BMW Motorsport, headed by Jochen Neerpasch, sought to compete against Porsche in Group 5 racing, which required producing a car in sufficient quantity for homologation. BMW partnered with Lamborghini to work out chassis details, assemble prototypes, and manufacture vehicles. The tubular steel space frame was designed by Gianpaolo Dallara, but Lamborghini's deteriorating financial position forced BMW to reassume control in April 1978, after seven prototypes had been built. Former Lamborghini engineers who had founded a firm called Italengineering subsequently completed the engineering at a facility less than ten miles from the Lamborghini shop.
The fibreglass body was styled by Giorgetto Giugiaro, drawing on the 1972 BMW Turbo concept car. Production delays and changes to Group 5 rules ultimately forced BMW to campaign the car in Group 4 rather than Group 5.
Fibreglass body panels were manufactured by Italian firm TIR (Trattamento Italiano Resina) in Reggio Emilia. The chassis was built by Modenese firm Marchesi. Body and interior assembly were completed by Italdesign in Turin, after which the partly finished cars were delivered to German specialist manufacturer Baur for final hand assembly. Hand-built M88/1 engines were supplied from BMW in Munich; completed vehicles were shipped to BMW Motorsport in Munich for final inspection and delivery. Of the 453 production cars, 399 were road-going units and 53 were motorsport examples.
The M1 uses a 3,453 cc (3.5 L) M88/1 straight-six petrol engine with Kugelfischer-Bosch mechanical fuel injection and Magneti-Marelli ignition, developed by Paul Rosche, who also created the S14 inline-four and S70/2 V12. The engine features six separate throttle bodies, twin-cams, and four valves per cylinder, producing 277 PS (204 kW; 273 hp) at 6,500 rpm and 330 N⋅m (243 lb⋅ft) at 5,000 rpm, with a top speed of 265 km/h (165 mph). Drive is through a five-speed manual ZF Friedrichshafen gearbox with a 40% locking limited-slip differential. A version of the M88/1 was later used in the South African 745i (209 examples, 1984–1986), as well as the E24 M6/M635CSi and E28 M5.
Steering is unassisted rack-and-pinion. Suspension is double-wishbone with adjustable coil springs and Bilstein gas-filled dampers; road cars used softer bushings for ride quality. Ventilated steel brakes measure 300 mm at the front and 297 mm at the rear. The car ran special Campagnolo alloy wheels — 7×16 inches front, 8×16 rear — fitted with Pirelli P7 tyres.
The M1's interior was relatively basic, combining leather and cloth trim with parts sourced from other BMW models. Standard equipment included air conditioning, power windows, and a stereo, but no seat adjustment was offered and only left-hand drive was available.
In 1979, Jochen Neerpasch devised the Procar BMW M1 Championship, a one-make series supporting Formula One with racing-modified M1s, created to aid BMW in accumulating the production numbers required for Group 4. The series ran for two seasons: Niki Lauda won in 1979 and Nelson Piquet in 1980. After BMW met the Group 4 standards, Procar cars were deployed by various teams in the World Championship for Makes and national series.
In June 1979, Hervé Poulain with Manfred Winkelhock and Marcel Mignot raced an M1 Art Car with bodywork painted by Andy Warhol at the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans in the IMSA GTX class, finishing second in class and sixth overall. The M1 continued to run at Le Mans from 1981 to 1986, classified as a Group B car, though it was eclipsed by Group C prototypes.
An M1 Pro Car was converted to Group B rally specification by BMW France for the 1982 season and campaigned through 1983 before passing to the Motul privateer team for 1984. Former ERC champion Bernard Béguin took back-to-back wins at Rallye de La Baule and Rallye de Lorraine in 1984 and claimed a second-place outright ERC podium at the Rallye d'Antibes later that year. The car was not campaigned after 1984.
March Engineering built a highly modified M1 derivative in 1981 known as the March-BMW M1/C (also March 81P), an IMSA GTX/GTP sports prototype developed in collaboration with BMW.
In April 2008 BMW unveiled the M1 Homage concept to mark the M1's 30th anniversary, first shown publicly at the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este. Its design drew on both the original M1 and the BMW Turbo concept by Paul Bracq. The Vision EfficientDynamics concept led to the production BMW i8, a plug-in hybrid range-extender with a three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine designed by Benoit Jacob, with series production beginning in April 2014 — the second mass-produced mid-engine BMW after the M1. The Vision M Next concept, shown in June 2019, is a plug-in hybrid partially inspired by the M1's louvered rear windows and BMW roundels inside the taillamps, with claimed total system output of 441 kW (600 PS).
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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