50,000 Miles on Air Lift Performance – Matt Dear's E91

Every now and then we hear a story of a car on Air Lift Performance that transcends the usual show car submissions.

You can’t help but have your ears prick-up when you hear about a car that has covered over a quarter of a million miles. You heard that right, 250,000 miles. That’s a really long life for any car, and what made it even more impressive to us was that it’s done a big chunk of those miles on an Air Lift Performance suspension – 50,000 miles to be exact.

Enter Matt Dear, BMW enthusiast, mega-mile-munching photographer, and his 320d.

Back in 2013, Matt was still at university and was a budding freelance photographer. Scanning the classifieds for a reliable daily driver, this 320d M-Sport E91 immediately jumped out as the perfect option to ferry him around the country. For two years, it did just that – traveling to and from shoots and meshing with day-to-day traffic.

But, as with most enthusiasts, Matt started to get bored with the E91 in its stock form and decided to drop it on coilovers and added his first set of Fifteen52 wheels. While it gave him a new look, it never really gave him the versatility or practicality he wanted and started looking at other options.

When Matt acquired a new set of wheels, he realized that he’d need to get the car lower in order to pull off the look. After doing some quick Photoshop to get a mental picture of what the final product would look like, he fell in love with the laid-out look and decided that adding air was the right call.

These Fifteen52 Formula GT are actually one of the only pre-release sets in existence – thanks to contacts made along the photography trail, the 320d wears a 19×9.5 front and a huge 19×11 rear.