Originally Posted by scott27

This vehicle is known inside BMW as "FABEAN" - a suspension / body stress measurement vehicle. This test vehicle is used to test suspension work of a certain vehicle (X1 in this case) at different loads - measuring the stress / forces on suspension & body. With this vehicle we check IRL the computer calculations we have made during the initial suspension development.

Later the data from FABEAN are applied to suspension load simulator - where we eg. simulate entire vehicle millage on the Ring during the whole lifecycle of the car. Yet this test is done in 2 weeks only!
With this simulation we check the structure of the suspension - and tweak it if needed way before the prototype production starts.