This 1985 BMW 535i AKA Rusty Slammington Is Winning SEMA 2015

This 1985 BMW 535i is the epitome of customized cars made to no standard and built solely for the owners pleasure. Needless to say, it’s ruffled a few feathers along the way.

If you hop onto Instagram and tap #SEMA2015, you’ll find literally hundreds of pictures of this rusted out BMW with people snapping photos, videographers taking video, and generally people gawking at what is arguably the most Instagrammed car for this year’s SEMA show. It’s owned by Stance Works founder and Editor in Cheif Mike Burroughs and according to their blog post earlier today (Nov. 3, 2015) it’s made its triumphant return to the world and is kicking ass and pissing off BMW purists. Check out some of the social media rolling out as SEMA 2015 kicks off this week as well as some of the video already captured.

https://instagram.com/p/9mSNeHKziK/?tagged=rustyslammington

https://instagram.com/p/9oSCZbyqvt/

https://instagram.com/p/9n2D1RSqrG/

More from Art of Gears

We’re not going to pretend we know absolutely everything about this build because frankly there’s literally enough pictures and details to fill an entire encyclopedia with. What we do have are a couple of choice articles and threads that best showcase what this car’s been through.

As far as we know, it started its life a good eight years ago as a trade and in its stock form was a 1985 BMW 535i with shiny black paint ready for all sorts of modifications. In its lifetime, it’s been lowered on coil overs then a switch to air suspension, has had numerous wheel and tire setups thrown on all four corners as well as an engine swap courtesy of a Toyota 1JZ from a Toyota Chaser, its roof line lowered by a good five inches, and most importantly has had its entire body, starting with the hood rusted out.

In 2010, Burroughs called it quits after a damaged frame had the car too foregone for repairs as it was no longer safe to drive the way it sat. Many thought that that was the end of Rusty Slammington. There was even a farewell video made which we’ve posted below.

Then back in 2011, the car suffered a catastrophic fire. According to one commenter on Jalopnik’s coverage of the horrible turn of events,

"He was working on an engine outside his garage, which had hydro locked with fuel. He pulled the sparks to plunge the gas, the battery hooked up to harness sparked, shooting a fireball into his garage, connecting with a 5-gallon can of gasoline next to Rusty."

Left with a frame after the fire, that surely had to be the end for Rusty Slammington? Wrong! In March 2014 work began to pump life back into this tired old frame and now its been reborn better than ever. The proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes if you will.

Beating underneath the rusted hood is a 3.5 liter S28 engine from an ’88 BMW M5 that’s been stroked up to 3.7 liters and totally reworked by Vac Motorsports. In terms of the chassis, the wheelbase has been shortened by a foot (including the entire body) and aero inspiration is taken from Group 5 racing cars of yore (thus the wide fenders out back.) And talk about racing suspension as now the suspension is out of the wheel wells and utilizes an inboard suspension design thanks to H&R Suspension.

According to Burroughs, this is literally just the beginning and there’s much left to do. We can’t wait!

And now a couple of links if you’d like to catch up on the history of this car. I’m sure there are more threads out there including magazine articles, but this should be enough for the casual internet peruser.

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