The five greatest BMWs

These are the cars we consider to be the five greatest BMWs of all. We didn’t agonise over choosing them - no, we bent double and writhed around on the floor, banged our heads against the walls, wailed and gnashed our teeth over their inclusion.

Actually that’s not true: the top three were always going to be there (though not necessarily in that order) and probably the fourth placed car too. But what should come fifth and, more to the point, which cars should fail to reach this final reckoning drove us almost to distraction.

We don’t expect anyone, let alone everyone to agree with our choices, and if by making them we spark a debate, we will welcome it be it heated or otherwise. For now though, let us celebrate those we have chosen, from the very old to the spanking new.

5. BMW i3 (2013)

To some it looks a little odd, to many too odd in appearance and operation to seal the deal, despite the massive advantages in running and taxation costs. Once the early adopters had filled their boots, sales of the i3 have not been what BMW would have liked. But success in the market place is no measure of greatness: the McLaren F1 was a total sales disaster and that’s not done too badly since. Nor, for that matter, has the BMW M1.

So no, the i3 is not for everyone and, yes, of course it has its limitations, mainly related to its range, but the time will come where we are sitting in our largely electric and occasionally range-extended future, relieved that’s it’s nothing like as dull as we feared it might be, and we will look at the i3 as the car that showed us the way.

5. BMW i3 (2013)

The efforts BMW have gone to with this car beggar belief. Electric cars are heavy right? Not this one. The i3 is the lightest car BMW makes. Thank its carbon core for that. A carbon clad BMW on sale for not much more than a fully loaded Toyota Avensis.

5. BMW i3 (2013)

Better than that, the i3 is genuinely good to drive and you don’t need to qualify with ‘for an electric car’. By normal standards, by BMW standards indeed, the i3 is engaging and entertaining. Its performance from rest is ridiculous thank to instant electric torque, its handling making the car chuckable in a way too few cars of any kind are today.

But it’s not just fun, it’s funky too. How easy it would have been for BMW to claw back some cash by just fitting a 1-series cabin. We might have even been reassured by its familiarity. But no, BMW saved some of its most creative content for the shapes and some of the sustainable materials used in its interior. If your ideal is for an environmentally friendly car to brighten up your daily journey to work, an i3 will not only allow you to drive the dream, but live it too.

4. BMW 328 (1936)

It came from nowhere. Up until 1936 BMW had built several good cars and a few interesting ones at that but this, the 328, was something else again and its influence would last for years, nowhere more in Britain.

In many ways, the 328 was BMW at its best: pushing at the outer edges of both what technology could offer and its brand could sustain, just like an i8 today. Its chassis was simple, its engine based on an old design. It was what it did with those raw materials that set it apart from everything else and sewed the seeds for the reputation for engineering excellence and innovation BMW enjoys to this day.

4. BMW 328 (1936)

Alastair Pugh’s 328 is as good as they get, a beautifully original right hand drive example carrying the Frazer-Nash badging of its UK importer. That’s the first British connection. Its engine is a 2-litre straight six that BMW adapted to include a cross-flow head, hemispherical combustion chambers and a unique valve gear system offering most of the benefits of a twin cam engine with just one camshaft. In 1936 it had 80bhp which, back then was a respectable output for an engine half as large again.

4. BMW 328 (1936)

Clothed in super slippery bodywork and weighing just 800kg, it was enough to guarantee a 328 a top speed of almost 100mph in an era when the cars most people bought would struggle to go much more than half that fast.

4. BMW 328 (1936)

To drive it feels like an advanced 1950s design, easy, fluent, fun and even pleasantly rapid. You have constantly to remind yourself its design is 80 years old. As for the other British connections, Bristol ‘saved’ the engine design from the rubble of post-war BMW, ensuring it would live on in Bristol road cars, sports cars and even Cooper and Lister racing cars for years to come. And then there’s the Jaguar link: look at this pre-war 328, then find a picture of a post war XK120 and tell me one was not inspired by the other.

3. BMW M1 (1978)

As a car it was a dead end, as a sales proposition a complete flop. On the road and especially on the track for which it was originally designed, the M1 was a total failure. Yet this is the first M-car and, to date, BMW’s only multi-cylinder, classically configured, mid-engined, rear drive supercar. And it is wonderful.

Its Giugiaro-penned shape is a perfect wedge of late 1970s design, its Campagnolo wheels design icons in their own right. The cabin, frankly, is a mess with dreadful switchgear and absurdly offset driving position (even the clutch is to the right of the steering column) and no attempt at style but even that is somehow pleasingly characterful.

