BMW X7 SUV heading for a debut at the Paris Motor Show

The production version of the BMW X7 – BMW’s new big SUV to challenge the Range Rover – is heading for a debut at the Paris Motor Show.

It’s eight years since the BMW X7 – a new range-topping SUV from BMW, taking aim at Range Rover – first started to look like it was going to eventually arrive as a production car (well, after the idea was originally quashed by the world’s financial meltdown in 2008). But it took another four years for BMW to confirm an X7 was indeed part of their plans, and that it would arrive in 2018, and another three years for the Concept X7 iPerformance to arrive to preview what to expect.

Since the X7 was previewed with a Concept last year, BMW has been busy delivering ‘official’ spy shots of the X7, and even recently released video of the X7 strutting its stuff off-road, just to prove it can do Land Rover stuff.

All that’s been leading up to the debut of the X7 in production guise, and so far BMW has been prepared to say only that the X7 will debut in Q4 2018. But The Drive has had confirmation from BMW that it will be an October debut, which almost certainly means the Paris Motor Show.

What we’ll get is a toned-down take on the X7 iPerformance Concept with probably a similar range of engines to those found in the X5, but there’s also likely to be an X7 M version, a hybrid version and, perhaps, even a full M model. There could even be an iX7 EV, if patent filings mean anything.