Notable BMW M1s

The first 16 serials were BMW's own, and the Register's categories show what each was for. One car was crashed for the TÜV on 17 July 1978, for the type approval that, BMW wrote in 2008, needed crash tests; another was written off in an accident; three went to the press.

Later works serials followed: 4301024 and 4301025, the second of them entered as "Type Checking Abroad", a quality-inspection car, 4301060, and a test car, 4301109. Five more road cars, four orange and one red, went first to BMW's press department between 1979 and 1981. Motor Sport's test car, a red one, was collected in Munich for the magazine's report of April 1981, and no source read says which serial it was. The Register does not explain its own abbreviations, ZS, AQ and the rest.⁠source 1​source 3​source 4

4301063 has the earliest M1 result racingsportscars records: ninth in the Eifelrennen at the Nürburgring on 29 April 1979, Marc Surer driving for BMW Motorsport GmbH, 2 weeks before the first Procar race. Slickpix's history of the Swiss M1s also dates the M1's racing debut to Surer that April. The Register numbers the car PROCAR 23. It went on as BMW Schweiz's Procar, with Surer, Markus Hotz and others driving it, and David Hobbs was ninth in it at Donington that June.⁠source 2​source 5​source 1​source 6

Niki Lauda drove a works car in the first Procar race, at Zolder, and retired; racingsportscars does not record its serial. From Monaco on he had his own, Project Four's No. 5, serial 4301028, the Register's PROCAR 7, which the Register enters as delivered in primer. In it he won at Monaco, Silverstone and Hockenheim in 1979 and the first title. Project Four entered the same car for Hans-Joachim Stuck in 1980, and Stuck won at Monaco and the Norisring with it; EMKA Productions raced it in the World Championship and at Le Mans in 1981 and 1982.

Nelson Piquet's works car of 1979 was 4301018, PROCAR 3, No. 6. He did not start at Zolder, then won the race at Donington and the round at Dijon and was second at Silverstone; the car later raced in IMSA. The car of his 1980 title is not identified by serial in any source read. BMW Group Classic says it holds "a BMW M1 Procar, in which he became BMW Procar champion in 1980", and Piquet drove it at Estoril at the end of August 2025.

Both champions had a road M1 to keep as well. "The winners were also presented with a road-going M1 as reward for their endeavours," BMW Group Classic writes.⁠source 2​source 1​source 7​source 8​source 9

The car that won the M1's only World Championship race, the Nürburgring 1000 km of 24 May 1981, had no Register serial. It was 81.M1R.02, the second of two space-frame Group 5 M1s Peter Sauber built that year, and GS-Sport ran it in BASF's colours for Stuck and Piquet. Slickpix, writing in 2024, gives Stuck and Piquet's practice lap on the Nordschleife in 1981 as 7:37.8, against 7:46.6 in the Group 4 M1 they had raced there in 1980. By the same account the car was wrecked at Kyalami that November, and its remains were rebuilt over about 20 years by a German M1 collector who had been a Procar mechanic.

"The BASF M1" can mean either of two cars. One is this Group 5 car; the other is GS-Sport's BASF-liveried Procar, 4301098, which raced in 1980 and in which Helmut Henzler won at Wunstorf in 1981, the year he took the Rennsport Trophäe.⁠source 2​source 5​source 9

Some of the racing cars can be followed serial by serial through their results. De Angelis won the first Procar race, at Zolder in 1979, in 4301040, entered by Osella; the car crossed to America, where Red Lobster Racing raced it in IMSA from 1980 and Dave Cowart and Kenper Miller won the GTO championship of 1981 with it. Stuck's Procar of 1979, 4301062, which Manfred Cassani entered, has more entries in racingsportscars' list than any other M1, 76: wins at Zandvoort and Monza that year, second place at Kyalami in November, Schurti's win at the Avus in 1980, then Kurt König's seasons in Germany and, under Helmut Gall, the Group B class at Le Mans in 1984 and 1985. The Register gives the number PROCAR 35 to two serials, 4301059 and 4301269, and the second was BMW North America's IMSA car of 1980–81. PROCAR 30, 4301077, spent its whole racing life in Japan. And BMW France's rally M1, which won the Rallye de Lorraine in May 1984, has its own page; whether its registrations belonged to one car or two, no source read settles.⁠source 2​source 1​source 10​source 6​source 11​source 12​source 13

Serial 4301004, the first of the two "PROCAR Test" cars in the Register, became BMW's fourth Art Car in 1979 when Andy Warhol painted it, and it raced once, at Le Mans that June, finishing sixth.

A second Procar was painted by an artist the same year. The American racer Peter Gregg ordered one from BMW Motorsport GmbH in 1979 and had Frank Stella paint it, for himself, to a design from Stella's Polar Coordinates works.

Harald Ertl, an Austrian racer who had won the German championship of 1978 in a Schnitzer BMW 320 Turbo, bought a road M1 of 1979 second-hand in 1981, and with BP, which wanted to show what liquefied petroleum gas ("Autogas") could do in a road car, he turned it into a record car. Gustav Hoecker's firm fitted two KKK turbochargers and the body was reshaped for less drag, with NACA ducts. On 17 October 1981, on Volkswagen's test track at Ehra-Lessien, it set a record for LPG-fuelled cars at 301.4 km/h (187.2 mph), the average of two runs under official timekeepers. Ertl was killed in an air crash a few months later. The car passed through several owners and then stood unseen for about 25 years in a garage in East London, until it came to light again in 2019.⁠source 18​source 19

The Studie, a dealer's conversion of the road M1, was the idea of Peter Gartemann, managing director of AHG, a BMW dealer group in Bielefeld: a road-legal Procar, as auto motor und sport described it in 2021. Herman Altmik painted each car in its own colours and signed his work, "altmiks lackdesign", under the left tail lamp. How many were built, the magazine could not say: "Wie viele Studien es wirklich auf die Straße schafften, ist nicht genau bekannt" (in English, "How many Studien actually reached the road is not exactly known"). The actor Paul Walker owned one for a time.⁠source 20​source 1

BMW keeps M1s of its own. The Register marks one road car, 4301200, for the BMW Museum: a white car with a black interior, finished at Baur on 3 March 1980. Whether it is the white M1 on show in the museum, no source read says. BMW Group Classic holds the Warhol car and the Procar of Piquet's 1980 title, and some of the 10 Group 4 cars it raced at Hockenheim in July 2008 came from its museum.⁠source 1​source 9​source 21​source 22

The Register's last numbers end in 1981. Serie 386, the highest, was finished at Baur on 6 March 1981, and two more road cars, Serie 352 and 353, had their Baur dates as late as 2 June. Italdesign had completed six spare bodies, white and without interiors, on 27 February 1981, and the Register sends them to firms: BMW, AHG in Bielefeld, Schnitzer, Heidegger, and two to Seeger & Hoffmann. Two serials were never built, and one orange car, Serie 334, was "stolen in the production at Baur in Stuttgart". No source read names any one car as the last M1.⁠source 1

BMW wrote in 2008 that the Grand Prix driver Alan Jones was "one of the first customers to buy this sports car for private use". Lauda and Piquet each had a road M1 from BMW for their Procar titles, Ertl bought the car he took to his record, and Paul Walker owned an AHG Studie. Peter Gregg ordered the Procar Stella painted. In December 2024 BMW showed a one-off M1, reconstructed in depth, which its release credits to Ronnie Fieg, founder of the label Kith.⁠source 3​source 8​source 18​source 20​source 16​source 23