From the Archive: The History of the BMW M1
From the December 1981 issue of Car and Driver.
BMW meant the M1 to be the foremost expression of its automotive art. The M1 was also intended to win races. The car’s name personifies its stature: “M” designates all BMW engineering projects of substance, and “1” signifies this project’s importance in BMW engineering history.
But between the birth of the M1 concept in mid-1975 and the end of production in December 1980, something happened. The M1 was created to represent BMW in a then new Manufacturers Championship based on cars with production silhouettes. Before the M1 could take the field, however, the pendulum of public opinion that had swung away from purebred prototype sports cars and toward production cars in the early Seventies had swung back again. Silhouette cars were obsolete by 1980. The M1, built expressly to homologate the ultimate silhouette race car, suddenly became obsolete. At the same time, Jochen Neerpasch, the man responsible for BMW’s racing prestige during the Seventies and the man behind the M1, became an orphan of this storm as well, his career at BMW doomed because of the controversy surrounding this car. In short, the M1’s story is wrapped up in the drawbacks of what was thought to be the best hope for a worldwide road-racing revival during the Seventies, the silhouette car.
Neerpasch and the M1 were identified with each other from the beginning. He came to BMW in 1972 and created a semi-autonomous company for racing, BMW Motorsports GmbH. Soon the 3.0 CSL coupe became the dominant force in the European Touring Car Championship. But by 1975 the CSL was obsolete on the production line as well as for the new Group 5–based World Championship of Makes. Neerpasch’s solution was to revive BMW’s mid-engined sports-car concept, a project that dates back to 1972, when Paul Bracq designed and built the BMW Turbo show car around a chassis with a mid-mounted turbocharged 2002 four-cylinder. (BMW actually began experimentation with turbocharging long before Porsche.) BMW had initially rejected the concept to concentrate on its new generation of sedans, but the car seemed persuasive as the basis for a racing program.
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As the project emerged, the E26 (engineering concept 26) would be designed by Giugiaro and his Ital Design staff around the proven CSL racing engine. Lamborghini would build 400 cars, making the design eligible for Group 4 racing. Once homologation was completed, a turbocharged version of the CSL six-cylinder would be fitted to the factory race car, and, went the plan, the winning would commence.
Lamborghini’s financial problems postponed the start of production beyond the original 1977 deadline, so BMW Motorsports hastily created the racing 320i for Group 5 competition. Although the M1 was formally announced soon after (January 1978), Lamborghini’s imminent bankruptcy finally forced BMW to cancel its contract on April 20, 1978. Under a new plan, Marchese would build the car’s tube frame, TIR would mold the fiberglass, and then Ital Design would mate the two and install the interior. The cars would then be shipped from Italy to Stuttgart, where Baur, long a builder of BMW production prototypes, would install the BMW hardware. BMW Motorsports would do the final preparation in Munich—in fact, the car would carry a BMW Motorsports manufacturing plate.
To salvage BMW’s prestige on the racetrack in the meantime, Neerpasch announced in July 1978 that BMW had sold an IROC-type series, called Procar, to the Formula One Constructors Association. The top-five qualifiers in each Formula 1 race would take the helm of BMW-prepared M1s and compete against a field of fifteen privateers also in M1s. BMW Motorsports prepared for this undertaking with a $2.5 million redevelopment of its Preussenstrasse facility that gave it a showroom, workshops, dyno rooms, offices, and a work force of 160—all the trappings of an independent carmaker. A concerned BMW management also installed a co-director with Neerpasch to oversee the company’s finances.
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The M1 finally took to the racetrack in 1979, but failure dogged it from the first. The Procar series brought mixed reviews, providing a show of brilliance but also evidence of early engine problems. The Group 4 entries at the Watkins Glen and Le Mans endurance races failed. Furthermore no turbo was ready for the M1’s M88 engine, because all work had been focused on McLaren’s turbocharged four-cylinder for the 320i. So even when Neerpasch commissioned a special Group 5 M1 from March later in 1979, the wildly illegal car that resulted was underpowered. A similar version raced by Jim Busby in America ultimately suffered the indignity of being fitted with a Chevrolet small-block V-8.
The project’s failure had become complete by 1980. The budget of BMW Motorsports had been slashed nearly 75 percent. The Procar contract was sold to England’s BS Fabrications. Under attack internally for diverting engineering effort from street cars, and yet anxious to develop the turbo four-cylinder for Formula 1, Neerpasch left BMW Motorsports. Everyone understood that the M1 had failed as a race car because its development proved too costly and could not keep pace with changes in racing regulations—two important failures in silhouette racing, as any IMSA or NASCAR competitor will attest.
