SIX BANGERS
BMW FAMILY TREE
If you happen to be a BMW nut, there is one car out of the entire corporate line-up that is the ultimate ‘get’ – the full race version of the 3.0CSL of the seventies, complete with wild wings and otherwise known as the Batmobile. Now we’ll get to that car in these pages, as we managed to drag one into our photo studio not so long ago.
However it’s worth having a bit of a squiz at the cars that led up to that monster. Thanks to the good folk at Makulu Car Services and Southern BM, both based in
Moorabbin (Vic), we actually got to play with the direct forebears of the mighty Batmobile: the
2000CS and a road 3.0CSL.
A little background first.
The sixties was turning into a make-or-break decade for
BMW. The financial results for 1958-59 were an absolute shocker, dripping with red ink, and the company blundered into the early sixties with no immediate sign of making a profit. There’s only so long you can keep that up.
With the new decade came plans for a fresh platform, dubbed the ‘new class’ (or neue klasse), which was to be bigger and host a new engine line in the shape of the M10 inline four. That started out as a 1500 and pretty quickly was developed into a 2000. As it turned out the saloons were a minor success and were sufficient to keep the company af loat. However as we’ve all seen over the decades, car companies like to have a bit of a glamour in their line-ups, as a way of getting attention and to use as customer bait in the showroom. Sure they’ll turn up to look at the sex y coupe, and will probably drive home in a sedan. Or that’s the theory.
In the case of the ‘new class’ the solution was the 2000C and CS, based on the existing platform but with much-revised styling led by in-house maestro Wilhelm Hofmeister. He was to go on and the lead the efforts on the much sexier E9 series.
The forward-leaning snout was to set a trend that went all the way through to the Paul Bracq-designed ‘shark snout’ E24 (aka 635CSi et al) and
lasted to 1989. However the bold looks of the front lights and chrome was the topic of much debate. The subtly altered CS front end wasn’t quite as confronting as the huge rectangular lamps on the sedans and it did have its supporters.
In any case, this is a substantial car and will instantly feel vaguely familiar to anyone who’s engaged with an E9. It’s effectively a medium-sized four seater with nice airy glasshouse feel to the cabin and, ironically, the coupe was a little heavier than the sedan it was based on.
As for the C/CS designation, the former ran a single carburetor powerplant claiming 100 horses, while the latter had a twin carburetor set-up and claimed a hefty performance jump to 120hp.
Transmissions were a four-speed manual or three-speed auto as an extra cost option on the C.
BMW reportedly charged like the proverbial wounded bull for these cars – something that became a long-lasting trend for its premium coupes. In the UK, one of these would have set you back more than an E-type Jaguar.
Karmann, which had a close association with BMW coupes through to around 1977, assembled the C/CS line in Osnabruck and is said to have only made 144 right-handdrive CS versions out of 13,691.
Inside the CS you’re immediately struck by the low waistline of the cabin, the uninhibited view thanks to the skinny A-pillars and the long, low timberwork