMW Group, ALPINA.

Of all the brand new fashions arriving in fast succession, we’re most excited to see the i3. Primarily a sedan model of the iX3, the second EV from the Neue Klasse household will land in 2026. Only a few months later, the next-generation 3 Series may even break cowl. The 2 will look almost an identical inside and outside, regardless of having vastly totally different underpinnings.

Logic means that High Gear will discover the i3 sedan higher to drive than the iX3, given how sedans are lighter and have a decrease middle of gravity. An electrical M3 will observe in 2027, however traditionalists needn’t fear. As a refresher, BMW remains to be creating an inline-six M3 for a 2028 launch, though it’ll probably come solely with two pedals and xDrive.

Supply: Top Gear