After a period of absence, Kelleners Sport has returned to the BMW

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Special
After a period of absence, Kelleners Sport has returned to the
BMW tuning scene and its 535i looks set to bring the brand
back with a bang Words: Sebastian de Latour Photography: Dave Smith
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MW enthusiasts will no doubt recognise
the Kelleners Sport name, though in
recent years it has been notable in the
BMW tuning scene only by its absence
and it’s been quite some time since the
company has brought out any new products. But,
thankfully, Kelleners Sport is making a welcome return
to the BMW scene, in a new location, under new
management and with the facilities and technical
expertise of Mercedes tuning expert Carlsson to hand.
And, judging by its first car, it’s off to a cracking start.
The car that has been tasked with the responsibility
of re-introducing the company to the world is the F10
535i and the team at Kelleners Sport has been
working away furiously for the best part of 2010 to
create a package for the car from scratch in order to
have it ready for its grand unveiling at the Essen
Motorshow last December. I can’t even begin to
imagine how daunting it must be to try and create a
styling package from scratch at the best of times but
when it’s for the first car from an essentially new
company, it has to be absolutely bang on. No
pressure then.
B
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Visually, the Kelleners 535i is nothing short of
spectacular – it looks like it would eat your children
when you weren’t looking and have your dog for
dessert. But somehow it manages to be both
incredibly aggressive and hugely intimidating but
without coming across as vulgar or over the top.
While I can appreciate that perhaps Kelleners’ styling
won’t appeal to all tastes, I personally think it’s
awesome and however menacing it may appear in
the photos, in the metal it’s terrifying. Kelleners has
worked hard to ensure that the bodystyling isn’t made
up of separate sections but that each piece of the
whole kit flows into the next, making it look a lot
more cohesive and aesthetically pleasing.
The front bumper can take the bulk of the credit
when it comes to the 535i’s looks because it does
most of the work and it’s what gives the car its visual
clout. It appears that whoever designed it left their
pencil and compass at home and only had their set
square to hand because it’s a riot of right angles,
eschewing curves in favour of bold square shapes. It
makes the F10 look massively wide, with those
squared-off edges that house the vertical LED arrays.
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KELLENERS SPORT F10 535i
The slim central air intake is flanked by two
purposeful intakes and, usefully, the bumper employs
a modular design. See that silver lip below the central
intake? If you don’t like it, you don’t have to have it.
And that stainless steel mesh is optional, too. I’ve
seen the car with and without it and I can’t really
decide which looks better – without the mesh and
with some black grilles and black wheels, it would
look incredibly mean and about as stealthy as is
possible with a car like this, but on the other hand, if
you’re going to the effort of fitting a styling kit that’s
so aggressive and unsubtle, then you might as well
go all out. I like the fact that Kelleners has eschewed
the use of any chrome on this car as well, as far too
many tuners (AC Schnitzer, I’m looking at you) seem
obsessed with the shiny stuff. Stainless steel though,
I’ve got a lot of time for. At the bottom corners of the
front bumper are two little fins that protrude slightly
and the line they create along the bottom edge is
picked up by the side skirts and the elongated design
of these, with their flared rear sections, has been
created to give the car a more coupé-like appearance
in profile, so I’m told. I’m not usually a fan of side
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skirts but I think these look really good – I like the
way they make the car appear even lower and I’d
even go so far as to agree with the coupé profile idea.
The flared rear sections of the skirts are then taken up
by the bottom edge of the rear bumper and this
features a central diffuser section which can be
painted in a contrasting colour to the rest of the
bumper – grey in this case – which is a nice touch as
it makes it more prominent and gives the rear
bumper a more purposeful look. I love the big, fat,
shiny quartet of exhausts, too. Each pair is staggered
slightly and they sit right at the edges of the bumper,
making the car look indecently wide from the rear
and they’re massive – not so much hinting at this
car’s potential as announcing it to the world via
megaphone with accompanying fireworks and laser
show. There’s also a rear spoiler, which is surprisingly
large but blends in with the lines of the car to such a
degree that unless you’re looking for it, it’s easy to
miss, especially on a black car. Finally, at least on this
example, Kelleners has left the interior well alone,
opting only for some branded mats and a pedal set.
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And that’s fine by me because the standard F10
interior is so nice I can’t see any reason to go around
filling it full of trinkets.
I’m naturally a little nervous about taking to the
streets in the one and only Kelleners 535i currently in
existence – kerbing a wheel or grinding the front
bumper on the tarmac doesn’t bear thinking about –
but as Kelleners’ MD Marco Reinberg explains, the
idea behind the car was to create a styling package
that looks good but without compromising usability.
“We have lowered the car,” he says, “but not so much
that you can’t use it – there’s still plenty of ground
clearance and you don’t have to worry about scraping
the bumper or skirts.” That’s good to hear.
The 535i fires with a four-gun salute courtesy of its
sports exhaust and settles into a restrained yet
purposeful idle. Sitting behind the steering wheel with
your feet obscuring the Kelleners pedals and your
legs covering the Kelleners logo on the floor mat,
aside from the gentle throb of the exhaust there’s
nothing to suggest that this is anything other than a
standard 5 Series, which makes a nice change. A
sport suspension kit is available for the F10 from
Kelleners but this car was just fitted with a set of
lowering springs which drop the ride height by
30mm, enough to make the 5 Series look a bit more
purposeful but not so low as to render it undriveable.
This car has been specced with VDC and retains the
adjustable dampers so even though the ride is
naturally a little firmer than standard on the sport
springs, you can still either soften it up or firm it
further if you so desire.
