By Pete Vack
This week we begin a multi-part series on Italian designers and BMW, researched and written by BMW Roundel columnist Jackie Jouret. These exclusive articles for VeloceToday are the result of some interesting connections and coincidences.
Although I’ve owned a lot of Alfas, my first new car was not an Alfa but a 1971 BMW 2002, chosen over an Alfa Berlina 1750. It will long be remembered, perhaps mostly because we kept the window sticker. It was in the days before the great inflationary spiral of the 1970s, and the cost off the showroom floor was only $3706. That’s three thousand, seven hundred six dollars.
Window sticker for our BMW 2002…$3706. Inset, cover of Das Kummet.
We raced it, rallied it, drove it cross country, parked it in the bog at Watkins Glen, and enjoyed being the editors of the local BMW Das Kummet club magazine, (the national being The Roundel) gaining an affinity for all things BMW in the process before moving back into the realm of Alfa Romeos.
By 2000, I was writing the occasional article for Forza, Ross Periodicals’ new magazine about Ferrari, then under the editorship of Henry Rasmussen. He had already enlisted Jackie Jouret to serve as Forza’s managing editor, and by 2001 she was promoted to editor; she was simultaneously serving as editor of Bimmer, the magazine about BMW, and would edit both magazines through 2003. (Also on the masthead of Forza at the time were Jim Sitz and Graham Gauld.) It was during this period that I got to know Jouret and introduced her to Dick Merritt, which resulted in an outstanding article on Dick and his Ferraris by Jackie.
Jackie (inset) was the assistant editor at Forza in 2000, managing her new contributors. In 2024 she published The BMW 2002 book.
Some twenty years later, Jackie and I hooked up again via VeloceToday as we asked her if she would like to republish her interview with Dick Merritt in VeloceToday. With a few new photos from Dick’s son Kendall, the article appeared in January 2023.
Later that year she wrote about a Greek car museum, again for VT…
In the twenty-year interim, Jouret had handed the editorship of Forza to Aaron Jenkins to concentrate on Bimmer, which ceased publication in 2016. As a freelancer, she writes a column on BMW history for the BMW Car Club of America’s Roundel magazine and edits its bi-annual BimmerLife magazine. She authored six books in conjunction with exhibits produced at the BMW CCA Foundation’s Ultimate Driving Museum in South Carolina, and has also published seven books on BMW history under her own imprint, ID Media LLC.
So when she suggested a new work on Italian designers and BMWs for VeloceToday, it completed the circle. I for one had never even contemplated the possibilities, being only aware of the effort made with Touring on the pre-war 328. It seems that there was a LOT more than that.
In this ten-part series, Jouret explains the Italian influence at BMW from Touring to Michelotti to Giugiaro. I was amazed at the depth of her research and the number of connections there were between BMW and Italy. There’s more to come, too: Future installments will explore the role of designers including Pietro Frua, Ercole Spada, and more.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, after all, she was my boss!