600bhp V-12 BMW X5...Amazing!!!!
05-02-2001, 04:50 PM
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600bhp V-12 BMW X5...Amazing!!!!
Fly all the way to Germany just for one fast lap in a 600-horsepower V12 X5? Where's my passport?
So: This is the famous Nurburgring, der gronne helle or something -- what do I know from German?! -- and I would be freezing my butt off if I had any time to think about it but every fiber of my being is concentrating on staying upright in the right-hand X5 seat as Hans Joachim Stuck does everything in his power to separate me from breakfast as we blast around the fourteen-mile course they call the Nordschleife. In the rain.
Now, then: This is not your father's X5.
This is the car they rolled out at the Geneva Auto Show last March in a sheer audacious display of effrontery that most of us thought was some sort of micturation stakes in retaliation for Mercedes' having dropped off an SUV atAMG: that is, a one-off surprise something like the design-study Z9. Only this one was more like a demented cross between perfomance art, full-frontal assault, and metal sculpture, see, because what they did was they yanked the engine out of the V12 Le Mans roadster and stuffed it in the engine bay of an X5 and fired it up -- no, that's not quite right: First they upped the horsepower since the V12 LMR is normally choked down to a mere 550 or so, and these boys were out to make an impression, so they tweaked it back up to the 600 horses that God intended and then they fired it up.
With no mufflers. At the BMW press dinner. So naturally we all assume ha-ha nice publicity stunt, Hans, pass the schnitzengrubers, what are you really working on these days?
Which means it comes as some surprise when they call us a few months later to tell us, hey, we put some mufflers on it, you want a ride?
Which is how I come to be hanging on to every projecting surface while Stuck revels in the joy of having some decent power beneath his foot, having spent the previous day trying to herd the underpowered anemic PTG M3 around Texas Motor Speedway with any brio. (At this point the four-liter V8 German Touring Car M3 project is the fattest rumor in Bavaria, but can I get Stuckie to spill the legumes? Noooooo -- admitting they're THINKING about it is as close as I get to confirmation so I put away any thoughts of confirming a PTG M3 V8 which is the only CHANCE these guys are going to have against the Porsche hordes, and BMW is still waffling, what are you THINKING?! Of COURSE you should build it! Too BOLD? Too DARING? I'M RIDING AROUND THE NURBURGRING IN A SEVEN-HUNDRED-HORSEPOWER SUV, YOU NINNIES! How daring is that?!)
When they presented this monster in Geneva--it's officially called the X5 Le Mans, a creative constipation having laid low the copywriters--it had four contoured racing seats and fat straps in every direction, but here at the Ring the standard X5 seat and belts are good enough for journalists, I'm sure. Stuck gets the Comfy Chair, of course, the one with bolsters around his thighs and bolsters around his hips and bolsters around his ribs and bolsters around his shoulders, all of them absolutely necessary because he is flat FLINGING this puppy through the bends -- he's been here before -- and my man Stuckie isn't even working up a sweat, he doesn't even bother with a helmet, while the G-forces are slinging my noggin around in the BMW System IV -- no, you can't have these helmets in your country, what would Ralph Nader say! And we WILL look through your luggage! -- something like swinging a used cat by the tail, and I get the idea that Herr Stuck knows his way around this here particular race track.
"Is this," I ask -- actually it comes out more like "Eee-yuh-yuh-yuh-zz thi-yuh-ISSS" "your favorite track?" ("yrr FAY-AY-AY-vrr. TRA-yuh-yuh-YAA-yuh-YACK?")
"Yes," he says, "in touring cars -- too bumpy for real race cars." To which I can testify, because the X5 Le Mans is um stiff and we are feeling every seam in the ancient asphalt, every frost heave, every dead squirrel, now mashed back in the seat as Stuck gleefully opens a dozen fat butterflies, now stretching the seat belt as he hauls this boat down for another corner, turns in, accelerates, corrects the push, slides over a few extra yards of damp asphalt, and lights it up down the next short straight. So we blast through the fog and go rocketing through the Karussell and eventually emerge onto the long back straight, the V12 singing in a wonderful shriek past 120, 130, 150, 170 miles an hour -- no, I don't know how accurate the speedometer might be, I just admire the fact that they got so many numbers into it -- and suddenly without any warning it hits me: This all makes a terrible kind of sense! Of course you'd stuff a 600-horse-power Le Mans engine into the X5! You'd do it because you can!
