BMW trademarks model names with echoes of the past

After battling with a growing model range and increasingly long names, BMW may have settled on a new naming convention for its future line-up of vehicles.

BMW is reportedly working on a new way to name its vehicles as it rolls out petrol and electric cars side by side.

According to US website CarBuzz, BMW has trademarked 43 new model names – taking elements of the company’s previous naming conventions in a way that will be familiar to longtime followers of the brand.

Under the current scheme, a petrol-powered, mid-grade, rear-wheel-drive 3 Series sedan would be called 330i, a mid-grade, all-wheel-drive petrol X3 SUV badged X3 xDrive30i, and electric versions of these vehicles i3 sDrive30 or iX3 xDrive30.

However, under the new nomenclature, BMW is looking to reduce the length of the model names – such as X330 for the petrol X3, i330 for the electric 3 Series, and iX330 for the electric X3.

The report shows trademarks to fit almost the entire line-up, including the i120, i550, and i760, for example, as well as SUVs from the iX120 and X130 to the iX760.

A performance-oriented badge was also trademarked: the M350.

Through the two final numbers in the model name typically represented the engine capacity of the vehicle in decades past, it’s believed those now depict the performance level within that model range.

In the past, a 3 Series with a 2.0-litre engine would be badged as a 320i – though over the past decade the company has moved to using the numbers to designate a vehicle’s performance, as multiple models share different versions of the same small, turbocharged engine.

While ‘BMW i’ now refers to the company’s battery-powered vehicles, the letter ‘i’ began to be added to its models in the mid 1970s to differentiate vehicles fitted with fuel injection (hence the ‘i’, for injection) rather than carburettors.

BMW called vehicles of that era as its Neue Klasse (new class), as it introduced the 3 Series small car, 5 Series medium car, and the 7 Series large sedan to the market for the first time.

As a nod to its past, BMW has also named its forthcoming electric-car platform Neue Klasse, which will underpin its electric models from 2025.

BMW has not made any announcements regarding the trademarks, but it’s possible we could see the new badges rolled out when the new Neue Klasse line of cars arrive in showrooms at the end of 2025.

The German car company has been slowly backing itself into a corner since it introduced the Z3 roadster in 1995 – and later, the X5 SUV, and vehicles with ‘xDrive’ all-wheel drive – resulting in complicated model names such as the BMW X6 M50i xDrive.

The new nomenclature appears as if it could streamline the company’s model line-up, making it easier to understand for the consumer – all while referencing its past.

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