The Kelleners 535i wears the company’s Hamburg
design alloys in a 20-inch diameter, though they are
also available as 19s. There’s so much going on here
that the wheels just shouldn’t work and yet in the
metal they are stunning. They are a 15-spoke design
with five single spokes and ten spokes arranged in
pairs with a recessed feature on the outside of each
pair and the spokes extend out from the centre of
the wheel at a slight angle before bending back in to
the edge of the wheel. This does mean that the
knuckle in the spokes does protrude ever so slightly
beyond the safety net of the of the tyres so there’s
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KELLENERS SPORT F10 535i
potential for some big kerbing disasters but I reckon
it’s worth the risk because they look so good and are
the perfect match for the rest of the body styling.
They are available in three finishes – matt black,
polished Graphite silver and polished Platinum silver
– and this car was fitted with a pair in matt black and
another pair in polished Platinum silver. I have to say
that the matt black finish makes the polished
platinum look positively dull; fitted to this car, with
this styling kit and in this colour, the wheels look
awesome, and after seeing the car with these alloys
you get the feeling that anything smaller than 20
inches would look lost beneath the F10’s arches. And
they don’t even ruin the ride – admittedly the roads
around here are very smooth but even with the
dampers on their Sport setting the 535i manages to
avoid rattling your fillings loose, though I’d willingly
sacrifice some comfort for style.
Pop the bonnet and you’re greeted by a mass of
black plastic which you’ll notice hasn’t even been
treated to so much as a Kelleners sticker so you really
have no way of telling whether or not there’s anything
special going on under there. But there is, in the form
of a Kelleners KS Power35 ECU. The 35i engine may
now only have a single turbo attached to it but that
doesn’t make it any less powerful or fun to use in
standard form and it doesn’t make it any less
responsive to a remap either. Power leaps from 306
to 367hp while torque swells from a capable 295lb ft
to a substantial 354 and while Kelleners doesn’t have
any performance figures for the car all you need to
know is that it’s fast and then some.
There’s torque everywhere, and despite its size and
weight, the 535i responds instantly to even the
slightest throttle inputs, with the excellent Sport auto
‘box fitted to this car not only being ideally suited to
the Five but also the perfect partner for this engine,
particularly in its breathed-on form. From the moment
you move off, you can feel all that torque swelling
beneath the surface and the 535i is keen to surge
ahead at the first prod of the throttle, regardless of
how few revs are showing. The mid-range is massive,
with only a gentle squeeze of the accelerator required
to have the F10 surging forwards on a wave of torque
and no matter what you may ask of the 535i it will
answer the call, powering past slower traffic, erupting
out of corners or just putting a massive grin on your
face. There’s more than enough grunt to spin up the
rear wheels under full throttle on the cold, wet roads
here in Merzig, much to the disapproval of the locals
going about their Christmas shopping.
But this engine is not just about torque – there’s
power here too, lots of power. Nail the throttle and
once you’re at the edge of the torque curve the
power takes over, the acceleration building and
building as the revs hurtle towards the redline and
the exhaust note hardens and increases in volume,
filling the cabin. It might not offer the same visceral
thrills as an E9x M3 as it hurtles towards the rev
limiter but peak power here is delivered at a lofty
7750rpm and the engine’s more than happy to rev,
which means that there’s good reason to wring each
gear out because that’s when the 535i feels at its
fastest and sounds vicious with it. It’s quite a startling
experience, so very different to what you’d expect
from a large executive saloon and so very different
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KELLENERS SPORT 535i
to what you’ve become accustomed to from the
diesel engines that normally power these cars, even
post power increase. The 535d may still be the
more sensible choice but it can’t deliver the sort of
thrill and noise that this 535i manages – it’s
intoxicating stuff.
It’s fair to say that I like the Kelleners 535i a lot. I
think it looks out of this world, is wonderful to drive,
handles superbly and is genuinely fast. All this comes
at a price, naturally, but the complete Kelleners
conversion is no more expensive than similar
products from its rival tuners, though none of the
other F10 Fives I’ve seen look quite as distinctive, or
as good as this. In fact, this is one of the few times I
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have come away from driving a tuner car and would
consider the styling one of the highlights of the whole
experience – so much so that I would genuinely
consider buying this kit and these wheels if I had a 5
Series and the money to spend on it. Kelleners Sport
may have been away but it’s back in a big way and
with just one car it has shown that it can go head-tohead with the rest of the tuning world. I can’t wait to
see what Kelleners comes up with next… ●
CONTACT:
Kelleners Sport GmbH
Tel: 0049 6861 933 2850
Web: www.kelleners-sport.de
ENGINE: Straight-six, turbocharged
CAPACITY: 2979cc
MAX POWER: 367hp @ 7750rpm
MAX TORQUE: 354lb ft @ 6100rpm
WHEELS & TYRES
Kelleners Sport Hamburg alloys, 9x20-inch (f), 10x20inch (r) with 255/35 and 285/30 tyres: From £330.36
PERFORMANCE UPGRADES
Kelleners Sport KS Power35 ECU: £1269.37
EXHAUST
Kelleners Sport stainless steel rear silencer: £1604.73
SUSPENSION
Kelleners Sport sports spring set: £256.16
EXTERIOR
Front spoiler insert with daytime running lights: £534.43
Front spoiler lip RS: £184.80
Side skirts: £605.79
Rear skirt extension with diffuser: £470.22
Rear spoiler: £334.65
Kelleners Sport three-piece stainless steel mesh grille
insert: £313.24
INTERIOR
Kelleners Sport floor mats: £89.19
Kelleners Sport aluminium pedal set: £78.49
Kelleners Sport aluminium foot rest: £74.92
(All prices exclude VAT, painting and fitting)