The hot-rod bug has bit Bavaria.
Which proves the Americans have finally influenced another culture. Never mind cup-holders and cell phones; the real spirit of America is the guy living deep inside each of us, the one who wears his hair in a DA and rolls a pack of Camels in the sleeve of his T-shirt, the one who sees the car, any car, as merely the starting point. We're the ones who drop chrome V8s into '32 high-boy roadsters. We're the ones who took a twinkie little English beater and dropped a Ford 260 in to make it a Cobra, and our mantra is When In Doubt, Go Bigger, so the 260 becomes a 289 becomes a 427, and the Corvette starts as a Blue Flame Six and jumps to a 265 V8, 283, 327, hey, I'll bet a big block'd fit! If we are here now to bear witness to Bavarian audacity, let it be noted that the whole X5 project is an American deal. And just as the Germans have come around to accepting-if not understanding -- that a suburban house-wife needs a 4,000-pound all-wheel-drive up-in-the-air platform, so they have embraced our can-do hot-rod spirit.
Which would explain Hartge's V8 M coupe. As well as this X5 Le Mans -- or even the original V8 XS, which is certainly no slouch -- and its new derivative (see sidebar) bored-out Stomper Wagon; if Madame Sacre-Maugham has found a need for the 290-horsepower XS, she'll really go nuts with another sixty horses or so.
Does she need 600?
Who cares? The remarkable thing is that while this one-off project started out as an exercise to test the limits of the platform -- "What's the biggest engine we could put in the X5?" asked project leader Eduard Walek (they actually looked first at the older McLaren F1 engine, but its induction system was too high, so -- darn! -- I guess we'll have to use the Le Mans engine instead) -- there are very few "one off" bits employed; the transmission is the six-speed from the 850 and the rear differential is from the M5, not because the stock X5 diffy won't handle the torque, but so the car has limited-slip, the electronic versions having gone bye-bye in the bad boy. The transfer case and other AWD pieces are stock.
Which means
mein gott!
the whole thing really does make sense, because everybody knows by now that BMW is happily wading hip-deep in plans for X3, X7, XThis, XThat, and the latest news is that the X7 is to be built on a modified X5 platform, yes? So what's to distinguish the X7 from the X5? How about we make ita V12?! I mean, we've already proved that the chassis will handle it, now, haven't we? (Even though the X5 Le Mans still hasn't broken through the magical eight-minute mark on the Nordschleife, poking around in 8:05.)
So. My e-ticket ride over -- yes, it is like the roller-coaster: too short, over too soon, can't we go around again just once? -- I watch the Bad Bad Leroy Brown of X5s take off with another giggling journo bouncing in the seat, some Euro-twit who probably dropped by the Ring on his way to the office, while I have earned the Roundel ride by getting on one plane to the Flatlands (arriving two movies later) where I grab another plane (three movies) to some European country -- Belgium? Ireland? Intransitia? -- where I transfer to Buddy Holly Airways for Dusseldorf (no movies) and a one-hour cab to the Nurburgring and a Bavarian barbecue -- this is evidently a big treat in Bavaria, oooo, look, we're barbecuing! -- and catch a few hours of jet-lag coma before wading through the sort of typical German breakfast that would drive anybody to emigrate and finally here we are in a freezing drizzly fog stamping around the garages to keep our feet warm and wiping our noses on our sleeves while awaiting our turn for --
One single solitary lap.
