BMW’s Italian Designers Part 3

By Jackie Jouret
Photo courtesy The BMW Archive

Among the most fascinating races of the pre-war era is one that never took place: the Berlin-Rome race. Announced in June 1937 for the following year, the race had been conceived by Adolf Hühnlein, an early follower of Adolf Hitler, who in 1931 became head of Germany’s National Socialist Driver Corps (or NSKK, to use its German acronym). The NSKK was in charge of all motoring and motorsport activities for the Nazi government, and Hühnlein ensured that German racing was well-supported in service of its propaganda value. A high-speed race on the newly-built freeways connecting the two Axis capitals would be ideally suited to that purpose, and it would allow German and Italian automakers to highlight their technical superiority where aerodynamics were concerned.

Alas, world events have a way of foiling even the best-laid plans, and the Berlin-Rome race had been planned during a volatile time. First, its original 1938 date was advanced by a year in deference to the economic and social difficulties created by Italy’s occupation of Ethiopia, then three dates in 1939 were canceled, the last following Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1 of that year.

Humans tend toward optimism, however, and few people in Europe expected the war to become a global conflict that would last for nearly six years and leave tens of millions dead. Even in 1940, most carried on as if peace would ensue shortly. That April, Italy hosted the Mille Miglia, followed by the Tripoli Grand Prix in occupied Libya and the Targa Florio in Sicily. Racing had been halted in Germany after 1939, but Hühnlein remained committed to the Berlin-Rome idea. In the fall of 1940, he rescheduled the race for 1941, and he even commissioned new aerodynamic roadster bodies from Touring of Milan to be built atop three BMW 328 chassis owned by the NSKK. (As a state sponsor of sports car racing, the NSKK owned a number of cars, which were maintained by teams like BMW along with the factory-owned racing fleet.)

Why Hühnlein chose Touring rather than a domestic coachbuilder undoubtedly comes down to the Milanese firm’s sophisticated aerodynamics. Not only were Touring’s cars beautiful, and beautifully crafted, but their efficacy had been proven at high-speed events like Le Mans and the 1940 Mille Miglia. BMW had won the latter with a Touring-bodied 328 coupe, and it would likely enter that car, another aerodynamic coupe, and several of its existing roadsters in the Berlin-Rome race. Two of those roadsters had been built by Touring following plans provided by BMW design chief Wilhelm Meyerhuber, who’d also penned BMW’s own highly efficient coupe body for the 328.

Regardless of its in-house talent, BMW’s in-house production capacity was limited. What’s more, the war had made all civilian automotive development forbidden within Germany. If he wanted a new design, Hühnlein had little choice but to commission one in Italy.

Even under wartime constraints, Touring had continued to develop its cars for ever-greater speed and stability. For the Berlin-Rome project, that meant updating an existing design rather than starting from scratch. Writing in the official history, “Touring Superleggera,” Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloni (son of founder Felice Anderloni) said that the design for the Berlin-Rome 328 was based on that created two years earlier for Luigi Belluci atop a Lancia Aprilia chassis. It wasn’t all that pretty, but it featured modern styling elements like nearly-flat sides, and fenders that were fully integrated with the central sections of bodywork.

Bellucci entered the car in the 1938 Mille Miglia, finishing third in the 1.5-liter class and 19th overall. He followed that result by taking sixth overall in the Targa Abruzzi later that year, and seventh in the 1939 Circuito dell’Imperio for 1.5-liter cars.

As modest as those results may have been, the car’s design showed promise. Moreover, it pointed the way to a more aerodynamically efficient future, one that Anderloni would execute to perfection on the BMWs he’d create for the Berlin-Rome race.

In November 1940, a trio of 328s were driven from Munich to Milan, where they were stripped of their standard 328 roadster bodywork and fitted with Touring’s Superleggera framework of metal tubing. Over that, they were given an aluminum skin adapted from that used on Bellucci’s Lancia, here made smaller to fit the 328’s narrower chassis. Two years on, the bodywork designed by Anderloni had become far more stylish, its flat surfaces joined by sensuous curves and its broad nose tapering elegantly rearward to a long tail with a Kamm-style finish.

The details improved along with the shape. BMW’s signature double-kidney grille—here canted rearward—proved more attractive than the larger Lancia grille, and better integrated with the rest of the bodywork. The headlights were mounted low on the fenders, but still higher than those on the Lancia to give the car a more pleasing face. The hood had custom-built hinges where its leading edge met the bodywork, eliminating the need for drag-inducing leather straps. Along the sides, a series of seven vertical air vents were followed by a high-cut door, again with bespoke hinges that minimized disruption to the air flow. The front fenders tucked around the wheels nicely, while spats covered the rear wheels to permit smooth passage of air to the rear. The tapered tail allowed the air flow to close behind the car, reducing drag as well as the ability of a following car to draft the Berlin-Rome roadster.

It’s an aesthetic masterpiece, and it proved technically effective, as well. According to Anderloni’s calculations, the bodywork contributed just 80 kilograms (176 pounds) to the roadster’s total weight of 644 kg (1,460 pounds), including a spare wheel and tire. Touring had given the 328 a frontal area of 1.10 square meters and a Cd of 0.25, for a Cd x A of 0.275. That’s better than most cars even today, and it was on par with the slipperiest BMW racing coupe of the era, the fixed-roof 328 designed by Wilhelm Meyerhuber in-house at BMW prior to the 1940 Mille Miglia.

Alas, this beautiful little roadster never got to face off against that car, or the Touring-bodied 328 coupe and roadsters that had done so well in the 1940 Mille Miglia. Touring completed three roadsters for the NSKK in March 1941, and all three returned to Munich in anticipation of the Berlin-Rome race scheduled to begin shortly thereafter. By then, however, world events had overtaken even the most optimistic projections for a return to normal life, much less racing. In Europe, Nazi Germany was by then occupying France, the Low Countries, and Norway, bombing Great Britain, taking over from the defeated Italians in North Africa and the Balkans, and launching an invasion of the Soviet Union. Neither Germany nor Italy was in a position to host a long-distance automobile race, especially with all available fuel and rubber being diverted to the military.

The Berlin-Rome race was shelved, finally, and the three 328 roadsters built by Touring were stashed on a farm near the Tegernsee in Bavaria. (Adolf Hühnlein, who’d commissioned them for the NSKK, died of cancer in 1942, at age 60.) The car bearing chassis number 85051 survived the conflict in good enough condition to be displayed at the Deutsches Museum before returning to BMW, which brings it out regularly for vintage rallies like the Silvretta Classic and the Mille Miglia Storica; it’s the car seen in the photos that accompany this article. One of the three disappeared altogether, while the other is in private hands and is currently undergoing restoration.

The Berlin-Rome roadsters may not have raced when new, but they provided a template for aerodynamic cars going forward. Touring’s design was borrowed by Veritas almost wholesale in the postwar period, and it informed various sports-racing prototypes well into the 1960s. Had it been built in an era of peace rather than war, who knows where its aerodynamic and stylistic developments might have led, much less Touring’s budding partnership with BMW. Alas, the Berlin-Rome roadsters represented the last contact between these two venerable firms, and Touring itself closed up shop in 1966. It was revived in 2006, however, and in 2014 collaborated with BMW Design on a stylish MINI concept for Villa d’Este that we’ll examine for a later installment in this series.

BMW’s Italian Designers, Part 1

BMW’s Italian Designers Part 2