BMW’s most controversial model is struggling to win over drivers.
The high-performance XM SUV was the luxury marque’s worst-selling model in the U.S. last year. The company sold less than 2,000 examples of the plug-in hybrid, which is even worse than it performed in 2023, despite only being available for part of the year.
Sales data released by BMW late last week shows that it sold just 1,974 examples of its range-topping SUV. That represents a 14.7 percent drop from 2023, when the company sold 2,315 iterations of the model after its launch that spring. In comparison, sales for the Z4, the one model the XM outsold in its debut year, increased by 13.1 percent year-over-year to 2,129 units. This relative surge in interest is likely do to the launch of a more powerful variant, the Z4 M440i, that comes with a six-speed manual.
The BMW XM was even outsold by the Z4 in 2024.
Tom Kirkpatrick, courtesy of BMW
Technically, the XM wasn’t exactly the worst-selling BMW in America in 2024. The marque managed to sell one example of both the i3 and the 6 Series Gran Turismo. But those are both zombie models that have been discontinued for years—the i3 since 2021, the 6 Series GT since 2019—whereas the XM is a model that is currently in production.
It probably shouldn’t come as a complete surprise that the $160,500 XM is struggling to gain a foothold. The second vehicle developed fully by BMW M has been fighting an uphill battle since debuting at Art Basel Miami in 2021. That’s because enthusiasts have struggled to accept that the automaker’s performance division would use resources developing an SUV, even one with over 700 hp under the hood, rather than a next-generation M1. It doesn’t help that the full-size SUV also looks more like a warthog than the sports cars most closely associated with the brand.
While the XM isn’t selling anywhere near as well as BMW would want, the rest of the brand’s lineup is fairing quite well. The automaker sold 371,346 cars and SUVs in 2024, which makes for a year-over-year increase of 2.5 percent. That growth, which was driven by a surge of interest in the company’s EVs, meant that the automaker finished well ahead of its main rival, Mercedes-Benz, which sold 324,528 vehicles in the U.S. in 2024.