The production of the M1 halted in December 1980 at 430 cars—35 to 40 of which were race cars. Since family sedans had saved BMW from bankruptcy in the early Sixties—not exotics like the 507 sports car—BMW saw little reason to perpetuate the M1 in the face of what it saw as a declining market for exotics.
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Yet BMW and Neerpasch have left a remarkable monument to automotive excellence behind them, as the following tests of a standard M1 and Dave Cowart’s M1 racer will reveal. The M1 is just what Neerpasch always said it would be: “a normal car, but normal at a higher speed than other cars.” And now that the market for exotics is expanding, we can only hope that Alpina’s efforts to revive the production of a revised and refined M1 will be successful. The M1 might have been the right car at the wrong time, but every driver deserves a turn at the wheel of what is probably the best fast car ever built.
When you drive around in a BMW M1, you’d better know everything there is to know about the car. At every stop you’ll be besieged by open-mouthed car freaks, drawn like moths to a flame by the legendary Bavarian ultracar.
The M1 is truly forbidden fruit. It was never officially exported to the U.S., and the total run was but 430 units. Even the semiclandestine specialty importer-certifiers haven’t smuggled in many of them. So when Alan Hardy and Tom Schwartz drove up in one for us to test, we knew the Car and Driver staff’s long years of collective clean living had finally paid off. Our M1 was dressed in virgin white and European trim, as yet unsullied by federal safety and emissions regulations. After our test, however, it would be deflowered by Hardy & Beck in Berkeley, California, then delivered to an eagerly waiting customer of Schwartz’s BMW Store in Cincinnati, Ohio, for the sum of $115,000.
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Even those who don’t recognize the M1 know it is no ordinary chariot. It’s as aggressive-looking as anything you’re likely to see on the road, standing less than 45 inches high, spanning about 72 inches in width, and gripping the pavement with four squat Pirelli P7s set at the car’s extreme flanks. Its basic shape is certainly attractive, but the overriding theme is function. The M1’s body is an aerodynamically efficient envelope wrapped around the velocity-generating hardware and the requisite two-passenger space. It’s executed in fiberglass to a remarkably high standard. There’s nary a ripple or wave in any of the panels and they fit as though lasered from a single molding.
A similar theme is carried through to the interior. The basic design could be characterized as ultimate kit car: a flat instrument panel and basically simple shapes formed by several small pieces. While most kit-car interiors would shame J.C. Whitney himself, the BMW’s insides are beautifully turned out. The dashboard, binnacle, console and door pockets are carefully fitted and upholstered in hand-stitched leather. The balance of the interior is finished in muted black-checked cloth and gray wool carpeting. Considering the extremely limited production run, this was a very sensible approach.
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The driving position is surprisingly upright for such a low-slung car. Although your legs lie virtually parallel to the floor, and aimed inboard slightly to clear the wheel wells, your torso sits comfortably sedan-vertical. From this position, all of the controls are an easy reach, and visibility is excellent except for the rear quarters. Even the engine louvers, which are initially annoying, seem to fade into near transparency with time. The controls themselves are designed for easy operation rather than for visual affectation. A perfect example is the steering wheel. It’s a classic three-spoke design with a thick, resilient rim and finger notches for good grip. But rather than a central horn button away from your grip, there’s a thumb-accessible button in each spoke that you can use without compromising control of the wheel.
This carefully conceived control connects to the best steering we’ve ever encountered in a street car. It’s very direct, suitably light, unaffected by speed (in sharp contrast to 911 Porsche steering), and volubly communicative about the intimate relationship between the front tires and pavement. There is some kickback, but it’s a small price to pay for unadulterated steering information.
At higher speeds, the aerodynamics deserve some of the credit for this performance, for the M1 remains firmly, placidly pressed to the pavement. Not only is the lift minimal, but our coast-down tests indicate that the M1’s aerodynamic drag is low as well. We measured but 7.5 hp required to overcome aerodynamic forces at 50 mph. The Ferrari Boxer, a car with almost identical frontal area, needs 10 hp, fully a third more, to push its less efficient shape through the air.
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The ability to cleave the wind smoothly makes an engine’s job a lot easier, but in the M1’s case, this is just icing on an already rich cake. The M1 is propelled by a full-race 3.5-liter six, detuned for street use. But only the calibration was softened, not the hardware. The 24 valves, the chain-driven double-overhead cams, the dry-sump lubrication system, the crankshaft-triggered ignition system, the timed mechanical fuel injection feeding six individual throttles, and the tuned steel-tube headers, with the biggest pipes this side of a big-block Chevy, still remain. The net output from this primo machinery is 266 horsepower at 6500 rpm.
