Eighty-four golfers competed at PGA National Czech Republic OAKS Prague on September 17, and not one of them drove home in a new car. BMW had dangled a Neue Klasse iX3 50 xDrive as the hole-in-one prize. Nobody sank the shot, and the electric SUV went back to Munich with the people who brought it.
That small detail tells you something about the gap between aspiration and reality that defines BMW’s current moment.
The Czech round of the BMW Golf Cup doubled as a four-car outdoor showroom, and the vehicle selection was deliberate. BMW parked the facelifted 740 xDrive alongside the second-generation iX3, then filled out the display with an M4 Convertible and an X7 xDrive40d. Gasoline, diesel, and battery electric, all wearing the same badge, all aimed at the same well-heeled audience.
Munich calls this “Power of Choice.” It has been using the phrase for years now, and the golf course staging made the slogan physical. A turbocharged inline-six sedan and a ground-up Neue Klasse EV, separated by a few yards of manicured grass and an entire philosophical divide about where the car business is heading.
The 740 xDrive represents the familiar playbook. Long hood, traditional powertrain, mid-cycle facelift sharpening its looks just enough to keep showroom traffic moving. It is a car built on assumptions that have worked for decades.
The iX3, by contrast, is BMW’s bet that those assumptions have an expiration date. Riding on the Neue Klasse architecture, it uses a clean-sheet platform, new battery cell technology, and a design language that shares little with anything else in the current lineup. BMW has also started feeding some of that battery tech back into the refreshed i7 through a partnership with Rimac, bridging the generational gap even if the i7 remains a mid-cycle update rather than a clean break.
Contrast the Czech event with what happened days earlier at the 2026 BMW PGA Championship in the UK, where Frédéric Lacroix actually nailed a hole-in-one and took home a new iX5 60 xDrive. Same promotional formula, different outcome. BMW keeps offering its newest EVs as prizes at golf tournaments because the audience is exactly right: affluent, brand-loyal, and likely cross-shopping within the portfolio already.
The fact that the company brought a diesel X7 to the same event speaks volumes about the European market’s stubbornness. In the Czech Republic, where charging infrastructure still trails Western Europe, a six-cylinder oil burner pulling a three-row SUV is not a relic. It is a purchase decision people are still making right now.
BMW’s strategy hinges on the idea that it can sell the 740 xDrive and the iX3 50 xDrive to overlapping customer bases without cannibalizing either one. That works as long as EV adoption remains gradual and the combustion side keeps generating the margins that fund Neue Klasse development. The moment one side of the equation falters, the balancing act gets a whole lot harder.
For now, the golf course choreography is tidy. Luxury sedan here, electric crossover there, convertible and diesel SUV filling the gaps. Every base covered, every customer reassured that BMW is not going to force their hand.
The iX3 sitting unclaimed at the end of the tournament, though, is its own kind of metaphor. BMW’s electric future was right there for the taking. Nobody quite got there yet.
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