Can a track-focused sports car be too track-focused? That’s what one major auto magazine suggested after testing the BMW M4 CSL, a special lighter, more powerful version of its M4. While the “lesser” BMW M4 Competition xDrive model (which is not a competition car, btw) is quicker in some acceleration tests, the 40-hp more powerful, 240-pound lighter, $58,000 more expensive M4 CSL is the faster car around the kind of private membership tracks whose clients this car is intended. You’ll pay for that capability with reduced comfort in everyday driving, but would you care?
BMW’s Z8 is the kind of car that many wish BMW would build again. Two of those cars – a standard BMW Z8 and the Alpina version, called the BMW Alpina Roadster V8 – recently sold earlier this month at RM Sotheby’s Miami auction. Offered by two different owners, and both with under 23,000 miles, each car sold for exactly the same price: $229,600. Read the backstory on the Z8 and the Alpina Roadster.
The BMW 507 roadster, introduced at the 1955 Frankfurt Auto Show, is recognized as one of the most beautiful models that BMW ever produced. Only 252 hand-built 507s were produced, and despite their curb appeal, they were money losers that nearly sank BMW as a company. A 1957 BMW 507, discovered in a Philadelphia garage, sold last month at the Bonhams Audrain Concours Auction in Newport, R.I. for $2.1 million. Read the backstory on this historic BMW.
Premier’s range of picks at the 2022 Bonhams Scottsdale Auction covers nearly every type of dream car…from a Lamborghini Countach, to an Aston Martin DB4 Series II, to a Jaguar XKE Series I, and a Shelby GT500KR Fastback. If there’s a Bonhams car that suits your taste, we’re happy to prepare you with the financing to bid with confidence.
Integral to the festivities related to the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance since its 1999 inception, RM Sotheby’s returns to the beautiful grounds of the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island for the company’s 23rd Amelia Island Auction.
Car designers may loathe the term “retro,” but when done right, retro can raise pulses. The BMW Z8 certainly raised pulses when introduced for model year 2000 – and it still does today.
Many auto aficionados no doubt resonate with the idea of a thread running through a carmaker’s timeline and model history, one that then defines the marque’s heritage. Marketing departments sometimes overplay heritage, of course. The best messengers for heritage should be cars that deftly blend a sense of history with their modernity. Call it retro done right.
