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It's funny how different everyone is on perceived space. I find our x5 feels much bigger than our x3. So does the wife. I find no difference between the x7 and the x5, even though the 7 is pre lci and the 5 is lci. It's just the 2 of us and 2 small dogs. We travel and camp a lot. There is more usable room in the x5 than both the x3 and x7 (we have captains in the x7). Compared to the x3, the depth of the x5 cargo makes a world of difference and the split tailgate is much nicer than that on the x3. We are able to fit the dog kennel on one side of the cargo area in the x5, with the seats up, and still have room on the other side for some cargo. With the seats down I can load all the gear we need, suitcase, etc and keep the kennel in place. This isn't possible in the x3 and is barely possible in the x7, at least for our typical compliment of gear. The fact that the x7's rear seats armrests stay in position, coupled with the fact that the captains don't fold flat, there just isn't enough usable room. If we had to do the x7 again, we'd go with the bench version. It gets old trying to protect the armrest / cupholder area every time we load gear.
For us the x3 is out of here soon. It's OK but not great, fun but rough ride, seems to wander more than I like. Never an issue though, other than 12k of tires during our 73k of ownership. As much as we both like the x7, and we both love the x7, that's probably out soon too. It just doesn't offer that much of an advantage over the x5, other than looks, which is obviously subjective (we both prefer the look of the pre lci x7 to the lci x5 and x7). We will likely be an x5 household in the future as I'm going back to a 2 door soon enough. The x5 is so well rounded, holds what we need, pulls what we need, looks pretty good, it's basically a perfect middle ground. If the next iteration is a styling improvement over the lci, I'd guess that's the route we'd likely go in a couple years. The only other car we're both excited about is the new GX but I want to see some real life use cases before actually considering ownership.
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