Timon Thijssen

BMW and motorsport is almost like a natural combination. Just like cows and milk or whatever combination you can think of. Everyone knows the stunning E9 3.0 CSLs, the very successful E30 M3 DTM race cars and the legendary, fire-breathing M1 Procars. Lots of motorsport technologies found their ways into BMW’s production vehicles. These technologies also found their ways into the BMW X5 Le Mans concept, the car I would like to tell you more about. But before doing that, I would like to tell you more about the origin of the motorsport technologies in this concept car.

When you think of Mazda, you probably think about rotary engines. And when you think about rotary engines, then you probably think about fire-breathing RX-7’s or the 1991 Le Mans-winning 787B. To honour its international motorsports heritage and to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the rotary engine, Mazda came up with a very extreme concept car; the Mazda Furai. A car named after the sound of the wind.

When people think of a limousine, they probably think about a big, luxurious and comfortable like car, like a Mercedes S-class or a Rolls Royce or a BMW 760Li… When people think of powerful engines, they often think about race cars, sports cars or supercars… As you probably know, many manufacturers use motorsport-inspired technologies to develop and sell cars. Well, Peugeot does so, but in 2006 they did it in a very odd way.

In the 1980’s Peugeot was, in terms of motorsports, on a bit of a roll. The Peugeot 205 T16 Group B rally car had done extremely well in the World Rally Championship. The 405 T16 dominated in Rally raids, like Dakar and Pikes Peak. And Peugeot also managed to build the fastest race car to ever lap Le Mans, the 1988 WM P88 Peugeot.

For those who don’t know what I mean with Class One or what it is, I will explain it first before going on with the question. As you probably know is DTM one of the most famous racing series in the world in terms of touring car racing. In Asia, they have a similar kind of racing series, namely the GT500 class from the Super-GT series.