The most famous automotive brand to adopt the Range Rover’s signature split tailgate is BMW.
Remember the BMW X5 & X7? When BMW owned Land Rover in the late 1990s (1994 to some time in 2000), BMW engineers leveraged Range Rover’s engineering and platform tech. They directly adapted Range Rover’s two-piece split tailgate (top half lifts up, lower half drops down) for the first-generation BMW X5 (E53) in 1999. BMW carried this feature forward as a signature design trait on every subsequent generation of the X5 and the larger X7.
Then came a couple of Chinese replica auto brands. Landwind (Jiangling Motors) infamously copied the Range Rover Evoque with the Landwind X7, leading Jaguar Land Rover to win a high-profile copyright lawsuit in China.
Then there was the Hunkt (Hanlong Auto) which released the Hunkt Canticie, a near-identical clone of the full-size Range Rover.
Other manufacturers who adopted similar split tailgate setups inspired by the practical two-piece design was Rolls-Royce when they launched the their SUV. the Cullinan. This luxury RR featured a split tailgate called “The Clasp” (Rolls-Royce is also owned by BMW Group).
Now, the Japanese car industry was also fascinated by this deign and Toyota together with its luxury brand Lexus also featured split tailgates on models like the Land Cruiser 100 & 200 series and Lexus LX 570.
