New kidney grills - a twist

[josiahg52]

I never really liked the chrome grills on my dark-colored vehicles even though it is the standard/traditional style. I've never really liked the totally blacked out grills either, especially the gloss black ones because they seem to be competing with the body paint and sort of created a void in between the headlights. I like muted contrast.

For the M5, I purchased matte-black grills with the narrow, pre-facelift bezels from bimmian.com. I took factory (OE BMW) chrome slats and the matte-black bezel from bimmian.com and combined them. They fit perfectly together and I liked the look. They've been on the M5 since 2011 and for about 30k miles and still look great.

Wanting something similar for the X5, I looked to bimmian.com again and found they sold matte-black grill sets for the E70 X5. I purchased them and set about separating them. I also took apart the OE BMW chrome bezel/silver slat grills that were already on my X5. I combined the matte-black bezels and silver slats and I like the look.

I'm happy with the look. There is a contrast between the Black Sapphire Metallic paint and the bezel and between the bezel and silver slats. Maybe it just looks good because it's new but it's also different.