3. BMW M1 (1978)

The engine is a masterpiece, the first of BMW Motorsport’s twin cam, 24-valve motors, that will stand for all time among the greatest six cylinder powerplants ever conceived. It developed 277bhp from its 3.5-litres (and up to 800bhp in twin turbo racing configuration) and directed it to the tarmac via a five speed box with a dog-leg first.

3. BMW M1 (1978)

It is a car you have to drive fast because if you just tootle about in it, it feels surprisingly ordinary. It rides well and is quite quiet but that’s not what this car is about. You have to make it sing, keep the revs high, the gears low and make its chassis work. Then it is simply mesmerising.

It has a feel and a balance courtesy of its light weight, unassisted steering and skinny contact patches closer to that of a Lotus Elise than a modern supercar. A properly set up and sorted M1 can be flung up the road, angled into corners on a trailing throttle and drifting out to the apex. The very thought of even attempting to drive, say, its Ferrari Boxer contemporary the same way is enough to give you the shivers.

3. BMW M1 (1978)

It’s such a shame the M1 failed, for had it worked the family of supercars it would have spawned could have taken BMW in an entirely different direction. In the event it would be over 30 years before BMW tried to make another mid-engine car again. Happily, and as we shall see, the wait was more than worth it.

2. BMW i8 (2014)

It is so safe to retreat into what we know, but true progress requires someone to put their head above the parapet and walk out into what we do not know, in the hope that by breaking new ground we will be taken in a direction worth travelling. And it is so easy to let someone else do the running so you might learn from their mistakes before following suit. It takes real vision to be the pioneer, not to mention balls of ultra-high tensile steel.

2. BMW i8 (2014)

BMW’s bravery beggars belief. The i8 is a £100,000 junior supercar relying for a primary power supply on a 1.5-litre three cylinder engine more usually found in a Mini. Yet if fortune really does favour the brave then the i8 will change the way people perceive BMW, for the resulting car is not just a work of visual art, it is an engineering triumph, a feast for head and heart alike and one of the most extraordinary mainstream production cars of this or any other era.

Its looks are landmark, proving that avant-garde design and true beauty can walk hand in hand. Its hybrid system allows it to cover up to 24 miles in zero emissions silence while also boosting that Mini engine to provide performance fully commensurate with its appearance. It sounds incredible yet will do 40mpg all day long. And, unlike any Porsche 911, it has an immensely strong, genuinely lightweight carbon fibre tub. Truly there is nothing else like it.

2. BMW i8 (2014)

Some have said it seems contrived, artificial, a clever confection of components but not a true, pure supercar. To me that is to misunderstand its role. The entire point of the i8 is that it is not trying to be like any other car. Indeed if you want to find another car that tries to balance grand touring ability with sporting aspiration like this, you need to look all the way back to the 1970s and Porsche 928. But even that is to sell the i8 short.

Its identity is unique, a post modern, trail blazing pioneer, lighting the road to the environmentally aware fast car future that awaits. And if that future is as good or even better than this, I for one, fear it not one bit.

1. BMW M3 (E30) (1986)

Our apologies for the utter predictability of this choice, but our favourite BMW was always going to be original M3. Only the i8 challenged it, and then only on the grounds that it’s a new car and this is a magazine whose primary business is new cars; but should that make it the best BMW of all time, regardless of everything else? Not to us.

1. BMW M3 (E30) (1986)

Even in its late ‘80s heyday, the M3 was never a particularly quick car, yet it had this ability to grab you by the heart and cling on, regardless of how many other faster, gruntier M-cars came along. Today you can buy an M5 with three times the 200bhp of the original M3, yet its place at the top of the tree has never looked more secure.

Why? Three reasons: first is its accessibility. When it was new, the M3 was almost affordable, it would carry four people in reasonable comfort and had a huge boot. It was a very usable car.

1. BMW M3 (E30) (1986)

Secondly, and conversely, its roots lay in racing. It’s a proper homologation special with a road-sanitised but full race engine under the bonnet, an engine never used in any other car. It has a unique shell, bespoke suspension and a race gearbox. In this regard it has something over every M car produced since.

Finally, it was and remains a riot to drive. The chassis is simply exquisite, offering race car balance, one of the best power steering systems ever devised and more fun on road or track than most alleged sports cars costing twice as much.

1. BMW M3 (E30) (1986)

In its pedigree, the pleasure it provides to those behind the wheel and the fact you don’t need a special reason to go out and drive it, even now it encapsulates all we ever wanted a BMW to be. The Ultimate Driving Machine, no less.

1. BMW M3 (E30) (1986)

Scroll through the rest of our gallery of Autocar’s 5 greatest BMWs, in convoy and on location at Goodwood in England.