When the engineers get to to their thing without the bean counters involved, awesome is often the end result. That’s what happened in 1977 and 1978 when BMW decided to go touring car racing and they targeted the wild Group 5 category as their objective. What resulted were some of the neatest, most iconic, and successful cars of their time. The flared fenders, the huge rear wing, the sculpted rear section of the body all add up to a cool looking but totally functional hot rod. You are looking at a weapon of automotive war right here. Less than 2,000lbs. 300hp from a BMW Formula 2 designed and four banger, and it has rear wheels on it 19-inches wide. Wowsers!
The particular car you are going to watch race here at Goodwood is being driven by Kevin Abbring and you can literally hear the delight in the announcer’s voice when he recognizes the car and the driver name. As you can see and as we have showed you in other videos, it was very cold during the event, so cold that it freaking snowed. The show was not happening as Abbring and his Group 5 pals were on course but you can tell that the car does not have a ton of grip at many points on the track. Let’s see, 600hp, 1,900lbs and an ice cold track had to have made this an adventuresome trip for Abbring but he handles the car well.
We love seeing the thing from head on because it gives you an idea about just how freaking much those rear fenders are flared. It’s like half a mile…or more. This car carried the vaunted Fruit of the Loom sponsorship and while if we could pick a look it would be the factory BMW colors, we’d not kick one of these cars out of bed for anything!
Crank the speakers and enjoy.
