HIS SECRET FORDS BOOKS LIFTED THE lid on countless fascinating Ford road car projects that never saw the light of day. Now Steve Saxty has turned his attention to BMW.
In BMW by Design, Saxty unearths the stories behind some of the brand’s most iconic models, as well as many more that never made production. Over the coming pages the author shares some of his favourite discoveries – along with a host of previously unseen images – to provide an insight into some of BMW’s design greats.
The road to the 1-series
THE BMW 1M COUPÉ HAS ALWAYS BEEN an icon-in-waiting, but I hadn’t realised what a fascinating backstory it had. The idea kicked off in the mid-’90s as a skunkworks project – to reinvent the much-loved BMW 2002. I had only seen one photo of it but knew a number of people who worked on the project, codenamed 2K2 (a 2002 for the year 2002). Although lacking the overtly retro look of the Z8 or BMW Mini, designer Andreas Zapatinas conceived a 2002-style car featuring the shark-nose front of a classic ’70s BMW. It went nowhere until engineer (and 2002 owner) Ralf Langmeier asked design boss Chris Bangle if it could be used for a novel manufacturing idea he’d had.
The clever concept was to reskin
