BMW 507: the car that nearly bankrupted BMW

December 23, 2022

BMW 507

Beautiful thing, isn’t it? Unfortunately for BMW, no one wanted him. In total, BMW sold only 254 examples of the 507. Enormously little so. This almost resulted in bankruptcy for BMW. The man behind this idea was Max Hoffman. He was an American car importer. Hoffman thought the 507 would perfectly fill the gap between cheap and expensive sports cars. After 3 years, BMW stopped production of the 507 in 1959.

Unique

The 507 is a unique car not only because of the small number of examples produced. It looks beautiful and has fine specifications. Up front is a 3.2-liter V8 engine that provides 150 horsepower and a wonderful sound. Just look it up on YouTube. Later models have 15 hp of extra power thanks to larger valves. The BMW 507 is a manual transmission with a top speed of 200 kilometers per hour and sits at 100 kilometers per hour in exactly 10 seconds. Even now, nothing to be ashamed of.

Why was the BMW 507 so disappointing?

Simple: it was way too expensive. BMW wanted to sell the car for 5,000 euros, but production costs turned out to be much higher than expected. The brand therefore screwed up the price to $9,000. Even for this amount, they could not make a profit on it, so it ended up sitting in the showroom for $10,500. That may sound little now, but for that money you could also have a Mercedes-Benz 300SL at that time.

Unfeasible

BMW had planned to sell about 2,000 units in the United States. That party was not going to happen. In total, the brand sold only 39 units of the BMW 507. Perhaps the most famous American of the time (and perhaps still) loved the German sports car: Elvis Presley. Although he could not handle the manual transmission well, he loved the design and performance of the 507.

Germany

By the way, he had the car not in America, but during his service in Germany in 1958. He had his white 507 repainted in red so that female fans would not recognize his car. After his service, he took it to America, and after a while traded it there for a Chevrolet. BMW managed to track down the car in 2016 and refurbished it. You can see the restored car in the photo above this article.

Expensive car

The disappointing sales figures decades ago make the 507 extra unique today. And therefore terribly expensive. Several years ago, a BMW 507 sold at auction for 2.4 million euros. This copy was once owned by the Shane O’Neal, the grandson of the founder of RKO studios, one of the greatest film studios of Hollywood’s golden years. In 2021, a 507 was discovered in a Philadelphia garage that had been sitting untouched for 43 years. This car also went under the hammer for more than $2 million.