BMW M1 was Recovered and Restored After 36 Years
Slideshow: A super rare BMW M1 from the early ‘80s was brought back to life and put on the market after being neglected for over 30 years.
What makes the BMW M1 so special?
Back in the 1970s, the c-level folks at BMW grew tired of constantly being beat by the competition when it came to vehicle performance (namely cars rolling out of the Porsche factory). To improve upon the consumer’s view of the brand, the company decided to focus its efforts on building a supercar. The result was the BMW M1. Jochen Neerpasch, head of the company’s motorsport division, led the charge in building the company’s first (and only, till the i8) mid-engine machine.
It wasn’t easy building the M1, so BMW found a friend to help
One of the biggest problems the company faced was the production of this vehicle. You see, BMW needed to produce 400 vehicles in order to qualify for competition. And given that this was a new endeavor, that was easier said than done. So, to get things going, Neerpasch tapped into the folks at Lamborghini for some assistance. And this made sense – have the Italian supercar masterminds design things like the chassis and shell, and then have the German carmaker bolt things into place. But alas, things went awry again and BMW wound up producing just 7 prototypes.
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The BMW M1 story continues…
The reason things had to stop is that the company was bleeding money. So, BMW took a look into how best to make sense of this project and wound up tapping into Giorgetto Giugiaro, another mastermind Italian, responsible for such vehicle icons as the Lotus Esprit, Maserati Ghibli, and the DeLorean. He wound up delivering to BMW a low, angular fiberglass shell that got production back up and running, though the production process was a bit convoluted. Shells and chassis were built in Modena, Italy, then partially assembled in Turin before being shipped to German specialist Bauer for the engines, at which point the cars were sent to BMW for final touch-ups. All told, 400 cars were sold, and approximately 50 were used for races.
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So, was it a success?
All things considered, BMW wound up creating a super supercar. Outfitted with a 3.5-liter straight-six engine that turned out approximately 275HP, the car could go from rest to 60MPH in just 5.3 seconds; in fact, it was capable of getting all the way up to 160MPH which, back then, was phenomenal. The cars were in production from 1978 to 1981, with prices that started at around $85,000.
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Which brings us back to this forgotten about M1
Okay, so now for the point of all this – the long-forgotten BMW M1. This particular vehicle was bought in 1981, and the driver put some 4500 miles on it before parking it in a garage in Italy and forgetting about it. There it sat for 36 years until a rep from Mint Classics, a classic car dealer in Germany discovered it and had it sent to BMW’s in-house restoration branch to have it brought back to its former glorious self. Most all original components were saves and the only new parts that were added were done where it had to be done – things like the oil pan and fuel tank, both of which time got the best of.
And while the price for which this car was purchased by Mint Classics has not been revealed, nor has the cost for the restoration, the renewed M1 was listed for a hefty $1.2 million.