A Bomb from Bavaria: BMW resurrects the 49-year-old Garmisch Concept

BMW has made quite an entrance at the recently concluded Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este show when it took the wraps off a painstakingly handcrafted replica of the legendary Garmisch Concept. The original vehicle celebrated its premiere at the 1970 Geneva International Motor Show, but disappeared without trace shortly afterwards.

Famous automobile designer Marcello Gandini conceptualized and built the first BMW Garmisch for Italian automobile company Bertone. In turn, its modern counterpart is a collaboration of a group of experts who made a great effort to imitate the original car as closely as possible. Like its predecessor, the newcomer is based on the BMW 2002 chassis and hails from Turin, Italy.

The vintage concept car received its name from a German ski resort situated in Bavaria. It had what passed for rather bold exterior design in the early 1970s, sporting a number of unique features on an otherwise simple body. These included large rectangular headlights, the radiator grille, the honeycomb pattern on the rear window, and the Venetian blinds.

The cabin also boasted quite a few bold features, such as a huge mirror situated in front of the front passenger, or a vertical control unit combining heating and radio controls.

Initially, when BMW lost the sporty coupe, it discovered that it only had a few photographs of it remaining in the archives. As such, the company did not have enough data to attempt restoration. In the end, Marcello Gandini himself volunteered to provide all the missing data about the car. Speaking at the Concorso d’Eleganza, he said he was happy to take part in the project. He also claimed that the modern BMW Garmisch was really hard to tell from the original vehicle.

Photos: BMW