Elvis’s BMW 507 found, restored
RARE ROADSTER: Car suffered botched V8 engine swap, paint jobs when BMW found it
Elvis Presley was a man who enjoyed living large and driving large cars — indeed, in his later years, he became rather large himself.
But amid a string of Cadillacs — and one yellow Pantera that he shot at — was a lithe BMW 507 roadster he owned in the late 1950s.
When BMW found the car, it had been repainted many times, had no engine and bore the scars of a botched Chevy V8 engine swap. But this car’s days as a rusty heap are over.
During the time Elvis was stationed in Germany as a military officer, he drove the fetching white convertible to and from the base, and while it was parked, many fans wrote loving messages on the side of the car in lipstick. This embarrassed Elvis somewhat and he had the car painted lipstick red to solve the problem.
After he had ended his service with the military, Elvis brought the BMW back home to America and sold it to a Chrysler dealer for the equivalent of $4,500 in today’s money. From there, the car suffered a homebrew engine swap with a Chevy V8, and large parts of the frame and firewall were hacked up to accommodate the extra cubic inches. Before Elvis bought it, the car was raced by legendary driver Hans Stuck.
The 507 was in a sorry state when BMW acquired it. It had rotted floors, missing gauges, no engine and many other missing items. But the restoration to its factory Feather White is a stunning one.