This is enough from the 211-cubic-inch straight six to rocket-sled the 3000-pound BMW to 60 mph in 5.4 seconds, to 100 mph in the next 8 seconds, and to 130 in only 26.3 seconds. The surge continues all the way to the redline in fifth gear, or 161 mph. These fiercesome exercises are accompanied by subdued, but genuine, race-tuned sound effects. An intake moan dominates at lower revs, reaching a peak, along with the torque, at 5000 rpm, beyond which the exhaust’s snarl takes over. Despite the heroic specific power output of 80 hp per liter, the M1 powerplant is totally happy at low speed, and is content to putter around without complaint. This domesticated race engine puts most street engines to shame in both output and temperament, although admittedly it is unconstrained by American emissions and fuel-economy considerations.
A similar race-converted-to-street strategy was used for the M1’s chassis. The basic underpinnings—unequal-length control arms, gas shocks, and anti-sway bars front and rear—were laid out for the Group 4, 470-hp, gumball-slick version of the car. When BMW’s engineers made it streetable, they didn’t have to worry about handling and stability—they had it in spades. They could concentrate on adding comfort and refinement.
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These efforts were unequivocally successful. The M1 handles as well as any street car we’ve driven. Its responses are immediate, direct, and without distortion. So effortless is its control that one can quickly assume that it has virtually no cornering limits. This is a mistake, as I discovered when I spun the M1 on a marble-infested entry ramp. The actual limit is 0.82 g. Certainly an excellent figure, but not as stellar as we expected. The limitation is probably the rubber. The M1 ‘s Pirelli P7s are no larger than a 400-pound-lighter Porsche 911’s. That the M1 outcorners said Porsche is a tribute to its suspension and superior chassis layout, but its cornering power could benefit from larger tires.
Larger rubber would increase unsprung weight, however, and might adversely affect the M1’s excellent ride. It’s firm, to be sure, but there’s sufficient and supple travel to avoid the bottoming crashes and general harshness that plague most hypercars.
The M1’s only real faults are niggling ones. The ZF transaxle, with its slightly skewed pattern, requires concentration and muscle to shift quickly. The same applies to the accelerator, which strains against the multifarious return springs and the mechanical friction inherent in a gang of six throttles. Combined with somewhat light brake effort, this makes heel-and-toe shifting a touchy proposition.
But these are mere trifles. The M1 is the absolute pinnacle of hyperfast street cars. Its overdoses of power and handling and responsiveness are suitably tempered by comfortable accommodation and a civilized ride. If a gentled-down race car can be made this good, then all the other ultracar builders are going about it from the wrong end. —Csaba Csere
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David Cowart brought German thunder to Ann Arbor the other day. We had him take it out of its trailer so we could hook up the technical department’s electronic testing thingies to it, and then he got into it and made the pavement wrinkle up. The racing M1 has 200 more horsepower and 500 less pounds than your everyday, milquetoast street M1. The racing M1 also has enough heart to rip off the second-fastest-zero-to-sixty time we’ve ever recorded.
But that’s only part of what we were after. The BMW racer has been oft maligned as a sort of halfway car, not quite good enough at anything to make racers sit up and take note. This year’s IMSA GTO competition has put an end to such piffle.
Near season’s end, David Cowart had run off a string of seven straight wins, a second, and two more wins, thus knocking off the GTO championship. With this little detail attended to, he plugged in endurance-event co-driver Kenper Miller for the remainder of the races in an attempt to become the first drivers ever to wind up a year first and second overall in points won with the same car. So Miller won at Road Atlanta.
Their racer has a lot of miles on it. Built in 1979 for the slam-bang rigors of the Procar series, it was first run by BMW of Italy, and Cowart says, “We bought it through BMW Motorsports, and they took it back and freshened it up. With import duties and every thing, the car ran us about $70,000. We bought a spare engine for 35 grand, a transporter, and all the corners [spare suspension units], and we made molds of the body so we could do our own pieces, including an easy off, one-piece nose. Each engine rebuild runs us from twelve to sixteen thousand dollars, so they’re not cheap to run, except considering the life we’re getting. We put a fresh engine in for Atlanta and won the next five races with it, over 25 sprint-racing hours, and it was still pullin’ like Jack the Bear when we finally pulled it out.”
AARON KILEY
The race engine is a more highly tuned version of the DOHC, four-valve-per-cylinder M1 street engine, itself a derivative of the healthy single-cam BMW six used in 5-, 6-, and 7-series production cars. The race motor is much like the race car in that it carries no magical hidden sources for its strengths, just an abundance of engineering development. Since the street car was planned to be more than a shadow of the racer, it follows that the racer won’t confuse anybody who’s taken a close look at the production version.
