Tag: BMW
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Monday Money: BMW E39 540i
PRICE: £5,000 -£11,000 This could be the ideal candidate for your daily classics itch. Heralded as the last great analogue BMW performance sedan, the E39 M5 has become a collectable that fetched for a record-breaking $176,000 (£143,000) at Pebble Beach auction last year. But not all hope is lost… If you were waiting it out…
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Electrifying classics: solution or sacrilege?
The electric revolution has begun. Whether or not you believe in climate change, the automotive industry is quickly moving to displace internal combustion engine cars in favour of electric vehicles (and apparently hydrogen fuel cell but that’s a discussion for another day). So, what does that mean for those of us with a penchant for…
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The DTM Golden era: BMW Vs. Mercedes-Benz
Rewind to the 1970s: The compact executive saloon market was flooded with boring, affordable versions of their full-size executive counterparts. One car stood out from the pack, nicknamed the “Flying Brick”, the E21 320 turbo was a force to be reckoned with on the racetrack but also in the showrooms – proving true the “Win…
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Monday Money: The Z3 M Coupe
1998 saw the introduction of the Z3 M Coupe; also known as the bread van, the clown shoe, or my personal favourite, the smurf hearse. It started life as an engineering study to work more structural rigidity into BMW’s Z3 M, but today it has been elevated beyond a mere mechanic’s experiment and has earned…
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The Concorde for the Road: Alpina’s B10 Bi-Turbo
Described as “the best 4-door in the world” by Road & Track, the Alpina B10 Bi-Turbo was also the fastest saloon ever when it was unveiled in 1989. Priced at nearly twice the value of a standard E34 M5, it became the best selling model in Alpina’s history up until that point. However, despite its…
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From Beautiful to Badass: the Story of BMW’s E9 Coupés
BMW’s E9 generation of coupés are probably the finest examples of automotive design ever to leave Munich’s doors. They represent a clear high water mark in the history of not just German automobiles, but cars in general; not to mention human accomplishment and the success of evolution as a whole. What’s even more commendable is…
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Some Tough Boxers
At The Mechanists, we like cars a lot, but we also love motorbikes. Even though we haven’t given them much love in the recent posts, it is now time to address this, starting with one of the most the historically acclaimed motorbikes for almost a century – the BMW R-Series. In recent years, the R-Series…
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Monday Money – 90’s Bad Boy
She had quite big shoes to fill coming in to replace the legendary M3 e30… It wasn’t an easy task, but many BMW fanboys (myself included) would agree that the e36 managed it rather well. Though in all honesty, the e36 is probably my least favourite 3 series generation but I have to admit that…
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The sound of metal
If you are a BMW fan, surely you are no stranger to inline 6 engine configurations. Of course, BMW does not have a monopoly on the L6 use, and for some of you the quintessential L6 might have originated from Jaguar, Triumph, Aston Martin, Mercedes or Nissan among many of the manufacturers that used that…
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“Why must art be static?” – AC
The BMW Art Car project started from the simplest and most elegant idea of using a race car as an artist canvas for their creation. Art aficionados appreciated the novelty and ambition of the project and critics received it rather positively worldwide. In 1975, French auctioneer and racing driver Hervé Poulain started the project by…
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3.0 Coupe Sport Leicht (Light)
Creative homologation at its best. The BMW engineers solution to the marketing departments requirements was to develop a limited production run ‘homologation special’ to meet the constrictive framework of the group 2 racing class regulations. By removing the trim, using thinner steel for the main body-shell, aluminium alloy for the doors, bonnet and boot lid;…