Why BMW recreated a long-lost concept car

THE Garmisch concept car is a true unicorn. Commissioned by BMW, the one-off car was designed by the legendary Marcello Gandini for the Bertone styling house. It was shown at the 1970 Geneva Motor Show.

And then it vanished.

At last weekend’s Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este, which sits on the banks of Italy’s Lake Como, the BMW Group unveiled the recreation of the Garmisch. The move, BMW said, is its way of paying respect to one of Italy’s most influential car designers.

“Marcello Gandini to me is one of the grandmasters of car design and his cars always have been an important source of inspiration for my work,” said Adrian van Hooydonk, senior vice-president of BMW Group Design. Van Hooydonk, according to BMW, has been intrigued by the Garmisch since he first discovered a faded picture of the car some years ago.

“Building the BMW Garmisch for a second time gave us the opportunity to pay tribute to Mr. Gandini, recall one of his lesser-known cars, and highlight Bertone’s stylistic influence on the evolution of BMW design. For me, that alone was reason enough to do this project; filling in the gaps and completing BMW’s history,” the chief designer said.

Like many other Italian show cars of the 1960s and 1970s, the original Garmisch was developed by Bertone as an independent design proposal intended to demonstrate the studio’s creativity.

“The original idea came from Nuccio Bertone himself, who wanted to consolidate our existing relationship with BMW by designing a surprise show car for the Geneva Motor Show,” said Marcello Gandini, at the time in charge of Bertone’s design department. “We wanted to create a modern midsize coupe that was faithful to BMW’s design language, but that was also more dynamic and even a bit provocative.”

While the side profile of the car was very sleek and clean, the most distinctive design feature of the Garmisch was its bold, vertical and almost angular variation of BMW’s kidney-shaped radiator grill, which was flanked by square glass-covered headlights. Other unusual details included sports car-like louvres on the C-pillars and the honeycomb-patterned mesh cover for the rear window — a trademark Gandini styling cue.

According to Gandini, even the car’s name was chosen to impress. “We picked the name Garmisch because skiing was very popular in Italy at that time. It evoked dreams of winter sports and alpine elegance.”

BMW has always been influenced by Italian design and coachbuilding culture, as exemplified by the brand’s 328 Mille Miglia that was created at Carrozzeria Touring in the late 1930s, and the wedge-shaped BMW M1 designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro.

The new Garmisch shows BMW’s expertise in design research and prototype building. As original documents of the 1970s Garmisch were sparse, BMW personnel involved in the project had to retrace every detail of the car’s exterior and interior from a small selection of period images.

BMW said Gandini himself contributed to the research process by providing what he remembers in creating the original Garmisch. This allowed the design team to refabricate key details such as the exterior color — a light champagne metallic in line with Italian fashion trends of the time — and the interior materials and trim. While the BMW design team used the latest 3D modeling technologies to revive and specify the original structures and shapes, the Garmisch was coach-built by skilled craftsmen in Turin.

Just like the original car almost 50 years ago.