BMW sold 60,128 X3 crossovers in the United States through September and Lexus sold 50,148 NX models, a gap of 9,980 vehicles that leaves the BMW just short of 10,000 sales ahead. A year earlier the order ran the other way: the NX led by 7,247 units over the same nine months. Autoblog senior editor Karl Furlong, who published the comparison on October 5, 2026, described the X3 as “over 10,000 units ahead,” a round-up the two sales totals do not quite support.
The reversal itself is not in doubt, and it is large in both directions at once. The X3 gained roughly a fifth on its 2025 total while the NX shed more than an eighth.
The nine-month tally for each model
Autoblog’s table covers January through September 2026 and sets the X3 at 60,128 units against 50,009 in the same period of 2025, an increase of 20.2 percent. The NX stands at 50,148 against 57,256 a year earlier, a decline of 12.4 percent. Subtract the NX figure from the X3 figure and the lead is 9,980; subtract the 2025 figures and the NX’s old lead is 7,247, which Autoblog states directly.
Good Car Bad Car’s small luxury SUV ranking carries the same two nine-month totals, 60,128 and 50,148, with the X3 at roughly 32.5 percent of the tracked segment and the NX at 28.0 percent. It also breaks out the quarter: the X3 delivered 22,457 vehicles in the third quarter and the NX 19,385, a third-quarter gap of 3,072.
That site’s percentage for the X3 differs from Autoblog’s, putting the increase at 21.9 percent rather than 20.2 percent. Dividing 60,128 by Autoblog’s 2025 base of 50,009 gives 20.2 percent, so the differing percentage appears to rest on a different 2025 base.
Both models peaked in the same month. Good Car Bad Car’s monthly series has the X3 ranging from 5,611 units in February to 8,113 in August, and the NX from 4,010 in February to 6,657 in August, so the gap in the strongest month was 1,456 vehicles and in the weakest 1,601. The gap between the two models therefore stayed between roughly 1,400 and 1,600 vehicles in those two months, and the X3 outsold the NX in both the slowest and the strongest months that site reports, so the nine-month lead was built across the calendar rather than in a single stretch of it, according to those monthly totals.
The redesigned X3 against an aging NX
Furlong attributes the shift to design age. The X3 was redesigned for 2025, and the NX, introduced in 2022, faces the pressure that comes with a model line in its later years. BMW’s own momentum shows in the monthly record: Good Car Bad Car’s X3 history counts 37,671 units through June 2026, up 29.8 percent on the 29,028 sold in the first half of 2025, and a 2025 full year of 75,867 that it calls narrowly a nameplate record.
The September-quarter report from BMW of North America, as summarized by BMWBlog, named the X3 the brand’s best-selling model in the third quarter at 22,457 units, just ahead of the X5 at 22,313. Together the two SUVs made up nearly 45 percent of BMW’s U.S. sales in the quarter, out of a total of 100,210 vehicles for the three months and 287,154 for nine months.
Prices and the refreshed 2027 NX
The two models start in different places. Autoblog lists the X3 at $51,300 for the X3 30 xDrive and the NX 350 AWD at $46,025, a difference of $5,275 at the base. On efficiency the most economical NX reaches 40 mpg combined, while the X3’s four-cylinder returns 29 mpg combined and a 393-horsepower six-cylinder version sits above it.
Lexus has a response in the pipeline. Autoblog notes that a comprehensively refreshed 2027 NX was recently introduced and could “once again take over the lead.” Toyota Motor North America’s September and third-quarter report, issued October 1, shows the Lexus division at 93,056 vehicles in the quarter, up 1.6 percent, and quotes Andrew Gilleland, the company’s senior vice president of Automotive Operations, saying customers want choices, though that release’s headline figures do not break out NX volumes.
The Lexus side of the ledger is the soft spot. The 50,148 figure reaches readers through Autoblog and Good Car Bad Car rather than a Lexus table, so the exact NX total and the final size of the gap will be pinned down when full-year registrations are published.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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