The Project X Story: Chapter VIII, Into The Wild

08 Dec The Project X Story: Chapter VIII, Into The Wild

We’ve finally hit that point. It’s time for our final chapter of the Project X build. Today, let’s take a look at the X5 as it ventures out into the wild.

Since one of the goals with the X5 was to build a car that gathered as much attention as possible, we figured it would be appropriate to showcase pictures of the X5 that were taken by other photographers, not just our in-house twerp. We’ve thrown in a couple that we’ve snapped, and we’re also including three very special shots at the end, taken by a closer personal friend of ours. So let’s start this last chapter out with the X5’s first appearance after being finished. The location? Tuner Galleria (part of the World of Wheels) at Rosemont Convention Center, Rosemont IL. The winter was still going strong at this point, so while the trip there may have been treacherous, the show itself turned out great. Here’s the best two shots we could find of the X5 as it sat at Tuner Galleria. Thanks to Ben Levy for snapping these:

From there, about a month later, the X5 packed itself to the brim and headed out to MFest with Ashley’s 335, the DCM3, and Gold Wheels. Here’s a shot from the night of our departure:

A couple rolling shots and several hours later…

…and we arrived in one piece!

And what Tuner Galleria lacked in the way of photographers, MFest definitely made up for. Enjoy these shots from various Flickr accounts of MFest participants, along with European Auto Salon, ModLyfe, and our good friend Jeremy Cliff:

And finally, we bring you three photos that you may not have seen before. Well, two, if you’re following StanceWorks on Facebook. When Mr. Rusty Slammington himself — StanceWorks founder Mike Burroughs — came through the shop in February for the X5’s Performance BMW shoot, shenanigans were had. Plenty of shenanigans. If you saw StanceWorks’s Facebook, you may recognize the next picture. A little background on it: This was actually taken in the middle of our fabrication garage in the dead of night, using a light-painting rig we created from a tube of aluminum and some cardboard. Positioning the X5 was no easy task, requiring us to shove one of the dyno ramps into the E39’s headlight cavity. We positioned Aaron’s bike to block the rear of the E39 (the rear end is in awful shape; it’s just a random parts car we have), propped up the E90 in the background and then Burroughs worked his magic:

These last two were taken from the daytime portion of the X5/Burroughs shoot, which took place at Acme Refining in Joliet. Nothing like a proper scrapyard to show off the rugged new design for Project X.

There are even more amazing leftovers from this shoot, but if you want them, you’ll have to ask the man with the camera himself. Furthermore, we would have loved to used one of John Zhang’s 1013mm shots, but he didn’t respond to our e-mail in time. As we cue the sad trombone noise, let’s move on to the two YouTube videos of Project X. The first is our own teaser, featuring Tom’s golden quip of, “Holy shit dude, the whole exhaust is glowin’ orange!” The second was taken by an attendee of our Motor Union track/show day. Thanks for putting it on YouTube! And by the way, if the videos keep showing up over the pictures, just scroll the window a bit and they should move out of the way:

If anybody has any other photos or video they’d like to add to this chapter, don’t hesitate to get a hold of us, we’ll gladly include it. Otherwise, this concludes the Project X build story, from start to finish. But it’s not really finished — the car is currently tearing up the roads of Naperville on a daily basis, so if you hear something menacing rolling up behind you, you might just find yourself face-to-face with the powdercoated steel front bumper of the meanest E53 X5 you’ve ever laid eyes upon. Let this also stand as a lesson for anybody thinking about taking a ridiculous route with your car: Modifying a car is a little bit like life — if you don’t get a little off-the-wall with it every once in a while, what’s the point? If it doesn’t suck to roll hard, you’re not rolling hard enough yet.