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BMW’s Italian Designers Part 10

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

Following its near-death experience at the end of 1959, BMW announced its renaissance at the Frankfurt auto show of September 1961. The Giovanni Michelotti-designed 1500 drew huge crowds, and the all-new midsize sedan tended to overshadow the other cars on the BMW stand. That’s a shame, because two of those cars were also making their debut: a convertible version of the popular 700 microcar—another Michelotti design—and the 3200 CS coupe wearing stylish bodywork designed by a young Giorgetto Giugiaro at Bertone.

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BMW’s Italian Designers, Part 9

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

With his designs for the 700 and 1500, Giovanni Michelotti made an invaluable contribution to BMW’s survival at the start of the 1960s. The success of those cars put BMW on firm financial footing, which allowed the company to expand its product lineup to include a small coupe, a full-size sedan, and a larger but still sporty coupe—cars with the same kind of mass-market appeal as the 1500 sedan that also filled important niches in the marketplace. As the 1500 sedan had given BMW a recognizable brand identity, each of those cars would bear Michelotti’s imprint, to a greater or lesser degree.

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BMW’s Italian Designers, Part 8

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

The success of the Giovanni Michelotti-designed 700 microcar ensured BMW’s survival, and with it his continued collaboration with the Munich automaker. The Turin-based designer already been under contract with BMW for two years by the time the 700 premiered at the Frankfurt auto show in September 1959, and he’d created a pair of forward-looking prototypes—the 505 limousine and the 3200 CS roadster—while sketching a number of design proposals for future automobiles.

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BMW’s Italian Designers Part 7

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

As mentioned in our previous installment, the independent Turin-based Giovanni Michelotti began working for BMW in 1953, albeit indirectly. That year, working for coachbuilder Ghia-Aigle, he drafted the prototype for the 505 Diplomat sedan. In May of 1957, the BMW board offered him a contract for design consultation, and he began working directly for BMW that June, sketching the front of the 600 microcar.

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BMW’s Italian Designers Part 6

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

When it emerged from the destruction of World War II, BMW got back into business, first with motorcycles (in 1948), and then with high-end automobiles (in 1951). That was a logical strategy given BMW’s particular circumstances, but it began to fail by the mid-1950s. Even as the German economy was improving, BMW’s full-size sedans remained too expensive for most buyers. Worse, the motorcycle market was tanking, as riders abandoned two-wheelers in favor of motorcycle-engined microcars, which kept their occupants dry and warm regardless of the weather. [Read more…] about BMW’s Italian Designers Part 6

BMW’s Italian Designers Part 5

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

When BMW introduced its first postwar automobile, the 501 sedan, at the 1951 Frankfurt auto show, the company was announcing its resurrection as an automaker following the near-total destruction of its factories during World War II. BMW had also lost its automobile plant in Eisenach to the postwar division of Germany: Eisenach fell within the Soviet sector, and the BMW plant was appropriated as a spoil of war.

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BMW’s Italian Designers Part 4

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

As we saw in the first three installments of this series, BMW had fostered an association with Touring of Milan before World War II put an end to civilian automotive activities in 1941. That association had resulted in the Superleggera coupe that won the 1940 Mille Miglia, a pair of roadsters for which Touring crafted the bodywork to a design by BMW’s Wilhelm Meyerhuber, and a trio of stunning roadsters created for the proposed Berlin-Rome race.

One might have expected the Touring-BMW partnership to have resumed after the war, given the competitive and aesthetic success of those automobiles, but it did not. When BMW began building cars again in 1951, the company turned instead to Pinin Farina for the external proposal that would be weighed against an in-house design for the 501 sedan.

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BMW’s Italian Designers Part 3

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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.

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BMW’s Italian Designers Part 2

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

When eleven spectators were killed watching the 1938 Mille Miglia, Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini ordered the race canceled for 1939. The Axis powers remained eager to demonstrate their superiority through motorsport, however, and the race was back on again for 1940. This time, the Mille Miglia would trade its traditional mountain route from Brescia to Rome and back for a shorter course that triangulated Brescia with Cremona and Mantua. Although it had a few curvy sections, it was primarily held along flat, straight roads that would favor cars with a high top speed over those with agile handling.

If a car could combine those two traits, of course, it would have an additional advantage. As we saw in the first installment of this series, BMW’s 328 roadster had exceptional handling and a fine engine, especially in full-race form, and indeed a 328 with aerodynamic coupe bodywork from Touring of Milan had already won its class in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1939 when it lined up for the start of the 1940 Mille Miglia, aka the Gran Premio Brescia delle Mille Miglia.

In Italy, the Touring-bodied 328 coupe defeated a fleet of Touring-bodied Alfa-Romeos, as well as the other cars entered by the BMW factory team. These included another aerodynamic coupe built in-house at BMW, and a trio of custom-bodied BMW roadsters, two of which we’ll examine here.

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BMW’s Italian Designers, Part 1

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

To be successful at Le Mans, or in any high-speed competition, you need more than just a powerful motor. You also need effective aerodynamics. With low drag combined with stability at speed, power becomes less important overall, and even a relatively underpowered car can win races.

BMW’s 328 had been winning races since its 1936 debut at the Nürburgring, but it did so largely thanks to exquisitely balanced performance and responsive handling rather than outright power. (Which is not to say that the M328 six-cylinder engine was anything short of a masterpiece; it remains a superb engine, with hemispherical combustion chambers and an innovative valvetrain.) Those traits had allowed the BMW roadster to sweep the podium for 2.0-liter sports car class in the 1938 Mille Miglia, for instance, where the mountainous course played perfectly to the car’s strengths.

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