BMW Car Club Festival 2007
Bigger and brighter than
ever, it’s the BMW Car
Club’s annual Festival.
One of the highlights on our
calendar is always the BMW
Car Club’s annual show and
this year’s event was one of the
biggest, no doubt helped by the
searing sunshine which helped dry out a
nation still recovering from flash flooding.
Club secretary Andrew Dale reports that
the event has grown so much in recent
years that they even ran out of space for
the Show ‘n’ Shine competition this year,
while numbers for the popular tombola have
steadily risen every year to the point where all
1,242 tickets were sold out in just 75 minutes.
Hardly surprising when you looked at the
£10,000-worth of prizes on offer though.
As ever, we found some superb BMWs on
show, ranging from outright racers to an
amazingly original first-generation 7-Series.
If you missed the show, then click on right for a
video podcast of the event. Meanwhile, here’s
what we found.
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DARREN MOSELEY’S M5
Until recently you didn’t really see
turned in a solid 400 bhp straight out of the box it’s not surprising really.
There are a few areas which benefit from uprates though, which explains
Darren’s set of Stop Tech brakes. After a Porsche 964 he was clearly used to
cars with a bit more character to them, which explains the Tubi Rumore exhaust which he
reckons is the closest a BMW engine is ever going to sound to a Ferrari V8. Add a set of
KW coil-overs, 19 inch Schnitzer rims and the optional AC Schnitzer styling and you’ve got
an M5 which is slightly less subtle than M GmbH’s standard low-key effort. |
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NEIL SUTHERLAND’S CSL
Just finished off in time for the show, this Ceylon Gold CSL was simply superb.
Neil’s one of the names behind Quarry Motors so he was well placed to tackle
the task of rebuilding the car from “a pretty grim state”. The car suffered from
most of the usual CSL rust, but Neil reckons the floors and sills were OK, while
someone had already put the time and effort into sorting out the A-pillars. It’s car
number 343 and in theory should have been built in 1972, which leaves Neil wondering if
he should regret paying for his tax disc...
The original engine is currently in the middle of a rebuild, which explains why the CSL is
temporarily powered by an M535i motor from an E12 5-Series, which must make the car fly. |
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ROB JACKSON’S 316
Rob set out to build his BMW project
for “under a grand” and so far he
reckons he’s up to £996 with his
a standard 1.8-litre 316 and the
original plan was to supercharge it until the
idea of bike carbs took hold.
Using a set of four Mikuni carbs from a
Suzuki GSXR 1100, rejetted and mounted on
responsive”. These carbs are usually gravity fed from the bike’s tank so Rob’s had to use a
pressure regulator to stop them from flooding. His target is 150-160 bhp when it’s finished,
with the complete recipe to include a Dbilas 292-degree cam and a big valve head. See
more of the car in Total BMW soon. |
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ANDY TODD’S 733i
Forget the 507 and M1, firstgeneration
7-Series are some
of the rarest BMWs around
these days, which is why the
first car we photographed
at Gaydon was Andy Todd’s incredibly
original 733i.
Complete with the original service
history spanning four owners and just
39,000 miles Andy found the car in the
classified section of a local paper and it’s
a real timewarp piece from an era when
luxury executive transport meant doing without a passenger mirror.
The interior is a riot of pinstriped
velour and it’s a manual too – four
speeds, if you can believe that. Andy
had attended the show hoping to chat
to other E23 owners. “But there aren’t
any!” he laughed. |
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DAVE HOLLAND’S 323
It ran OK for about a week,” laughed
Dave Holland, explaining how his
Baur had been recommissioned after
a decade in storage. “Of course then
the injection system was well and truly
clogged up with stale fuel.” No sooner had
he cleaned out the K-Jetronic system than
the hydraulics all decided to fail – clutch,
brakes, heel cylinders, the lot – which
explains just why extended storage isn’t
always such a good thing.
With the car back on the road, the rotted
fabric seats were retrimmed in leather and
the unique Baur roof was replaced too.
Having spent £3000 buying the 44,000-mile
car, Dave reckons he’s spent another £1500
getting it up to scratch but is now looking
to sell it. If you’re interested, contact us at
bmw.ed@kelsey.co.uk and we’ll pass your
offers on. |
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BMW Car Festival 2007
The best of the rest |
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It’s even rarer to find one of the Neue
Klasse cars but this was like new.
|
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| This was another timewarp BMW, a 1979 316i
with just 11,750 miles on the clock. Fresh out of a
private collection it could be yours for £3750. |
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| The 7-Series based Alpina B12 was over £100,000-
worth back in the day. |
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| Ever seen working headlamp wipers on an E30?
Believe it or not after we took this photo they
worked like new. |
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