The chassis is made up of the same boxed tubing, but reinforced, and gusseted in the middle by a modest roll cage. The suspension is modified for lower ride height, racing tires, stiffer springs, beefier shock absorbers, and several choices of anti-sway bars, but the layout remains the same, a classic unequal length-control-arm design with coil springs, the stuff of all up-to-date racing cars.
The steering is quickened from 3.1 turns to 2.0 turns for the racer, and its wheels and tires front and rear are almost 50 percent wider. A big air dam, bulky flares, and a chunky wing aid roadholding and high-speed stability, but the wide flares do bad things for air management. As tested, the drag on the racer from both aerodynamic and frictional losses is up a surprising 50 percent.
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In his reverie on the regular M1, Csaba Csere makes reference to the smallness of the P7 tires in relation to the weight of the car. Its balance is good, but ultimate adhesion is something less than extraordinary for a mid-engined car with a good suspension. The race car’s big Goodyears take care of that, cornering force jumping substantially, from 0.82 g to 1.15 g.
BMW increased braking capability by upsizing to a set of calipers and rotors that look as if they could panic-stop the biggest Peterbilt from Mach I. The ATE brakes are wider and more than an inch larger in diameter than the roadgoing models, and they balance well enough with the mid-engined weight distribution to pull the GTO winner down from 70 to a full stop in just 164 feet.
The balance of the race car is good enough that Cowart says, “When I first drove it, it was comfortable, but in retrospect it was probably too comfortable, because we didn’t really start going fast until this year. There seems to be a threshold. You get up to it and feel like you’re going to lose the car, but if you just keep pushing, you go over the threshold and then you run up to the second one. You just keep your foot in it. Of course, we’ve exceeded the second plateau a couple of times. . . .”
Cowart’s laid-back Florida drawl bends around the edges of his bearded smile. At 39, he is as loose as you might expect a successful Sun Belt stockbroker to be. He commanded a navy boat crew in Vietnam, and he disappears on non-IMSA weekends to a second life as a full commander in the naval reserve. His abilities as a businessman landed the M1’s Red Lobster Restaurants sponsorship, a mutually profitable arrangement that will grow to cover the added expense of a full campaign in the GTP category next year. David Cowart seems to engender respect, and he regards those around him with circumspect good humor.
A question about the transparent fluid reservoirs that crew chief Jack Deren has perched at window level in the M1’s cockpit brings a smile.
“First of all, you have to realize that Jack was under the tutelage of Rube Goldberg for a number of years, so you’ll see some things on the car that you’ll never see on anybody else’s. Actually, they work very well. The brake-fluid reservoirs are up there because in long races we keep our eye on the level of the fluid, and it indicates pad wear. Which turned out to be an academic feature anyway, because pad wear turned out to be not a factor in this car. You can run the whole twelve hours at Sebring on the same set of brake pads.”
AARON KILEY
Cowart looks around to see if Deren is within earshot.
“Did you notice that long retractable cord that goes all the way across the dashboard? Well, that’s his way of keeping the radio wire from wrapping around the steering. It’s one of those retractable-key-chain things!”
Rube Goldberg may not have known about race cars, but Deren obviously does. If the team’s recent record wasn’t proof enough, our performance readouts confirmed it.
The furiously responsive and usable 3.5-liter engine fires its 2500-pound wedged housing from a standing start to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds with the perfect normally aspirated combination of drivability, gearing, and traction. Though it has lower ultimate horsepower and greater weight than, say, the JLP Racing Porsche 935, the Red Lobster M1 gets off the line so cleanly and accelerates so strongly at the lower end of its range that it beats the 935 to 60 by 1.5 seconds and it’s only a half-second slower than Teo Fabi’s much lighter, higher-powered, Can-Am March. The M1 has an advantage in elapsed time over the 935 at the end of the quarter-mile, 11.6 seconds versus 12.3, but the Porsche is coming alive with a 136-mph trap speed as the M1 is slipping back at 122 mph. The street M1 rips off its own 5.4-second zero-to-sixty run and a quarter-mile in 13.7 at 102 mph, no slouch, but isn’t it wonderful what an extra 200 horsepower and a quarter-ton weight reduction have done for David Cowart?
As you finish this M1 trilogy, be a little huffy with BMW for not continuing the M1, but give them credit for giving Neerpasch his head in the first place. And keep your eye out for the new Alpina-built version of the BMW M1. Don’t stop dreaming dreams. —Larry Griffin
Csaba Csere
Contributing Editor
Csaba Csere joined Car and Driver in 1980 and never really left. After serving as Technical Editor and Director, he was Editor-in-Chief from 1993 until his retirement from active duty in 2008. He continues to dabble in automotive journalism and LeMons racing, as well as ministering to his 1965 Jaguar E-type, 2017 Porsche 911, and trio of motorcycles—when not skiing or hiking near his home in Colorado.
