ELVIS AND HIS BMW 507

THERE is no doubt that the BMW 507 roadster deserves a spot on the top 100 list of most beautiful cars ever made and there is no doubt that Elvis Presley has earned his rung in the top 100 most influential entertainers in the world.

Imagine finding a BMW 507 that used to belong to the King. That is like finding Michael Schumacher’s driving gloves and balaclava at a coin-op laundromat, except that it wasn’t.

The story of serial number 70079 is interesting, even without the Elvis link.

Search for the car that Elvis drove began when journalist Jackie Jouret, who wrote for Bimmer magazine began looking at the car that was sold by Barret Jackson as one that belonged to the King of Rock and Roll. It was chassis number 70192.

The problem is, the timeline of this chassis number conflicted with the lore of the Elvis 507.

Word has it, the King was enlisted by the United States Army during the Korean war and Private Presley was then assigned to the Third Armoured Division, which was stationed in Frankfurt during the Cold War.

As a side note, it is worthwhile to note that the Third Armoured Division is itself quite famous. It was the first armoured division the US army sent into action in Germany and it was considered one of the biggest armoured division to be organised for World War 2.

The division played a key role in the western front of World War 2, restricting supply routes which helped Allied forces to win the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, the division returned to US soil.

It was moved back to Frankfurt in 1956 during the cold war, where it was responsible for defending the Fulda Gap in the event of an attack and they received Private Presley two years later.

While stationed there, the singer had met famous racecar driver Hans Stuck, who had two 507s, which he campaigned in various series including hillclimbs.

The singer fell in love with the sound and shape of the car and leased it from Stuck as his daily driver during his stay in Germany.

The car had its 3.2-litre engine rebuilt and was given a brand new fourspeed manual gearbox before it was handed over to its famous driver, who used it until he was rotated back to the US in 1960.

The car was originally painted white, but Elvis had it redone in red because female fans were kissing the car and writing down their phone numbers on the bodywork with their lipstick.

Lipsticks are usually red. While female fans continued to kiss the car and leave their number, at least they were no longer as visible. #Rockstarproblems.

The other story that involved Elvis and the 507 was that the King had gifted the car to his co-star in the movie Acapulco, Ursula Andres.

The two stories were merged for the Barrett Jackson sale and so the story goes that the car, which bore the serial number 70192, was driven by Elvis in Germany and then gifted to the actress.

Jouret checked Dr Karlheinze Lange’s definitive history of the 507, which listed every single one of the 253 car that were ever built and she wanted to find out which one of Stuck’s car Elvis had used during his stay and it was clear the racer owned serial number 70079 and 70145.

She found out that Stuck had campaigned 70145 throughout 1959, which meant that Elvis was given car 70079.

So was car 70192 a fake? Not exactly. It is true that Elvis bought that car during his stay in Germany, but it was which he had shipped back to the straight to the US from the factory in 1968 before his tour ended.

He gifted that car to Andres and there is no way to know for sure if he had ever driven the car. #Doublecheckitbeforeyoubuyit

Once it was established that the car Elvis drove was 70079, our intrepid journalist put out a request for anyone who know the whereabouts of that chassis and found a reply from car collector Jack Castor who had bought the car to restore.

It was sold by Stuck and landed in New York, where it suffered from various modifications to turn it into a drag racer of some fashion.

When the car was identified in Castor’s garage, it was in red, but the paint history indicates that there was a coat of black paint on top of the Elvis red and the final red was painted on top of the black.

Apparently the car suffered a major accident before it was bought by Castor, who had collected quite a few parts so it could be converted back to original condition, but he never really got around to it.

When he replied to Jouret’s request, Castor did not even know that the car was the one Elvis had driven.

Eventually, the car found it’s way back into the hands of Klaus Kutscher, a restoration expert with BMW Classics.

Armed with the formidable resources of the outfit of the restoration process, there was no way that it would not turn out to be better than new.

Luckily for the buyer of 70192, he was more than okay with the Ursula Andres via Elvis provenance, even if the King may never have driven that car.

I think anyone would have been happy with that provenance, which included suggestions of the King of Rock and Roll and one of the most beautiful actress of the time being linked by a gorgeous roadster.

And that is the story of Elvis’s BMW 507. Both of them.