BMW Super Bild: 1967 BMW 1000 Prototype

Thanks to the BMW Blog and our friend John E. at Classic and Vintage BMW for this little nugget!

Thanks, fellas!

By Manny Antunes. Read Bio
April 5th, 2013 | Interesting | 1 comment

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BMW prototypes; they live a very short life of intense fame for the sake of auto show circuits worldwide, afterwards being put away in storage for decades. But others, as in the case of the BMW Vision Concept can continue to live on for a few years in morphed forms.

Recently BMW opened the doors to their secretunderground garages to display some unique one -offs as well as test mules that never saw the light of day. Other prototypes are built to celebrate corporate events or simply to display BMW’s technological prowess.

In today’s world of on demand information and social sharing, one can summon Google to fetch us an image of a prototype from two decades ago, but older cars we may never know exist.

Today’s Super Bild happens to be both a very old prototype and one that never saw the light of day. The 1967 BMW 1000 Prototype was shared with me by our good friends at Classic and Vintage BMW. Here is more on this rare BMW that may or may not exist today:

Soon after BMW’s absorption of the Dingolfing based Glas factory, in 1966, BMW’s planning director Helmut Werner Bönsch was faced with the challenge of how to make use of the Glas factories’ multitude of available resources. Under the direction of Helmut Werner Bönsch, the newly acquired Glas factory had produced a prototype that consisted of surplus materials from both BMW and Glas.

The general body structure of the long-wheelbased (and by now out of production) 700LS received an exterior makeover on both the front and the rear. Much like the 700 series BMWs, the 1000 prototype was powered by a rear-mounted engine. Instead of incorporating the 700’s flat-twin engine, the car was instead powered by the one-liter, 42 hp (normally front-mounted) engine from Glas’ 1004 model. Upon completion of the 1000 prototype, the car was deemed unacceptable by BMW’s sales manager, Paul Hahnemann, who insisted that they instead focus their time, efforts and attention on the production of larger, more desirable, six-cylinder cars.

A quick search on Google produced no information on the whereabouts of any existing mules let alone any other images besides the ones provided by Classic and Vintage BMW. Kudos to John for providing us with such obscure information on such a lovely car.

http://www.bmwblog.com/2013/04/05/bmw-super-bild-1967-bmw-1000-prototype/