BMW family sports tourer perfect for city commuters

UNDERSTANDING a car name used to be easy. Now, however, as the traditional lines between saloon, hatchback, coupe, SUV, and MPV blur, the car makers have to stretch their nomenclature to the limits and, well, it doesn’t make the life of the ordinary car buyer very easy.

BMW is at the forefront of inventing new model niches, so it has had to expand on its relatively easy-to-understand numbering system of late to accommodate the new entrants. One of those is the 225xe Active Tourer.

To explain what it’s all about, we need to go back a few years, to 2007. That’s when the 1 Series spawned coupe and convertible variants. Those cars were replaced in 2014 by all-new models called the 2 Series coupe and convertible, the new number said to represent a move upmarket to distance the sportier offerings from their regular hatchback siblings.