Concept To Reality : BMW Z1

There is always something fascinating about concept cars, they pop up at just about every major motor show around the world in some form or another.  You can chart the design ideas of the time and see if they bled into production cars.  Right now it is all alternative fuels and recyclable materials, back in the 70's it was very much wedge shapes.  The 80's though saw a number of aspirational soft top designs hit the show floor in concept form.

The problem with concepts is that they get watered down a lot before they make it into production, as designers have to think beyond their own selfish world of ideas into the practicalities of actually delivering a car the public can drive reliably and safely.  Often the car that starts out as an exciting concept is almost unrecognisable by the time it hits the street.  Not so for the BMW Z1 though, this had a different route to the road.

In 1985 BMW set up an internal company to push forward developments in car design and technology in order to 'reset or modify the basics of automobile design'.  Asuch it had no commercial commitments, it was an ideas pool and some very clever people swam in it under the guiding light of Ulrich Bez.  The first design they worked on was under the label "Freedom on four wheels", it became the BMW Z1.

When the concept hit the pages of "Auto Motor und Sport" the response was strong, in fact it was so strong that BMW agreed to build some more prototype cars.  When the desire for the car didn't let up the decision was taken to put it into full production, essentially unchanged, literally from concept to show room.

Production wasn't cost effective for BMW and the life cycle was fairly short, from 1986 until 1991, with just 8,000 cars being built.  It paved the way for many cars that came after, not least of which was BMW's own Z3.  Sadly one of the most striking features of the Z1, it's drop down doors, haven't really caught on, even though they feel like they may have come from the future.

Technically the Z1 was at the cutting edge, multiple construction materials make up the body work, hugely efficient aerodynamics aided by the flat underbody.  The use of aerodynamics in the car to aid road holding and agility, creating low and high pressure areas to pull the car down onto the road in all the right places.  Whilst it is essentially 'based on' a BMW E30 325i, the Z1 shares almost no components with the car except the engine and gearbox.

Performance was pretty good, the 168 horse power engine powering the rear wheels and pushing the car to 60 in 9 seconds, then on to 137 mph at top speed.  Alpina, Hamann-Motorsport, Schnitzer and Kelleners all made modified version of the Z1 with subtle styling mods and more power.  In more recent years an E34 M5 engine has been squeezed into a Z1, which sounds like a lot of fun.

You can read more about the Z1 at this UK site.