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got this from somewhere about BMW generation naming.
They're development numbers. So the E90 is the 90th chassis they developed since they started using the E designations. Some of the "developments" never see production, so that's why there are some gaps. Being that BMW develops certain cars in parallel, you'll see big jumps between generations of a certain series too. You can see they came out with a lot of new models between the E46 and E90 (E52 Z8, E53 X5, E60 5, E63/E64 6, E85 Z4, etc, etc). So each of those series probably has at least 1 or 2 potential designs that never saw production.
The year of introduction doesn't necessarily coincide with the E number. The new X5 is an E70. Then there's the E83 X3, E85 Z4, E86 Z4 coupe, E63/E64 6-series and the E65/E66 7-series. They've expanded their model lineup considerably in the past few years. Imagine that each of those had a few development prototypes and you'll easily fill the gap. Each wheelbase and body style variant now has an E number also. For example, the E91 is a 3-series wagon and the E92 (perhaps you've heard of it) is the coupe.
'E' is short for 'Entwicklung' which in German means something like development. the numbers that we hear about are only the ones that make it to production. So between the E60 and E90 there were about 30 other models with different chassis designations.
Only lately BMW has started differentiating between the Coupe and Sedan versions of their cars with the chassis code. The E90 is the new 3er sedan, while the E92 is the Coupe and the E93 will be the Cabrio.
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