Couple days of searching and we found one 70 miles out, picked it straight from a dealer. Stock. Owned by an older lady. Perfect. Not a church-only car, but the seats weren't sunk in, so she drove it easy.

The dealer tried to hide some wear on the right hub. Small thing. We'd get it to the shop and swap it ourselves. That's the dealer game, they'll try to slip something past you. Cheaper and cleaner to just fix it than to turn it into a fight. But it happens.

Got it to the shop. Ordered the body kit. Ordered custom wheels. Ordered a big brake kit. Left the engine alone for now. Then the wait.

Kit landed and it was install time. Took half a day, because a body kit is a hundred little things, a lot of small plastic clips you do not want to snap and then sit around waiting on replacements. So you go slow and careful. Half a day later the kit sits together on new wheels over new brakes. Good.

We could paint it ourselves, but prep eats time, so it was easier to send it to Maaco. Couple days later it came back. Not a perfect job, we'd have done it cleaner, but it'll do. Shook it down, drove fine, drove normal. But it was time to get ready for the show.

We decided to wrap it in matte grey metallic.

There's a reason. The X5 has beautiful body lines, and unfortunately every color BMW offers buries them. To read a silhouette you need hyper contrast, and hyper contrast in factory paint is exclusive and expensive. Our version is simpler. Grey. Mid grey, the color sculptors work in so they can actually see the form. And because ours reads almost like matte chrome, every change in the surface throws an instant contrast. Look at the photos and the side line jumps out, every shape sharpens, and the gloss black trim pushes the matte forms even harder.

Skirts are the interesting part on an X5. Everything in the aftermarket today is a fat beam with little wings, fins, on the ends. Honestly it works badly, because it turns the X5 into a stagecoach. To make it look sporty the skirts have to be a cove, concave. Then they read fast, especially with the car dropped to the ground, which is a requirement. We took it on air, corrected the sensors, and put it practically on its belly.

The rear arches matter just as much. They draw the dynamic line from the skirts back into the diffuser. Always a must do.

A wing on the rear glass, mid-car, is madness. It fights its own aerodynamics. Visually fun, but too much. A wing up top, on the roof, is real work and actually dams the air. So that's the one worth upgrading, and we upgraded it.

I thought about swapping the front headlights from LED to laser, then didn't. In more aggressive tuning the LED lights, especially in that lemon yellow, look far meaner than laser. The triangular signature you see on the X5M is more of the moment, and more temporary. Complex shapes always age fastest. That's turned out true, since BMW is walking its front lights back toward simpler lines as we speak.

That part of the project is done. We took it to the show, had a great time.

And we've already ordered the next kit, from the last generation before the new 2027 X5. Which, jokes online aside, is genuinely a bold piece of design research from BMW. Standing ovation. The potential in that generation is excellent, especially for tuning and white body work, which is the next iteration of this car anyway.

Kit's ordered. Elements are getting refreshed. Interior goes cinnamon and black. New wheel. Every wood insert gets wrapped in vinyl. Should come out cool, and then we'll see.

Three weeks to wait, and we start the rebuild. Whether it keeps this color is an open question. Open to suggestions.

Kit's on the way. Couple weeks and it goes on. That's the next episode.