And now I have to go play airplane tag again and I still don't have a decent quote on the Alleged V8 M3 and sure enough they watch me very carefully to make sure I hand over the System IV helmet -- but the whole thing is worth every effort because now I have spoken to these guys, these BMW gearheads, observed their grinning pride as they show off their Serious Bad Ride, heard the excitement in their voices as they talk about how they came up with this insouciant glorious madness -- hell, we might as well be back in high school, showin' off our rods at the A&W -- and I realize that these are our kind of people! Total gear-head nut-jobs, and if they called me again for another ten-minute ride I'd be on the next damn plane.
But next time, I don't think they should waste this car on journalists. I think they should give Ralph Nader a ride.
------------------
'98 Dakar Yellow ///M3
www.BMWExperience.com
Forums are now open at www.BMWExperience.com
0-60 5.53 sec G-Tech
[This message has been edited by M3Sins (edited 05-02-2001).]
So: This is the famous Nurburgring, der gronne helle or something -- what do I know from German?! -- and I would be freezing my butt off if I had any time to think about it but every fiber of my being is concentrating on staying upright in the right-hand X5 seat as Hans Joachim Stuck does everything in his power to separate me from breakfast as we blast around the fourteen-mile course they call the Nordschleife. In the rain.
Now, then: This is not your father's X5.
This is the car they rolled out at the Geneva Auto Show last March in a sheer audacious display of effrontery that most of us thought was some sort of micturation stakes in retaliation for Mercedes' having dropped off an SUV atAMG: that is, a one-off surprise something like the design-study Z9. Only this one was more like a demented cross between perfomance art, full-frontal assault, and metal sculpture, see, because what they did was they yanked the engine out of the V12 Le Mans roadster and stuffed it in the engine bay of an X5 and fired it up -- no, that's not quite right: First they upped the horsepower since the V12 LMR is normally choked down to a mere 550 or so, and these boys were out to make an impression, so they tweaked it back up to the 600 horses that God intended and then they fired it up.
With no mufflers. At the BMW press dinner. So naturally we all assume ha-ha nice publicity stunt, Hans, pass the schnitzengrubers, what are you really working on these days?
Which means it comes as some surprise when they call us a few months later to tell us, hey, we put some mufflers on it, you want a ride?
Which is how I come to be hanging on to every projecting surface while Stuck revels in the joy of having some decent power beneath his foot, having spent the previous day trying to herd the underpowered anemic PTG M3 around Texas Motor Speedway with any brio. (At this point the four-liter V8 German Touring Car M3 project is the fattest rumor in Bavaria, but can I get Stuckie to spill the legumes? Noooooo -- admitting they're THINKING about it is as close as I get to confirmation so I put away any thoughts of confirming a PTG M3 V8 which is the only CHANCE these guys are going to have against the Porsche hordes, and BMW is still waffling, what are you THINKING?! Of COURSE you should build it! Too BOLD? Too DARING? I'M RIDING AROUND THE NURBURGRING IN A SEVEN-HUNDRED-HORSEPOWER SUV, YOU NINNIES! How daring is that?!)
When they presented this monster in Geneva--it's officially called the X5 Le Mans, a creative constipation having laid low the copywriters--it had four contoured racing seats and fat straps in every direction, but here at the Ring the standard X5 seat and belts are good enough for journalists, I'm sure. Stuck gets the Comfy Chair, of course, the one with bolsters around his thighs and bolsters around his hips and bolsters around his ribs and bolsters around his shoulders, all of them absolutely necessary because he is flat FLINGING this puppy through the bends -- he's been here before -- and my man Stuckie isn't even working up a sweat, he doesn't even bother with a helmet, while the G-forces are slinging my noggin around in the BMW System IV -- no, you can't have these helmets in your country, what would Ralph Nader say! And we WILL look through your luggage! -- something like swinging a used cat by the tail, and I get the idea that Herr Stuck knows his way around this here particular race track.
"Is this," I ask -- actually it comes out more like "Eee-yuh-yuh-yuh-zz thi-yuh-ISSS" "your favorite track?" ("yrr FAY-AY-AY-vrr. TRA-yuh-yuh-YAA-yuh-YACK?")
