BMW Put A Le Mans-Winning V12 In An X5 In 2000. A Guy Who’s Owned 100+ X5s Found What Else It Hides

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BMW’s one-off E53 X5 Le Mans uses the V12 from the 1999 Le Mans-winning V12 LMR, yet it kept its all-wheel drive and its sunroof.

Sean Troy has owned more than 100 E53 X5s, but until BMW Group Classic invited him to see the BMW X5 Le Mans, he had only seen the one-off SUV in pictures. Everyone knows about its 6.1-liter V12 from the Le Mans-winning V12 LMR, good for more than 700 hp, so in our latest video Sean skips the spec sheet and points out what an E53 specialist notices first. He runs Alpine Rennsport in Cleveland, Georgia, and is building his own X5 LM tribute.

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The fog lights are gone, and their openings feed air to the V12. The headlights and fender flares are unique to this car, and the front flares run into the bumper, something no regular X5’s flares do. The rear bumper gets its own diffuser pieces around the center exhaust. The BBS magnesium-center wheels still wear the same tire sizes as a production 4.6is: 275/40R20 front and 315/35R20 rear. Underneath, tow hooks bolt on where the rear exhaust hanger normally mounts, and the rear sway bar makes the stock one look “like a straw,” as Sean puts it. The plastic battery box is gone, and Sean figures the exhaust runs too close for it to survive.

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The cowl was removed to make room for a massive airbox, an oil tank sits where the DME normally lives, and the engine computer moved to the glovebox. Sean was surprised the car still runs BMW’s EWS immobilizer, which has caused it serious problems. The black rectangle under the hood, which Sean had always taken for a sticker over the VIN stamp, is actually the original paint. This X5 started life as a pre-production 1999 4.4i in Cosmos Black, and BMW taped that patch off before the repaint.

Inside, LM-only full-leather door panels pushed the window switches onto the center console, and the instrument cluster comes from an early E39 M5, identifiable by its black gauge faces. The warning labels are pure race car: wear a helmet because there are no airbags, and don’t expect the alternator to charge below 4,000 rpm.

Why Does A Track-Built X5 Still Have All-Wheel Drive?

A digital display shows gearbox, differential and transfer case temperatures, which hints at the biggest surprise. The X5 LM is still all-wheel drive, with a front axle, front driveshaft and transfer case behind its six-speed manual. Because it started as a pre-facelift car, the system is fully mechanical and predates xDrive. Sean has converted plenty of X5s to rear-wheel drive and says they drive beautifully, so keeping the extra weight on a track car strikes him as odd. The sunroof puzzles him too, since it puts a heavy assembly at the highest point of the car. The chassis does get proper race parts, though, including a limited steering lock and a monoball in the front thrust arm.

BMW built the X5 LM in 2000 to celebrate its Le Mans win, and in 2001 Hans-Joachim Stuck lapped the Nürburgring Nordschleife in under eight minutes with it. Sean says BMW “built it for one purpose and one purpose only,” which was to see what it could do at the Ring. Even so, someone at BMW made a custom plastic panel just to cover two empty rear-seat mounting holes.