A US university graduate team has met a BMW design brief requesting they develop a vehicle capable of carrying potted orange trees in the back while retaining a luxurious interior and sports handling.
But the project car, which grew out of a production X3, is not fit for even a couple of Kelpies, and it would only accommodate a bike wearing training wheels.
It's no Holden Maloo and it's certainly a few steps away from your average one-tonne crew cab, but the students involved in the project – from Clemson university in South Carolina – reckon they've nailed the perfect sports pick-up, built as part of a special vehicle prototyping programme.
The modified X3 essentially removes the normal hatchback lid and installs a side-hinged tailgate to enable it to meet the brief from BMW: Create a vehicle capable of accommodating potted orange trees in the back, without compromising the luxury interior or sporting characteristics of the regular car.
The project was developed under the watchful eye of the marketing, finance and engineering departments at BMW in the USA, with the instruction that the students create a vehicle with a sticker price no more than USD $8000 (about AUD $8600) above a regular X3. Part of the project required the development of a low-cost manufacturing programme for a production run of as many as 5000 vehicles.
The graduate students created a vehicle that would cost about USD $10.2 million (AUD $11 million) in assembly line and process alterations, as well as proposing a low-cost method of altering the regular X3 roofline using 3D printing of structural materials.
The workhorse X3 was put on display for the first time at a series of CAR Management Briefing Seminars held by engineering graduate students at the university last week.
According to Automotive News Europe, the project manager for the BMW pick-up at Clemson's International Center for Automotive Research, Ashish Dubey, scored a job as a product design engineer at Chrysler in the USA after completing his master's degree.
The project was part of the Clemson University's Deep Orange vehicle prototyping programme, which nurtures design creativity in auto engineering students. The university is located about 100km west of BMW's Spartanburg plant in South Carolina.
Picture courtesy of Clemson University