"Yes," he says, "in touring cars -- too bumpy for real race cars." To which I can testify, because the X5 Le Mans is um stiff and we are feeling every seam in the ancient asphalt, every frost heave, every dead squirrel, now mashed back in the seat as Stuck gleefully opens a dozen fat butterflies, now stretching the seat belt as he hauls this boat down for another corner, turns in, accelerates, corrects the push, slides over a few extra yards of damp asphalt, and lights it up down the next short straight. So we blast through the fog and go rocketing through the Karussell and eventually emerge onto the long back straight, the V12 singing in a wonderful shriek past 120, 130, 150, 170 miles an hour -- no, I don't know how accurate the speedometer might be, I just admire the fact that they got so many numbers into it -- and suddenly without any warning it hits me: This all makes a terrible kind of sense! Of course you'd stuff a 600-horse-power Le Mans engine into the X5! You'd do it because you can!
The hot-rod bug has bit Bavaria.
Which proves the Americans have finally influenced another culture. Never mind cup-holders and cell phones; the real spirit of America is the guy living deep inside each of us, the one who wears his hair in a DA and rolls a pack of Camels in the sleeve of his T-shirt, the one who sees the car, any car, as merely the starting point. We're the ones who drop chrome V8s into '32 high-boy roadsters. We're the ones who took a twinkie little English beater and dropped a Ford 260 in to make it a Cobra, and our mantra is When In Doubt, Go Bigger, so the 260 becomes a 289 becomes a 427, and the Corvette starts as a Blue Flame Six and jumps to a 265 V8, 283, 327, hey, I'll bet a big block'd fit! If we are here now to bear witness to Bavarian audacity, let it be noted that the whole X5 project is an American deal. And just as the Germans have come around to accepting-if not understanding -- that a suburban house-wife needs a 4,000-pound all-wheel-drive up-in-the-air platform, so they have embraced our can-do hot-rod spirit.
Which would explain Hartge's V8 M coupe. As well as this X5 Le Mans -- or even the original V8 XS, which is certainly no slouch -- and its new derivative (see sidebar) bored-out Stomper Wagon; if Madame Sacre-Maugham has found a need for the 290-horsepower XS, she'll really go nuts with another sixty horses or so.
Does she need 600?
Who cares? The remarkable thing is that while this one-off project started out as an exercise to test the limits of the platform -- "What's the biggest engine we could put in the X5?" asked project leader Eduard Walek (they actually looked first at the older McLaren F1 engine, but its induction system was too high, so -- darn! -- I guess we'll have to use the Le Mans engine instead) -- there are very few "one off" bits employed; the transmission is the six-speed from the 850 and the rear differential is from the M5, not because the stock X5 diffy won't handle the torque, but so the car has limited-slip, the electronic versions having gone bye-bye in the bad boy. The transfer case and other AWD pieces are stock.
Which means
mein gott!
the whole thing really does make sense, because everybody knows by now that BMW is happily wading hip-deep in plans for X3, X7, XThis, XThat, and the latest news is that the X7 is to be built on a modified X5 platform, yes? So what's to distinguish the X7 from the X5? How about we make ita V12?! I mean, we've already proved that the chassis will handle it, now, haven't we? (Even though the X5 Le Mans still hasn't broken through the magical eight-minute mark on the Nordschleife, poking around in 8:05.)
So. My e-ticket ride over -- yes, it is like the roller-coaster: too short, over too soon, can't we go around again just once? -- I watch the Bad Bad Leroy Brown of X5s take off with another giggling journo bouncing in the seat, some Euro-twit who probably dropped by the Ring on his way to the office, while I have earned the Roundel ride by getting on one plane to the Flatlands (arriving two movies later) where I grab another plane (three movies) to some European country -- Belgium? Ireland? Intransitia? -- where I transfer to Buddy Holly Airways for Dusseldorf (no movies) and a one-hour cab to the Nurburgring and a Bavarian barbecue -- this is evidently a big treat in Bavaria, oooo, look, we're barbecuing! -- and catch a few hours of jet-lag coma before wading through the sort of typical German breakfast that would drive anybody to emigrate and finally here we are in a freezing drizzly fog stamping around the garages to keep our feet warm and wiping our noses on our sleeves while awaiting our turn for --
One single solitary lap.
