Wheeling some of the most influential M machines at their spiritual home.
“The M division is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and it has booked the Nürburgring exclusively for a couple of days and is bringing some of its old road cars for you to drive. There’ll be a Batmobile, an M1 . . .”
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, I’ll be there. The lady from BMW didn’t get any farther down her list of iconic machinery. (Check them out in the massive photo gallery.) I didn’t stop to check the diary or ask the wife. I’m no M-car fanboy, but under what circumstances do you decline the opportunity to drive some of the most influential road cars ever made, and at their spiritual home? Batmobiles and M1s aren’t exactly thick on the ground, and the M division’s own examples will be the best you’ll ever drive.
And—here I’m attempting to add some thin veneer of professional justification to this trip—M has seen some radical changes of late. In 2009, it abandoned its 30-year devotion to rear-drive, naturally aspirated road cars with a pair of monstrously over-exaggerated turbocharged SUVs in the X5 M and the X6 M. Since then it has adopted turbocharging for all its new models and even offered M diesels in Europe, making some of those fanboys apoplectic. The chance to drive all of M’s back catalog back-to-back has never before been presented, nor ever been as instructive. They might have evolved faster of late, but surely M cars have always been changing.
It started, as have many good things in the car world, with Bob Lutz, who in 1972, as its sales and marketing boss, was helping to forge the modern BMW. Bob said some very noble, Grecian-sounding things about the benefits of sport for the (corporate) body, and BMW Motorsport GmbH was born in May of that year. The first real M-badged road car was the M1 of 1978; there were a few M-enhanced 5-series made, but M was all about motorsport for its first six years.
It first went racing with the 3.0CSL, a homologation-special that had already been lightened from the pretty, stock CS coupe by Alpina and was built by Karmann. So the CSL isn’t really an M car, but that isn’t going to stop me driving it. It is utterly sensational. But it also lends a little perspective to BMW’s reputation for quality. It wasn’t always this way: witness the truly crappy, black-plastic weight-saving excuse of a fender on the back, or the fact that the later, more desirable CSL Batmobiles with their extraordinary aerodynamic addenda came with those spoilers in the trunk for the first owner—and what a fine, far-sighted choice you made, sir—to bolt on himself because they utterly violated Germany’s road-car regulations at the time.
But it’s not just the cars that lend perspective. In one of the pit garages I find Paul Rosche, the “genius” (engineering guru Gordon Murray’s word) who worked for M from the start and who began serving as its technical director starting in 1980. He created arguably the greatest road-car engine ever in the 618-hp S70/2 V-12 he designed for the McLaren F1, as well as the insane turbocharged 1.5-liter F1 engine which first ran in ’82 and propelled Nelson Piquet to the world championship the following year. “We think it made 1400 hp in qualifying,” he says of the F1 motor. “But we don’t know, because the dyno broke at 1280 hp.”
Rosche seems utterly unconcerned about M’s adoption of turbocharging for its road cars, so maybe we should all care less, too. He recalls with humor and honesty M’s early experiments with turbocharging for its race engines: Surprisingly half-assed for an outfit now known for unerringly competent engineering. “I had no idea about turbocharged engines,” he says of his first attempts in 1969. “We had no idea how much power we could produce. So we ran an engine on the dyno and just turned the power up step by step until the exhausts were glowing white. Then it exploded.”
So I had to go sample his handiwork. This was to prove harder than expected. Although the Motorsport division was founded in May ’72, it waited until November 2012 for its official birthday party. (There also was a pre-party of sorts at the AvD Oldtimer Grand Prix in August.) The world’s most difficult, dangerous racetrack in foul, foggy weather; a bunch of powerful old rear-drive cars on decades-old rubber and largely bereft of any electronic driver aids; and some overenthusiastic and under-talented journalists: What could possibly go wrong? There were casualties: by lunchtime on the first day, two E36 M3s had been “retired” and the guys in charge of M’s historic fleet had grounded the rest. Your correspondent had to resort to bullying, guile, and borderline theft to drive the cars he came to drive. But boy, was it good—instructive, too. Some brief impressions:
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As good to drive as it is to look at, even after forty years. Lithe, light (2567 pounds) and fast, even with just 206 hp. Not an M car, but set the tone with its fabulously linear straight-six, faithful front-engined, rear-drive handling and motorsport intent. The final racing versions had 800-hp turbo engines, or as much power as today’s F1 cars.
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Csaba Csere loved it when C/D first drove it, but BMW’s ill-fated and only (until the forthcoming hybrid i8) mid-engined supercar hasn’t worn well. A collaboration between BMW and Lamborghini that became BMW’s project when Lamborghini went bankrupt, the M1’s Italian supercar influence shows in the madly offset pedals and the fact that, at under six feet tall, my head is nevertheless hard against the roof. It has the same linear power from CSL-derived engine and is still good to drive, but the M1 wasn’t M’s finest hour.
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The CSL and M1 were both homologation specials, but the first M3 eclipsed them for significance on road and track. Designed from the outset as both a road and race car, it dominated European touring car racing and nearly 18,000 units were sold. The steering doesn’t feel as benchmark-sweet as some contemporary tests suggested, but the four-pot powertrain is as good as the previous sixes.
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Driving this car now, this generation of M5 feels like a bigger leap for M than even the switch to turbos: It’s big, serious, and heavy, but with the power to overcome its mass, and plainly optimized for destroying 1000 km of autobahn rather than a racetrack. Still a six, but drives more like the V-8–powered E39 M5 that followed, and shares its character with the current car.
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Return of the CSL name. No motorsport intent this time, as the race-prep has been done elsewhere since ’96. But it’s amazing how more than 350 hp and a curb weight reduced by almost 400 pounds conspire to make this car sensationally exciting to drive. I was blown away by it as a junior road tester when this car originally debuted, and it feels just as dynamic and rewarding nearly a decade on.
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40 years of bmw m:
Classic Drives, Tests, and Features
bmw m5 e28 through f10:
A History of Supremacy
bmw’s m garage:
A Look at the M Cars that Weren’t
25 years of the bmw m3:
Four Generations on the Track
bmw m3 buyer’s guide:
E30 Through E90
View Photo Gallery