BMW M1 PROCAR BASF, 1980

Necessity is the mother of invention. When BMW needed to fast-track its M1 supercar’s homologation, the answer came in the form of a one-make race series that people still get dewy-eyed about 40 years later. The resultant M1 Procar was devastating looking – a bewinged, fat-tyred, mid-engined cartoon extrapolation of the great Giorgetto Giugiaro’s delicately hewn wedgy original. Better still, F1’s powers-that-be agreed to let the series run as a support race, the five fastest drivers in that weekend’s F1 practice sessions up against world sports car and European touring car drivers. With cash for first, second and third positions, and an M1 for the overall winner, the grids were busy and egotistical. Niki Lauda won in 1979, Nelson Piquet in an expanded 1980 series. BMW Motorsport Works’ red, white and blue livery is probably the best remembered, and Andy Warhol’s BMW art car entry used one as a canvas (it took him 20 minutes to put together, and now it is worth in excess of £100m). But the M1 Procar’s substantial competition afterlife generated a lot of graphic action, and we’ll go with the BASF-sponsored GS Tuning entry, as driven in the 1980 season by the mighty Hans-Joachim Stuck. (NB:Cassettes are popular with hipsters, so you might like to know that a company called AEG presented a machine called the Magnetophon in 1935, for which BASF developed the first tape that same year. The red and white op-art logo first appeared in 1953.)