The Day BMW Became ‘The Ultimate Driving Machine’

Author: Chuck Squatriglia
Source: Wired.com


   
BMW has long hailed itself as building “the ultimate driving machine,” and never was that more true than when the company thoroughly dominated the Mille Miglia 70 years ago.

Even now, BMW considers winning the inaugural Gran Premio Brescia dell Mille Miglia its greatest auto racing success. The sleek and sexy BMW 328 racers, with their small but powerful engines and superlative handling, were so wickedly good that BMW scored the overall win, the team win and third, fifth and sixth place.

“The victory in the 1940 Mille Miglia remains a milestone in the history of the BMW brand,” Klaus Draeger, a company board member who oversees R&D, said in a statement heralding the anniversary of the win on April 28.

That success followed nearly five years of hard work.


    

The story starts in 1935 when BMW quietly distributed a brochure to selected customers vaguely describing a new model called the 328. Although the lightweight car featured a 2.0-liter straight-six engine that produced 80 horsepower, nothing was said of the car’s performance and nothing was said to the press. The company, which had started building cars just seven years before, only wanted to tantalize a few “friends of the company.”

Nothing more was said until the BMW 328 was unveiled at the famed Nurburgring racetrack on June 13, 1936, ahead of the International Eifel Race. Ernst Henne, a record-setting motorcycle racer, drove the car to victory with an average speed of 63 mph, an impressive figure at the time.

It was the dawn of a new day for BMW.


    

The roadster scored its second victory in August, when H.J. Aldington, a British BMW importer, won the Schleißheimer Dreicksrennen race. Aldington convinced the brass in Munich to compete in races beyond Germany, so BMW sent the three 328 prototypes to Ireland for the Tourist Trophy.

The cars finished 1-2-3. Several more victories followed in the months to come.

Customers had to wait until April 1937 — one year to the day after Henne first took the 328 to victory — until they could get their own cars. By that time, the 328 had amassed a trophy case full of hardware, easily beating cars with far more powerful engines.

BMW’s little roadster had arrived.   

By the end of 1937, BMW was dominating the 2.0-liter class in Germany and had established a reputation in Europe. But it wanted a major win on foreign soil. The company set its sights on Italy’s Mille Miglia, a 1,500-kilometer race from Brescia to Rome and back. It was, at the time, one of the most famous races in motor sports.

Four 328 roadsters entered. Thousands of people lined the course, and the BMWs set a blistering pace. The roadsters, with their little 80-horsepower engines, dominated their class but were outgunned by the supercharged Alfa Romeos, Delahayes and Talbots.

The fastest cars finished the course in 12 hours and change. But BMW surprised everyone when A.F.P. Fane not only took first in the 2.0-liter class but finished an impressive eighth overall in his 328. The others were close behind him, finishing 10th, 11th and 12th overall while giving BMW a clean sweep of its class. BMW finally had the international breakthrough it had sought.

But the best was yet to come.

 
    

The rules governing racing in Germany at the time required cars to have open tops. That limited the 328’s capabilities abroad because, although gorgeous, it was not very aerodynamic. The engineers were trying to make the six-cylinder engine more powerful but knew the best way to increase speed was to improve aerodynamics. Wunibald Kamm, an automotive engineer and aerodynamicist, conducted BMW’s first wind-tunnel tests. BMW soon decided to build a 328 coupe.

It was a disaster.

The first coupe suffered from poor workmanship and lousy handling. Although capable of stunning velocities, the car was so unstable at speed that it was, literally, all over the track. What’s more, the Nationalist Socialist Motoring Corps, which could be called Germany’s national racing team, was racing BMW 328 roadsters. BMW was contractually required to provide the team with the latest technology, and the team demanded a coupe of its own.

Trouble is, BMW didn’t have the spare capacity to build one.   

So the NSKK, or Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps, sought help from Italian coachbuilders Carrozzeria Touring. The company produced the 328 Touring Coupe in just four weeks.

It was stunning.

The car weighted just 1,719 pounds, which was remarkably light for that time. It was capable of more than 125 mph — and could hold a relatively straight line while doing so. The Touring Coupe made its debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 17, 1939.

It covered 1,981 miles at an average speed of 82.5 mph to take first in its class and fifth overall.   

BMW went back to work on its own coupe. The result was the Kamm Coupe. And as good as the NSKK’s Touring Coupe was, the Kamm Coupe was better — lighter, faster and sleeker. It had superior straight-line stability and it was far more aerodynamic — its coefficient of drag, measured with models, was 0.25, compared to the Touring Coupe’s 0.35. The increased aerodynamic efficiency — comparable to that of the 2010 Toyota Prius — allowed the car to achieve a top speed of 142.9 mph.

The engineers were hard at work on the roadsters, too. The car got a lighter space frame and a sleeker aluminum skin. The edge of its sweeping front wings, or fenders, got a pronounced crease to improve aerodynamic efficiency. That detail gave the car it’s nickname, the “Trouser Crease” roadster.

But with the start of World War II, no knew when, or if, the new cars would see action.


    

Benito Mussolini suspended the Mille Miglia after a crash killed a number of spectators in 1938. But the race was back in business in 1940, with a revised route. The new course was a triangular route linking Brescia, Cremona and Mantua. Drivers would make nine laps of the 103-mile circuit. With a new course, the race was given a new name — the First Gran Premio Brescia delle Mille Miglia.

BMW made a big show, entering five cars — three roadsters, the Touring Coupe and the Kamm Coupe. The grid was dominated by the rosso corsa cars from Fiat, Lancia and Alfa Romeo. All told there were 70 Italian teams, joined by two lone Delahayes from France.

The BMWs were strong from the start...


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