Cundari was faced with a challenge for the new BMW M5 launch this June: convey its high performance while emphasizing its luxury, and top last year’s viral hit for the BMW 1-Series M (which achieved three million views in three weeks).

“We set the bar really high with the 1M campaign,” says Cundari’s CCO Brent Choi of the video, which saw the vehicle drift through car-shaped holes in brick walls.

For the latest launch, Cundari shot the M5 speeding out of a gun’s barrel. As it raced down the track it hit objects – such as a glass apple or massive water balloons – while super-slow motion cameras captured the destruction.

“The relationship between a bullet and high speed was a natural one, but the challenge was, how do we make it feel luxurious and premium?” says Choi. “The slow motion in combination with the classical music [played during slow-mo bits] brought this premium feeling throughout the piece.”

The video exceeded expectations by amassing three million views in just eight days, more than four million views at press time, and sales figures are on track to beat last year’s results. Online, the video garnered more than 42 million impressions, Choi says. It received international attention from CNN, Discovery Channel, car show Top Gear and rapper 50 Cent, who mentioned it on his blog. Toronto Life praised the piece as “the coolest car commercial we’ve ever seen.”