BMW is fundamentally altering the DNA of its most popular luxury SUV. The upcoming redesigned BMW X5, internally designated as the G65, will officially abandon the split tailgate. It marks the end of a signature design feature that has defined the vehicle since its initial launch.
Instead of the traditional two-piece setup, the next-generation SUV will adopt a conventional single-piece liftgate. BMW project head Michael Ahlers and senior vice president Philip Koehn confirmed the structural shift. They pointed to aerodynamic aesthetics and user ergonomics as the primary drivers behind the change.
The official corporate line focuses heavily on design constraints. A sleeker, faster roofline simply leaves no room for the necessary seam. Furthermore, executives argue the lower half of the split gate actively hindered shorter drivers from reaching items pushed deep into the cargo bay. Yet industry analysts, looking closely at official executive quotes, suspect a more practical motive: manufacturing costs.
A split tailgate requires a highly complex sub-assembly. We are talking about an extra set of reinforced hinges, dedicated support struts, and a secondary electronic motor just to operate the bottom half. By reverting to a standard one-piece hatch, BMW significantly streamlines the G65 assembly line.
How the G65 Tailgate Decision Impacts the Luxury SUV Market
The loss of the split tailgate isn’t an isolated engineering quirk. It signals a broader industry pivot away from complex, low-margin features in the luxury utility sector.
Historically, the X5 inherited this split-gate DNA from Land Rover during BMW’s brief ownership of the British marque in the 1990s. Now, that era of over-engineered utility is ending. We are seeing identical cost-cutting measures across the Japanese luxury market. Toyota recently stripped similar complex tailgate mechanisms from both the full-size Land Cruiser and the premium Lexus LX.
For BMW purists, the writing is already on the wall. The automaker recently killed the beloved 30-year-old pop-out glass hatch on the 5 Series Touring. With the X5 now conforming to standard tailgate geometry, industry watchers expect the upcoming X7 and 3 Series Touring updates to suffer the exact same feature cuts.