BMWM1

BMW M1 Versions

BMW built one road M1, in one left-hand-drive specification, from 1978 to 1981. Around it grew the Procar for BMW's one-make series, the Group 5 cars of March, Sauber and Schnitzer, BMW France's rally car and a dealer's conversion, the AHG Studie.

A white BMW M1 racing car with blue, violet and red stripes, flared wheel arches, a deep front spoiler and a tall rear wing, panned at speed past blurred straw bales and hoardings.
A Procar in BMW Motorsport colours at speed at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in July 2013.Craig Morey, CC BY-SA 2.0

The M1 is one road car with a family of racing cars built on it or around it. The road car and the Procar shared a serial sequence and, from 1 December 1980, a Group 4 recognition. Teams built Group 5 silhouette cars on the M1's outline, and BMW France's rally car ran in Group 4 and then, from 1983, in Group B, under a recognition dated 1 March 1983. The line-up below lists the road car, the Procar and the Group 5 cars, oldest first.⁠1​2​3​4​5

The road car

BMW built one road M1, known inside the company as project E26, in one specification for every market, and every one was left-hand drive. Its frame came from Marchesi, its body from T.I.R., its trim from Ital Design and its mechanical assembly from Baur, with BMW Motorsport's checks at the end; the BMW M1 Register numbers the road cars as a series of their own, "Serie" 1 upwards. The specifications give its figures and how many were made its totals.⁠6​1​2

A red BMW M1 road car in a museum bay, front three-quarter, with Nürburgring photographs behind it.
A red road car at the Volante Oldtimermuseum, Kirchzarten, Germany, in September 2016.© Jörgens.mi, CC BY-SA 3.0

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The Procar

The Procar was the racing M1 that BMW called a Group 4 car at its launch, built for the one-make series that supported European Grands Prix in 1979 and 1980. Ron Dennis's Project Four built most of them, and after the series ended they became the M1's racing stock everywhere else, from Le Mans to IMSA in the United States.⁠7​8​9​10

A white and dark blue Procar lettered DENIM and BMW ITALIA, number 70, cornering at Monaco in front of a full grandstand, with a second Procar behind.
Plate I A Procar in BMW Italia and Denim colours, No. 70, at Monaco on 26 May 1979; the photographer identifies the car as Osella's and its driver as Bruno Giacomelli.Carlo Marzetti (Carlomarzetti), CC BY 4.0

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The Group 5 cars

Group 5 let a team build a racing car that kept only the outline of a recognised one, and three firms built Group 5 M1s. March built a space-frame car for BMW with the normally aspirated six; it was a reserve at Le Mans in 1979 and raced in IMSA and at Le Mans in 1980. Sauber built two space-frame cars in 1981, and one of them, GS-Sport's BASF car, won the Nürburgring 1000 km that May. Schnitzer's twin-turbocharged M1 Turbo won two rounds of the German championship's first division the same year.⁠7​11​12​13​14

A low, wide Group 5 BMW M1 in white Würth colours with green, red and blue bands and the number 52, in a paddock beside a touring car.
A Group 5 M1 in the Würth livery and crew names of the Sauber car entered at Le Mans in 1981, No. 52, in the Goodwood paddock in June 2022.MrWalkr, CC BY-SA 4.0

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The rally car

BMW France rallied an M1 from the end of 1981 to 1984, with Bernard Darniche as a Group 4 car and, from 1983, with Bernard Béguin as a Group B car. In 1984 Béguin and Jean-Jacques Lenne won the Rallye de Lorraine and the Rallye de La Baule, both rounds of the French second-division championship.⁠5​15​16​17

The red and white Motul rally BMW M1 nearly head-on in a tent, with a Tour de Corse rally plate on the bonnet.
BMW France's rally M1, in Motul colours, in the Goodwood paddock in July 2019, with the plate of the 1983 Tour de Corse on its bonnet (hood).MrWalkr, CC BY-SA 4.0

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The AHG Studie

The AHG Studie was a conversion of road M1s by AHG, a BMW dealer group in Bielefeld, with a Procar-style front lip, sills (rocker panels) and rear spoiler, wider wings (fenders) and three-piece BBS wheels. auto motor und sport reported in 2021 that a small series was planned; how many were converted, no source read says. The Register records a road car and one of the six spare bodies delivered to AHG in Bielefeld.⁠18​2

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The March M1/C

BMW of North America's IMSA prototype of 1981 carried the M1's name but was a March, the 81P, with an aluminium monocoque in place of the M1's frame. It raced first with the M1's six-cylinder engine and later with a turbocharged four, and it belongs with the M1's racing family only by name and engine. The M1 race car has its record.⁠19

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After the M1

The M1's engine went on in BMW's M635CSi and M5 of 1984. The M1 Hommage and the history tell what followed.⁠6

The red BMW M1 Hommage concept under a show tent, front three-quarter from the left.
BMW's M1 Hommage, a design study of 2008, at the Festival automobile international in Paris in January 2015.Thesupermat, CC BY-SA 4.0

