What's all this about?
You're looking at the first production examples of the BMW X7. Well, pre-production, more accurately; the finished article of this luxury SUV won't be in showrooms until the end of 2018. Anyway, the initial X7s are coming off the line at the Spartanburg facility in South Carolina, USA.
OK, so why has production - sorry, pre-production - started so early?
Because there's still quite a bit of development work to do on the X7. These vehicles are going to be put through their paces to test their longevity. To that end, they are given the natty, shape-disguising camouflage-wrap on the production line (the same line that the X5 and X6 are built on) to ensure prying eyes don't see what the showroom model will look like. Then a team of specialists homologates them and registers them for road-testing. This will be undertaken in places as extreme as Death Valley in the US and the most frozen, inhospitable zones of Scandinavia.
Very nice. Why did Spartanburg get the nod for X7 production?
It's BMW's SUV centre. The factory, which came on stream in 1994, has had $8billion (£5.89bn) invested in it over the years, and in 2016 it built more than 411,000 cars across four model lines - the X3 and X4 are also built there. That means it's the largest plant worldwide in the BMW Group. It exports around 70 per cent of the vehicles built there to 140 countries around the world and the maximum production capacity is 450,000 units. The addition of the X7 line should give the 9,000 workers employed at Spartanburg plenty to get on with.
OK, and are there any soundbites about this X7 development?
Voila - here's one. Knudt Flor, head of the BMW Group Spartanburg plant, said: "We are proud to produce the BMW X7 here in Spartanburg, the home of our X models. This is a very special vehicle and our employees are looking forward to yet a further member of the X family. Together with the BMW X7, a total of five BMW X models will be exported from Spartanburg to all four corners of the globe."
Matt Robinson - 2 Jan 2018