BMW X5 LE MANS, 1999

It’s an expensive business, motorsport – executive boards demand results and brands have to justify spending vast amounts on paying short Europeans to drive in circles. The dream is to demonstrate a sort of trickledown effect, for dealers to point at a lardy SUV and claim a rich racing heritage.

Something like the X5, perhaps. A risky move for BMW when the urbane pseudo off-roader came out. This was the company’s first SUV, and while Mercedes and Lexus had beaten it to the punch, BMW’s reputation as the maker of ultimate driving machines was at stake. Not to mention that it had decided it was going to build this German-badged monster in a new factory in South Carolina. Yikes.

In entirely unrelated developments, come 1999 BMW found itself committed to a Le Mans programme in conjunction with its new F1 partner Williams, which would be getting newly developed 3.0-litre V10s in 2000 (the year that Jenson Button made his debut). The endurance effort was a bit more successful than the F1 bid (a mere 10 wins in six years was a bit of a disappointment), winning the Le Mans 24-Hour Race at the second time of asking in 1999 with the V12 LMR, running a 6.0-litre V12 engine codenamed S70/3 that was a development of the motor they stuck in the back of the McLaren F1 supercar.

We say unrelated, but evidently someone at BMW put two and two together and got X5 – the production version of the SUV was revealed at the IAA in Frankfurt in 1999, and the Le Mans concept car turned up the following March in Geneva with the monstrous 700bhp V12 from the Le Mans racer shoehorned in. Enough for 0–62mph in 4.7secs and a 173mph top speed.

There were some bodywork changes made, most notably a giant air scoop on the bonnet to get air to its thirsty engine. The engine is actually more powerful than in race trim – it had to have airbox restrictors during races that kept it pegged back to around 580bhp. BMW’s engineers also fitted new skirts all round and 20in racing wheels, dropped the suspension by 30mm and fitted racing seats so passengers wouldn’t be flailing around like loose change in a washing machine.

But they weren’t thinking of a production run, this car’s job was to make the school run X5 look a little sexier. Job done, the X5 has gone on to success and is firmly cemented in the BMW range. Hard to imagine what they were so nervous about. We’d go further though – instead of homologation specials, we want any carmaker thinking of racing to have to take its dumpiest, slowest car and give it the full Extreme Makeover treatment. Might not sell many extra cars though.