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Versions

Sources for Versions

Road car
3,453 cc: BMW AG (BMW Group PressClub USA), "Icons for Connoisseurs – Thirty Years of the BMW M1" (press release), 27 Mar 2008⁠6; Jeremy Walton ("J.W."), "Road Impressions: BMW M1", Motor Sport, Apr 1981, p. 83⁠1; ONS / FIA (FIA Historic Database), ONS/FIA homologation form (Testblatt) no. 670, BMW M 1, Group 4 (and its transfer to Group B), 1980⁠3; auto motor und sport, auto katalog 1980, Ausgabe Nr. 23 (Stuttgart, 1979)⁠20
399 built: BMW AG (BMW Group PressClub USA), "Icons for Connoisseurs – Thirty Years of the BMW M1" (press release), 27 Mar 2008⁠6; Richard Heseltine, "BMW M1", Motor Sport, Mar 2008, p. 134⁠21
Procar
3,498 cc: touringcarracing.net, Season car pages, "1978 Cars" to "1981 Cars" (group)⁠12

  1. Road car

    1978–1981 · 3,453 cc

    399 built

  2. Procar

    1979–1980 · 3,498 cc

  3. Group 5

    1979–1981

Pictures, top to bottom: Matthew Lamb, CC BY-SA 2.0; MrWalkr, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Sources

Sources are given as plain text; their addresses are on the sources page.

  • Primarymade at the time, by the maker or by people who were there
  • Referenceserious later work: clubs, specialists, magazines, books
  • Databaseresults and listings, entry by entry
  1. Jeremy Walton ("J.W."), "Road Impressions: BMW M1", Motor Sport, Apr 1981, p. 83, p. 83, left-hand drive only; p. 83, the build chain and left-hand drive; p. 83. Primary
  2. BMW M1 Register, "VIN Table", the serial sequence and its categories; the "Serie" numbering of the road cars; a road car and a spare body delivered to AHG in Bielefeld. Reference
  3. ONS / FIA (FIA Historic Database), ONS/FIA homologation form (Testblatt) no. 670, BMW M 1, Group 4 (and its transfer to Group B), 1980, form p. 1, Group 4 from 1 December 1980; form p. 1. Primary
  4. ONS / FISA (FIA Historic Database), FISA/ONS homologation form no. B-240, BMW M 1, Group B, 1983, form p. 1, Group B from 1 March 1983. Primary
  5. eWRC-results, Driver profiles: Bernard Béguin and Bernard Darniche (group), the rally car's classes, Group 4 in 1981–82 and Group B from 1983; the M1's rallies, 1981–84: drivers, entrants and classes. Database
  6. BMW AG (BMW Group PressClub USA), "Icons for Connoisseurs – Thirty Years of the BMW M1" (press release), 27 Mar 2008, "Project E 26"; the production model's specification; the M635CSi and M5 of 1984; 'Specifications BMW M1 – production model' table; text, final section. Primary
  7. Clive Richardson ("C.R."), "BMW's Racing Plans", Motor Sport, Jan 1979, p. 54, p. 54, "these identical Group 4 M1s"; the builders; p. 54, the March-built Group 5 car. Primary
  8. Motor Sport, "Retrospective: BMW Procar" ("Race of champions"), Jan 2017, p. 98, p. 98, Project Four "had built most of the M1 race cars". Reference
  9. Motor Sport (database), "1979 BMW M1 Procar" and "1980 BMW M1 Procar" (championship races and standings), the 1979 and 1980 seasons. Database
  10. racingsportscars.com, "BMW M1 – All Results", the Procars' entries after 1980. Database
  11. racingsportscars.com, Race, results and car-data pages with BMW M1 entries, 1979–86 (group), Le Mans 1979 and 1980, the March-BMW M1; Nürburgring 1000 km 1981, "BMW M1 Sauber". Database
  12. touringcarracing.net, Season car pages, "1978 Cars" to "1981 Cars" (group), "1981 Cars": the Schnitzer M1 Turbo and the Sauber M1; '1979 Cars', BMW M1 Procar. Database
  13. touringcarracing.net, DRM 1981: race pages and "1981 DRM Class" (group), Norisring and Salzburgring, 1981. Database
  14. Alan Henry, "Procar: When current F1 champs went tin-top racing" ("Procar – the ultimate one-make racer"), Motor Sport, Jul 1997, p. 94, p. 94, the "silhouette" Group 5 category. Reference
  15. eWRC-results, "30. Rallye International de Lorraine 1984", final results, final results, 12–13 May 1984. Database
  16. eWRC-results, "17. Rallye International de La Baule Hutchinson 1984", final results, final results, 1984. Database
  17. S.F., "Rally review, June 1982", Motor Sport, Jun 1982, p. 41, p. 41, the 1982 Tour de Corse. Primary
  18. Sandro Vitale, Article on Paul Walker's BMW M1 AHG Studie, auto motor und sport (online), 21 Jan 2021 (later updated), the dealer group, the bodywork, the wheels and the planned series. Reference
  19. International Motor Racing Research Center (racingarchives.org), from Octane Press, IMSA 1969–1989 (excerpt, "BMW"), BMW of North America's IMSA programme and the March M1/C. Reference
  20. auto motor und sport, auto katalog 1980, Ausgabe Nr. 23 (Stuttgart, 1979), data tables, pp. 196–197. Primary
  21. Richard Heseltine, "BMW M1", Motor Sport, Mar 2008, p. 134, p. 134. Reference

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