
Post Title → BMW Sports Car
Home » Archives for December 2010
As this engine grew, the original "New Generation" sedan evolved through 1600, 1800, and 2000 derivatives. A new CS coupe variation arrived in 1965, combining the 2000 sedan's running gear, floorpan, and some inner panels with a handsome new pillarless body designed by BMW's Wilhelm Hofmeister and executed by Karmann of Osnabrück. Unfortunately, this 2000CS had but a 120-horsepower four and was thus somewhat underpowered, while its face was one only Frau Hofmeister could have loved.
But BMW is nothing if not persistent, and in late 1968 it corrected most every 2000CS flaw in a six-cylinder successor, the BMW 2800CS. To accommodate the longer engine, new sheetmetal was grafted onto the existing body ahead of the cowl, adding 2.9 inches in wheelbase but nearly five inches to overall length.
The BMW 507 was the first sports car from BMW that could compete with the Jaguars and Ferraris. Born in 1916 as an aircraft-engine manufacturer, Bavarian Motor Works had branched out into motorcycles by the late Twenties and was looking to expand into the auto business. It got the chance when the Dixi company in Eisenach proposed that BMW take it over, thus giving the Bavarian firm a license-built version of the British Austin Seven.
BMW soon developed cars of its own that moved far beyond that humble little rattletrap, building a reputation for superb engineering in the process. This naturally embraced sporting models, of which the most famous and successful were the six-cylinder Type 328 and 327 of the immediate prewar years, and later, the BMW 507.
But then came World War II, and BMW emerged as divided as defeated Germany itself. Some of its prewar facilities were irrevocably lost behind the Iron Curtain in the new state of East Germany, while those that remained in free West Germany had been devastated by Allied bombing. Rebuilding from this rubble was slow and painful, and it wasn't until 1951 that BMW was able to return to car production, though it did so with a new postwar design.
Bayerische Motorenwerke, or Bavarian Motor Works, was established in 1916, producing first engines for aircraft and then for motorcycles. It moved into automobiles in the 1920s, assembling for the German market small British cars under license. BMW began to manufacture cars of its own design in the 1930s, and from the start, most had a sporting bent. The prewar highlight was the quick, pretty, and advanced-for-its-day 328 roadster.
BMW's recovery from World War II was labored as the company gambled and lost with big, expensive sedans before resorting in 1955 to the tiny, egg-shaped Isetta to stay solvent.
It was the sensational BMW 507 sports car of 1956 that reignited the company's high-performance personality. Though it didn't sell well, the vitality of the 507 inspired a series of good-handling two- and four-door cars that earned BMW credit for inventing the sports sedan.
Spiritual successor to the 507 was the BMW 2800CS of 1968. Discover how this shapely coupe and the variants that followed into the 1970s laid the groundwork for the BMW 6-Series of high-performance two-door models starting in 1976.