It has been said of late that BMW as a company is in a tailspin, caught off-guard by Tesla and begging the question what exactly is a BMW these days and what exactly does it do? It seems that even BMW doesn’t know as it continues to drift off course to the extent that even one of the company’s past stylists has publicly condemned much of what it makes now.
Of course, by contrast BMW knew exactly what it was doing 40 years ago as it geared up for the launch of the second generation 3-Series, the model codenamed E30.
In gestation since 1979, the E30 is the car that really did catapult BMW into the big time and perhaps its success even caught its own maker unaware. In reality, the E30 was a well massaged and improved version of the 1975 ‘E21’ 3-Series, itself a good car but one that supposedly lived in the shadow of its smaller, lighter and spectacularly successful 2002 predecessor.
The E21 had moved BMW’s smallest offering upmarket with many improvements that overall amounted to a better car. It was bigger, heavier and slower but on the other hand it was roomier, more solidly built with a better ride, a much nicer interior and vastly better heating and ventilation.
Selling 1.3 million units between 1975 and late 1983 (the 316 overlapped slightly into E30 production), the E21 handsomely outsold the ’02 range by about half a million units so BMW was doing something right. Its successor would sell over 2.3 million units.
The E21 had a few failings to sort out though. It was expensive to make because it shared so little with other BMW models and the more powerful versions were either quite thirsty (320 six-cylinder) or could be a bit lively in the wet – enter the 323i, a car trickier than Rasputin and one that prompted the Swedish authorities to look a bit closer at the car’s
