We know that the BMW X3 LCI facelift is on the way, giving current X3 customers something to trade their car in for. Along with that newly nipped and tucked X3 is going to be a facelifted version of its sportier sibling — the BMW X4. In some new spy photos, we can see the upcoming BMW X4 LCI facelift wearing some camouflage on its front and rear ends, obscuring its changes. (We don’t own the photos, so click on the blue words to see ’em)

Up front, it’s clear that the BMW X4 LCI will gain a new face, with bigger grilles and sharper headlights. The new grilles won’t be as mahoosive as those found on the beaver-toothed 4 Series but they’ll still make the old car’s look small. It also gets sleeker headlights but you don’t notice those as much with the monster grille taking all of the attention away.

Out back, the camo covers up any significant changes, so we don’t know if there will be any. That said, there aren’t likely to be many changes. We can see that this specific car is a BMW X4 M40i, due to its trapezoidal exhausts.

One oddity on this particular test mule is its mirror design. Rather than use the same standard mirrors that all M Performance cars use, this test mule seems to have BMW M mirrors. Obviously, this could just be for test mule purposes; slapping whichever mirrors they had in a bin onto the car just to make it road legal; but we’re hoping that BMW isn’t going to start giving M Performance cars proper M Division design elements. While that might draw some more customers to M Performance cars, it would also ruin the specialness of those designs. So let’s hope the M mirrors seen here are just parts-bin testing equipment.

Exhaust pipes don’t lie, though. So this car is indeed the BMW X4 M40i, which means it’s packing a 3.0 liter turbocharged I6. We don’t know if BMW is going to give it a power bump but it’s likely to make around 382 horsepower and 369 lb-ft. In the current X3 and X4 M40i, that engine is far more than enough to be fun.

When this facelifted BMW X4 M40i LCI make its debut, it’s going to have some competition. There’s the Mercedes-AMG GLC43 Coupe, the all-new Audi SQ5 Sportback and the all-electric Tesla Model Y. So those new grilles need to work.

[Source: Motor Authority]