And now I have to go play airplane tag again and I still don't have a decent quote on the Alleged V8 M3 and sure enough they watch me very carefully to make sure I hand over the System IV helmet -- but the whole thing is worth every effort because now I have spoken to these guys, these BMW gearheads, observed their grinning pride as they show off their Serious Bad Ride, heard the excitement in their voices as they talk about how they came up with this insouciant glorious madness -- hell, we might as well be back in high school, showin' off our rods at the A&W -- and I realize that these are our kind of people! Total gear-head nut-jobs, and if they called me again for another ten-minute ride I'd be on the next damn plane.
But next time, I don't think they should waste this car on journalists. I think they should give Ralph Nader a ride.
------------------
'98 Dakar Yellow ///M3
www.BMWExperience.com
Forums are now open at www.BMWExperience.com
0-60 5.53 sec G-Tech
[This message has been edited by M3Sins (edited 05-02-2001).]
05-02-2001, 05:13 PM
#3
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I have no idea, I think it needs deep dish rims.
------------------
'98 Dakar Yellow ///M3
www.BMWExperience.com
Forums are now open at www.BMWExperience.com
0-60 5.53 sec G-Tech
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by ruvz:
Nice car....Sweet!
What the hell is with the 80's style BBS gold rims???
</font>
Nice car....Sweet!
What the hell is with the 80's style BBS gold rims???
</font>
------------------
'98 Dakar Yellow ///M3
www.BMWExperience.com
Forums are now open at www.BMWExperience.com
0-60 5.53 sec G-Tech
05-02-2001, 05:14 PM
#4
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<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by ruvz:
Nice car....Sweet!
What the hell is with the 80's style BBS gold rims???
</font>
Nice car....Sweet!
What the hell is with the 80's style BBS gold rims???
</font>
------------------
01- Acura CL silver 3.2-s
20% tint 35%front window
Bose Mods.. Mod's to come headers and springs
05-02-2001, 05:22 PM
#5
Happy CL-S Pilot
hmmmmm....
What happens when you take a 120 mph sharp curve (say an exit ramp). WIth an SUV that has high gound clearence, Tiping over is suicidal. This beast better has a dynamic suspension system (% speed) that can lower the ride by 3-4" inches to keep the X5 plented firmly.
------------------
Black, Ebony, 3.2 CL Type-S, NAV.
- 3M clear bra, by Stonguard (full front bumper, and side mirrors, and partial hood)
- Acura Spoiler, Moonroof visor
- Splash guards, Winter mats, Trunk liner
- Valentine V1 Radar Locator
- HELMS Service Manual
- PIAA 19169 road lamps
- 03/19/01: Injen Polished CAI
- 04/13/01: 235/40/18 NITTO 555 on 18x7.5, +45 offset, Koing Imagine in Silver with wheels locks
What happens when you take a 120 mph sharp curve (say an exit ramp). WIth an SUV that has high gound clearence, Tiping over is suicidal. This beast better has a dynamic suspension system (% speed) that can lower the ride by 3-4" inches to keep the X5 plented firmly.
------------------
Black, Ebony, 3.2 CL Type-S, NAV.
- 3M clear bra, by Stonguard (full front bumper, and side mirrors, and partial hood)
- Acura Spoiler, Moonroof visor
- Splash guards, Winter mats, Trunk liner
- Valentine V1 Radar Locator
- HELMS Service Manual
- PIAA 19169 road lamps
- 03/19/01: Injen Polished CAI
- 04/13/01: 235/40/18 NITTO 555 on 18x7.5, +45 offset, Koing Imagine in Silver with wheels locks
05-02-2001, 07:36 PM
#6
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another pic.
BTW, this is my fav. car.
------------------
2001 CL-S
Black/Black
Moonroof Visor
35% Tint All Around
Black Wood Dash Kit
Currently on TL rims with Nokian Winter Tires
My Bitch
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