(Photos by Kevin Adolf and Grassroots Motorsports Magazine Staff)
Author’s Note: Recently, our buddies over at Grassroots Motorsports Magazine asked me if I’d like to help them out with writing about some cool feature cars. All of them are 100% Bangshift Approved, and you’ll see them pop up over here in the coming months. This is the first of hopefully many more. Enjoy!
A few months back, I learned about this car from the guys over at Grassroots Motorsports Magazine, and it immediately piqued my interest. As a lover of all types of cars, I’ve found the 70’s BMW 2002 a curiosity. They were bare-bones RWD sports coupes with little if any creature comforts from an era before BMW really got wrapped up in the German Luxury rat race. They were truly a throwback to another era, and found a niche with performance-minded drivers in the dark days of the 1970’s, where fuel rationing and insurance premiums drove the big power muscle and sports cars into hiding. But while these pure driver’s cars were cutting edge back then, compared to today’s spiritual successors like the Miata and Honda S2000, they were a bit sloppy and slow.
Here’s the car in it’s original BMW-powered configuration. Diego performed the body mods himself. Ratty, yet functional, just the way we like it. And trust me, it gets better,
Enter Diego Loza, a guy in his 20’s that got bitten by the racing bug after exposure to it from his buddies. After watching his friends race, they all egged him on to build something of his own. He had some previous experience with a Honda S2000, which he loved, but he had sold the car to get something more sensible for daily driving. He decided that he wanted to get something cool and older, and he ended up finding a discarded BMW 2002 shell in the mountains of West Virginia. After swapping in a modern BMW S52 engine and tracking the car a few times, he pined for the handling and high revving nature of his old S2000. He hatched a plan: what if he sold all the BMW stuff, found a S2000, and merged the two cars?
Oops. Diego did this in his parents’ suburban garage, much to the chagrin of his mom. It took a lot of convincing to kick her car out in the cold as he spliced the two cars together, but he did it! Thanks Diego’s mom!
Diego hit up some online Honda forums and scored a S2000 chassis as well as a S2000 drivetrain and started cutting, hacking, welding, and splicing. Over the course of time, he ended up with this:
Yeah baby! The BMW body was mated to the S2000 chassis with some wheelbase and other various body modifications, including those homemade flares. He was going to paint it, but since the body had been pocked with various imperfections from sitting out in the mountains of West Virginia for decades, he stripped the paint and left it au natural. He says that it shows the honest history of the car, and we agree. It’s freaking rad!
Inside, he had to modify basically everything to make the car function, and functionality clearly takes precedence over aesthetics. The Honda’s digital gauge cluster was rigged up along with some aftermarket gauges, and a custom pedal assembly sticks up from the floor. No fancy leather, heated seats, and iDrive in this BMW!
Here’s the heart of the beast: the Honda S2000’s F22C VTEC 4-cylinder. It’s basically stock, and puts down about 211hp to the rear wheels. That’s plenty of motivation to get this 2400 lb car hustling through the corners on the track. Notice that the engine is set way back in the engine bay to achieve optimal chassis balance.
Without a doubt, this is the coolest BMW 2002 and/or Honda S2000 we have ever seen. It’s raw, rowdy, and we love it! If you want to learn more about the car, check out the rest of story in its entirety over at GrassrootsMotorsports.com!
And as always, we would love to hear what you think, so comment away!
Awesome – now finish and paint the bodywork and sort the interior out as it just looks like shit at the moment!