Have you ever laid your eyes on a sports car that captured your heart and soul?
Let’s talk about the rarest vehicle ever made by BMW. Max Hoffman, a well known car enthusiast and importer, went to BMW with a plan to get them on the map. He introduced Albrecht von Goertz, a German industrial designer to BMW. That’s where the legacy of the BMW 507 roadster was born.
The BMW 507 was built (between 1956 to 1959) with everything you could ask for in a sports car of that era. It has an aluminum body along with an aluminum engine. Underneath the bonnet lies a 3.2L V8 engine that rockets this roadster from 0-60 mph in 7 seconds. Considering this was the late 1950’s this was extremely fast for sports cars with a top speed at 122 mph.
The goal of the 507 was to make the sports car fun to drive, affordable, and fashionable. The problem was that BMW seriously miscalculated the production of the 507. Their goal was to sell each unit at $5,000.00 but because BMW overshot the price of production they had increased the price to $9,000.00 per unit. Max Hoffman knew he would not be able to sell those units at that cost, so he removed himself from the equation of selling the 507s and broke his contract. Due to losing so much money on each of the 507s, only 253 units were ever made. We can thank Herbert Quandt for investing his money into BMW, which kept them from going bankrupt.
The legendary king of rock and roll, Elvis Presley, owned a gorgeous white BMW 507.
He fell in love with this vehicle when he was stationed in Germany during his two year stint in the military. Rumors were that women would kiss his car leaving behind lipstick marks. He was irritated with the defacing of his baby, so he painted her blazing red. Historians later discovered that he instead traded in his white BMW for a fiery red one. Elvis’ 507 was discovered in a barn in California and since then has been restored in Munich, Germany.
An LLCTLC client told me about his experience of driving a 507 stating, “It’s a very unique experience driving a vehicle that’s all aluminum. The V8 has a very eccentric sound, it almost sounds like a muscle car from the 1960’s even though it was built in the 1950s. The German car handles very tight around corners and grips the road. It’s nothing like driving vehicles from the 1950's or even the 1960s.”