Too risky: BMW SUV (G74) failed to gain approval from management

According to insiders, BMW Group management has not given the green light to the project for a brutal off-roader with the factory index G74, production of which was due to begin in 2029 in the USA. The company is currently in cost-cutting mode and cannot afford to launch new models it is not 100% sure about.

The news that BMW was preparing the first full civilian off-roader in its history, capable of competing with the Mercedes-Benz G-Class and Land Rover Defender, emerged a year ago, although the company never officially announced it. Our artist Nikita Chuiko last month showed what a BMW with the factory index G74 might look like — these renders were a huge success online, and many people really liked that design option.

What the real BMW off-roader was supposed to be like, we will most likely never know, because, as the BMWblog resource reported yesterday citing informed sources, the G74 project did not receive approval from management in its current form. Despite the fact that the fashion for brutal off-roaders is not yet showing signs of fading, the BMW board of directors considered this niche too narrow, which means that real sales of the G74 off-roader would hardly recoup its development and production launch costs.

There is another restraining factor: BMW Group is currently on the brink of a crisis, cutting costs and launching a voluntary redundancy programme for 8,000 employees — in such conditions, investing in a project whose success is uncertain would be unwise. Today BMW Group published its financial results for the first half of 2026: net profit fell by 28.5% to €2.872 billion.

If the company manages to stabilise its financial performance in the coming years, it may return to the brutal off-roader project, but for now development of the G74 model has been put on hold.

BMWblog reported some curious details about this project: it turns out that the idea of creating a brutal off-roader was born at BMW three years ago. Initially, it was supposed to be fully electric and based on the Neue Klasse platform, with the index NA5. Assembly was planned at the eco-friendly plant in Debrecen (Hungary).

Then, when the global slowdown in demand for electric vehicles began, the technical concept of the off-roader changed completely: it was moved to the CLAR platform so that petrol, hybrid and pure electric versions could be offered simultaneously. The index NA5 was replaced with G74, and the new planned assembly location became the plant in Spartanburg (USA, South Carolina). Due to the platform change, the BMW off-roader became more brutal and gained a spare wheel on the tailgate, as in our renders. The interior was planned to be three-row, with a fold-down tailgate bench for picnics and a host of accessories for leisure and adventure.

We should add that in recent years BMW has significantly trimmed its model range, removing unpopular niche models from it, including the BMW 8 Series, the BMW Z4 and the GT liftbacks based on the '3 Series' and '5 Series'. The latest niche product from the Bavarian company — the sporty hybrid crossover BMW XM — has frankly flopped in the market. In short, for now BMW is betting on mainstream products, and experimenting with niche models is not the time.