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When racing driver Brian Redman, suited up and trackside, tells you that he’d owned BMWs privately for years before joining its racing efforts, it’s completely natural to pause this film and search your local classifieds for a classic BMW.
That’s been our reaction, at least. And Redman’s endorsement comes less than four minutes into this 26 minute film! Throughout, racing drivers, executives, engineers, and other key players in BMW give their opinion of what makes the cars special, often in plain, precise language.
“I wanted a car that I could drive on the street that didn’t attract undue attention from the forces of the law and order,” Redman continues. “I wanted a car I could take the family in, but I wanted a car that had high-performance at the same time.”
One of the most intriguing aspects of the film is the behind-the-scenes look at how the company is pushing into the future. This begins with grey suits and computers, but quickly gets to the sight of the 1976 Frank Stella BMW 3.0 CSL Art Car getting a new engine fitted!
Don’t worry: after some more boring stuff, they take it out for, presumably, lunch.
The rest of it makes a compelling case for setting your time machine for “Munich, 1976”…
Photo Courtesy of BMW
That is beautiful stuff. If Triumphs were my ‘high school’ when it came to performance cars & driving, BMWs were my ‘college’. I think I’ve had five 2002s over the years (still wish I had held on to one!), and I think my favorite was the grey market E21 323i I had in the early ’80s.
I have *always* loved E9s. But they’ve always been just a touch out of my reach. When good drivers were only $3K, I could only scrounge up two thousand. When they got to $8K, I could only find 7. Now that the only ones left are perfect ones for $35K. or $5000 basket cases that need thirty thousand dollars worth of welding, I think I’ll never have the chance to actually own one. Oh, well. At least I owned an E3 for awhile. Even my mom was impressed that a car the size of her Malibu went down the road that well.
Great find on the video! Being a BMW guy before the ‘Yuppie Hordes’ discovered them was fun. IIRC, I think I had that great old Paul Oxman poster of the CSL in the air at Nurburgring on my wall before I even had a drivers’ license.