The way that modern design manages, to make a particularly large car appear to shrink down to normal dimensions, but always having a big, powerful engine, permanent all-wheel drive and with a fair amount of comfort, even in the third row of seats, can be seen when having a good look at the BMW X5. First of all, the typical BMW double-kidney logo is shortened towards the bottom and without any space in the middle, is joined flush with the headlamps. This is now the hour of the designers. No parallesism, no rest for the eyes. Beadings are created and vanish again. Probably only very few people would be able to draw the front-end blindly, without having to check up on certain lines. The study of the bonnet seems to be more simple. It drops off to the side from two sheet-metal edges. The mudguard (is this expression still appropriate here?) is left only a little space. What one will not do, to reduce the height of this front end, at least optically. The dividing line between the bonnet and the side parts is at a slant. Indeed, that's only half true, since the slant twists to the front into an almost horizontal surface. Thus, the covering surface reaches right up to the next metal edge. Indeed, this also slowly diminishes towards the front, running out from a curve to the inside, before it reaches the BMW-grill. Then a second beading appears, this time right from the rear, this one however, also dwindles away when it reaches the wheel-housing. This shaping even has a circumferal edge and a plastic casing inside. Indeed, one can't rely on that either, because once it's reaches the vicinity of the headlamps, it also disappears. This design generates something excitingly incomplete. There is the distinctly accentuated beading on the side. The door handles don't disappear into the window frames, they are concealed, both of them, in this strong beading. On the right hand side the filler cap takes the shape of the bead, then smooths out towards the rear, oddly enough, into the side of the rear lighting unit, this however is hardly noticeable. Below the lateral bead a large concave surface is created. Once again however, not completely. Up front, behind the front wheels there are the air-extractor vents, which, by the way, also produce an edge, but only the bottom part. The upper part dwindles off quickly. Indeed, as if this wasn't enough, almost out of the blue, a fine line appears below and in front of the rear wheel, breaking the flow of the concave. We won't continue on this vein. You may be able to see from the above text, that this car must be looked at as being optically very interesting, even if one is not a particular fan of large, heavy SUVs, call them Sports Activity Vehicles if you like. You might like to have a look at the videos below and even the real thing, if you come across one. It's not something that one simply has to own. After all it hasn't become any more reasonable, although is is now to be had with a four cylinder Diesel engine and with 'only' rear-wheel drive. By the way, there is another way to make the car appear to be smaller, one produces it in the USA and films the prototypes with e.g., the Rocky Mountains as a backdrop. 02/14